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Today's
Stories
January
26, 2004
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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January
26, 2004
David Kay's Admission
Grounds
for Optimism?
By GARY LEUPP
"I don't think they existed. What
everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end
of the [1991] Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale
production program in the '90s."
Chief American arms inspector David
Kay, resigning his post and referring to the missing Iraqi WMDs,
January 23
Some
are predicting the imminent twilight of the neocons, and their
campaign to control the world. They have suffered some setbacks.
However optimistically they portray the situation in occupied
Iraq, things have in fact gone very badly. The predicted "cakewalk"
has become a bloody guerrilla war, claiming a U.S. soldier every
day (specifically, 1.13 since March 20) from combat alone. (Add
"accidents," and you get 1.64 per day; 512 total as
I write.) The troops have not met with the warm welcome foretold,
but with sullenness, fear, resentment, attacks, massive protests
demanding "democracy, not occupation." The putative
casus belli turns out to be a crock (as some us predicted
it would all along); there are no significant al-Qaeda links;
the credibility of the Bush administration, already abysmal in
the wider world, is increasingly questioned by the hitherto miserably
gullible and timid U.S. political and journalistic establishments.
Plans for the "handover of sovereignty" to Iraqis were
moved up to July 1 to assuage the mass demonstrations organized
by Shiites but involving Sunni, communist and other forces as
well. Plans to determine the composition of the new Iraqi regime
by caucuses (which, as the Boston Globe editorialized
January 24, would allow occupation forces "to arrange things
so that two-thirds of the delegates selected would be U.S. appointees")
have met with indignant resistance from the occupied.
Iraqis now want to call the invaders'
bluff and demand the democracy which, following the ignominious
collapse of the other rationales for war, has been touted as
the key, ultimately redeeming objective of invasion. Iraqis from
Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali Sistani, probably the most powerful
man in the country, to the Defense Department's own boy, convicted
swindler and Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, are
making this demand. Uncertain how to proceed, wishing to spread
out responsibility for what transpires next, and hoping to gain
international legitimacy for whatever government is installed,
the U.S. politely re-engages the spurned U.N. to help determine
whether a direct vote is indeed feasible by July 1. This was
not at all the neocon scenario.
Meanwhile, so far this month, CIA arms inspector David Kay, who
once promised "some surprises" in the quest for Iraqi
WMDs, told Reuters January 24, "I don't think they existed
I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the
'90s," making Colin Powell's UN presentation last February,
and Vice President Cheney's repeated, emphatic pronouncements
on the question look like either the result of strangely mistaken
intelligence (that will be the official explanation; blame
Tenet), or bald-faced lies designed to hoodwink the masses
into supporting a disastrous war. The Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace seems to favor the latter interpretation.
It recently issued a report charging that "administration
officials systematically misrepresented the threat from
Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile program," and "misrepresenting
inspectors' findings in ways that turned threats from minor to
dire [emph. added]." The Washington Post ran a long
front-page article January 7 concluding that "Iraq's Arsenal
was Only on Paper." Former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill
implicitly pooh-poohed the WMD rationale by revealing that Bush
in cabinet meetings as early as January 2001 asked his advisors
to find a pretext for war: "It was all about finding a way
to do it," the former Alcoa CEO told CBS News, "That
was the tone of it. The president saying, 'Find me a way to do
this." And then the Army War College's Strategic Studies
Institute publishes a report by a visiting professor, a national
security specialist, condemning the conflation of al-Qaeda and
Iraq and describing the Iraq invasion as a "detour"
in the "War on Terrorism" centered in Afghanistan,
where the Taliban enjoys a resurgence that few talk about.
You'd think all of this, along with last
year's exposure of the Niger uranium lie, and the vindictive
response to that exposure by some very sleazy person in the administration,
and the remark by Paul Wolfowitz that the WMD issue was chosen
by the administration as the reason for war "for
bureaucratic reasons," and the remark by Richard Perle
that "international law ... would have required us to leave
Saddam Hussein alone" (and so we broke it) would cause
an informed public to damn the whole world-transformation project
the neocons have openly outlined. You'd think their twilight
might in fact be in sight.
But I am not too optimistic. If each
day brings another apparent neocon setback, it brings more evidence,
too, that the balls they've set rolling continue to roll. Yes,
the Powell faction seems to have set back the chronology for
regime change in Iran and North Korea. Yes, the media seems to
get a little bit more critical. But then I switch on NPR or watch
MSNBC's Chris Matthews' Hardball, and there are Richard
Perle (former Defense Policy Board chief) and David Frum ("axis
of evil" speechwriter), peddling their warmongering manual,
An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, and receiving
a deferential hearing as they flout logic and urge the flouting
of international law, arguing for ongoing war into what they
like to call "The New
American Century." The next step in their project is
apparently a long-planned attack on Syria.
Last May I listed in a
CounterPunch piece "the issues the neocons have and
will continue to raise as they muster support for the Syria invasion:"
1. Syria's possession of chemical and
biological weapons, including those represented as relocated
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
2. Syria's supposed "sponsorship"
of Lebanon's Hezbollah (viewed by most in Lebanon as a large,
mainstream political party), and several Palestinian groups.
3. Syria's alleged involvement in the
flow of personal and equipment into Iraq to fight the invaders.
4. Syria's alleged harboring of fleeing
Iraqi officials.
5. Child custody disputes between Syrian
fathers and their American spouses. (This added just as a means
of vilifying Syrians in general.)
I felt last May that the most important
of these was the first, since it was used effectively to prepare
U.S. public opinion for the Iraq attack, and because if WMD weren't
found in Iraq then the easiest way out of the inevitable embarrassment
would be to assert that they're all over the border in Syria.
(The thesis of WMD relocation was, to the best of my knowledge,
first made by Ariel Sharon in December 2002, when the Israel
prime minister declared, "We are certain that Iraq has recently
moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria." So far
U.S. officials haven't been so "certain," but they've
occasionally raised the possibility.
Sure enough. Last September, leading
neocon and Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security John Bolton laid out the case to Congress for a bill
placing sanctions on Syria. Largely symbolic, since there is
little trade between the U.S. and Syria, the bill accuses Syria
of possessing WMD (which it admits it does, as a deterrent to
nuclear Israel, which has attacked it in the past), occupying
Lebanon, and supporting terrorism by sponsoring the Lebanese
Hezbollah group and several Palestinian organizations. The bill
passed overwhelmingly. Soon thereafter, in October, Israel bombed
Syria, for the first time in thirty years, supposedly in retaliation
for a Hezbollah attack in Israel. European and Arab officials
uniformly condemned the attack, but U.S. UN Ambassador John Negroponte
endorsed it, declaring, "Syria is on the wrong side in
the war on terrorism," and President Bush called Ariel Sharon
to make "it very clear to the prime minister that... Israel's
got a right to defend herself, [and] Israel must not feel constrained
in terms of defending the homeland." It's what you call
carte blanche.
Richard Perle praised the attack, telling
a Jerusalem audience he was "happy to see the message [that]
was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it
is the first of many such messages." He also told the Jerusalem
Post, on whose board of directors he sits, that he was "happy
to see" that Israel was behaving like the U.S. "in
responding to acts of terror," and when asked whether the
U.S. might attack Syria, responded: "Everything's possible.
Syria is militarily very weak." Meanwhile Perle protégé
David Wurmser, who had been working under Bolton in the State
Department, was transferred to the Vice President's office as
a Middle East advisor. Wurmser, like Perle a co-author of the
1996 "Clean
Break" memo to the Likud government in Israel, has long
advocated that Washington "roll
back" Syria's Baathist regime. So it's not so surprising
that Janes' Intelligence Digest reported last week that
"US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering
plans to expand the global war on terrorism with multi-pronged
attacks against suspected militant bases in countries such as
Lebanon and Somalia" and that "sending US special forces
into Lebanon--and in particular an area like the Bekaa Valey
(which is virtually Syrian territory) and where the bulk of Damascus'
military forces in Lebanon are deployed wouldalmost certainly
involve a confrontation with Syrian troops." (Question for
discussion: Would such a confrontation improve U.S. national
security one iota? Why would it happen, and whom would it serve?)
Now back to David Kay, the arms inspector
who quit. Just as I was feeling a sense of optimism that his
frank admission that the WMD were probably indeed destroyed by
the mid-1990s, and that no program was likely undertaken thereafter,
and that such statements may weaken the neocons' efforts, I see
this headline in the London Telegraph:
"Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief."
"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons,"
says Kay. "But we know from some of the interrogations of
former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before
the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme.
Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is
a major issue that needs to be resolved." This strikes me
as a very significant story, from the same newspaper that last
month reported the capture of a memo from Saddam's intelligence
chief confirming links between Saddam, al-Qaeda, the late Palestinian
terrorist Abu Nidal, and a Niger uranium shipment received via
Libya and Syria. (An obvious hoax,
it has been quietly buried.)
Whether Kay is deliberately spreading
disinformation, or whether there is indeed some reason to believe
that "some components" of a WMD program went to Syria,
I of course don't know. I do know that the U.S. sold such
components to Iraq in the 1980s, and that being the case, it
would presumably be legal for Iraq to give some to its neighbor.
But the bigger point is that the neocons are looking for reasons
to attack Syria, and if they could alleviate their discomfiture
over the absence of WMD in Iraq by producing a reason to mount
that attack (no doubt with Israeli assistance), they'd be killing
two birds with one stone.
Last April, Lawrence Eagleburger, Secretary
of State in the first Bush administration, opined that, "This
is still a democracy and public opinion rules. If George Bush
decided he was going to turn troops on Syria now and then Iran
he'd be in office about 15 minutes. If President Bush were to
try it now, even I would feel he should be impeached. You can't
get away with that sort off thing in a democracy." I do
so want to optimistically believe Mr. Eagleburger. I want to
believe the neocon nightmare will be over soon. But with them
seeking to rule in part through the creation of public
opinion, through their simplistic "end to evil" argument
appealing to fear, fundamentalism, anti-Arab racism, and nationalist
arrogance, I am not sure I can.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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