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Inside Iraq's Resistance HOT HOT HOT New CounterPunch Print Edition! Meet actual Iraqis and not just Western caricatures. Laith al-Saud interviews top man in Iraq's national resistance. It's not just Abu Ghraib and bids to kill Fidel Castro. Torture and assassination are integral parts of America's imperial machine. Don't miss Andrew Wimmer's searing journey into the soul of a nation that tortures as a way of life. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the killing of General Kassem. PLUS Sam Sillen's rollicking exhumation of Edmund Wilson as Malthusian Trostskyite. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Get CounterPunch's Print Edition By Email! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Today's Stories October 13, 2005 Werther The Two-Headed Monster October 12, 2005 Omar Waraich Britain and the Quake: Mean and Stingy William Cook Voices Behind the Entombment Wall Phil Gasper Countdown to a Legal Lynching Dave Lindorff Impeachment Now and Then: Clinton, Bush and the Polls Matt Vidal Capital, Power and Class John Gautreaux New Orleans will Never be the Same Diana Johnstone Srebrenica Revisited: Using War as an Excuse for War Mark Weisbrot The IMF Has Lost Its Influence Brian J. Foley Gitmo Tribunals Endanger Public Safety Website of the Day Columbus Day Lies   October 11, 2005 Roger Morris / Steve Schmidt Strategic Demands of the 21st Century Lila Rajiva Live from New Orleans: Abu Ghraib Bill Quigley New Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again Paul Craig Roberts Natural Born Liars Dave Lindorff Recruiters in Schools: No Lie Left Untried Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Suspect Thy Neighbor Mitchel Cohen Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese Tariq Ali Pakistan will Never Forget This Horror Website of the Day L'Heure Americaine   October 10, 2005 Cindy and Craig Corrie Rachel's Words Live Joshua Frank Washington's War Dems Gideon Levy The Beautiful Life Without Arafat Alan Wallis The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square Mickey Z. In Defense of Liars CounterPunch News Service Vermont Independence Convention Paul Craig Roberts The Police State is Closer Than You Think Website of the Day Dylan's Chronicles   October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Rhetoric and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People Ralph Nader Katrina and the Growls of Greed Jennifer Van Bergen New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case Saul Landau An Oily Religious Dream Jeff Halper Setting Up Abbas Lenni Brenner The Millions More Movement and Zionism Nikolas Kozloff Bird Flu and Bush Brian Cloughley Training Soldiers in Iraq Alice Slater A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl? John Gautreaux A View from Cajun Country Fred Gardner Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Leveethan Approach M.G. Piety Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard Tom Gorman The Hitchens Doctrine Mike Whitney Bunker Days with George Aseem Shrivastava Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan Ben Tripp Religion, an Epistle Poets' Basement Albert, Engel and Ford   October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson The Plame Case: the Real Issues Will Youmans Why Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus Dave Lindorff Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design? Judith Scherr Haiti's Children's Prison Russell D. Hoffman Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle Jared Bernstein Katrina and Jobs Jennifer Van Bergen New American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir Website of the Day FBI Witchhunt October 6, 2005 P. Sainath "Take That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal Idol Again Scott Parkin When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged Paul Craig Roberts Blundering into Syria Andréa Schmidt Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion Dave Lindorff Easy Money in the Big Easy Joshua Frank In Defense of Lew Rockwell M. Junaid Alam Jackboots at George Mason Matthew Koehler Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot Robert Pollin Is the Dollar Still Falling?   October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines Robert Jensen Is Bush a Racist? Ramzy Baroud Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire Col. Dan Smith Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad" Dave Zirin Barry Bonds Laughs Last Paul Craig Roberts Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over Alan Maass Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work   October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt. Mike Roselle Houston, You've Got a Problem Joshua Frank The Scoop on Harriet Miers John Chuckman War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say Alan Farago Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys Mickey Z. An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski Christine & Ethan Rose Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims Gary Leupp An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History Website of the Day Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan   October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Desperation at Holyoke Paul Craig Roberts Condi Rice: Gunslinger Joshua Frank An Interview with Cindy Sheehan Seth Sandronsky The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens Jeffrey St. Clair The Great Green Scare   October 1 / 2, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze Dave Marsh A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan Ralph Nader Gutless, Spineless and Clueless Flavia Alaya Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza Uri Avnery The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory Chris Kutalik The Battle at Northwest Airlines Greg Moses Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues Brian J. Foley I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet Nicole Colson Hunger Strike at Gitmo Ray McGovern Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility Fred Gardner Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit Justin Felux Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby! Will Youmans "Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine Mike Ferner What Else Shall We Do? David Krieger The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant Agustin Velloso Samson Returns to Gaza Saul Landau The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema Ben Tripp Right Down the Middle Poets Basement Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert Website of the Weekend Holler If Ya Hear Me   September 30, 2005 Mary Geddry Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill Paul Craig Roberts Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars Dave Lindorff Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time Gregory Wilpert "The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America" Benjamin Dangl "Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo James McMurtry We Can't Make It Here Anymore T.R. Johnson Return to the Ninth Ward   September 29, 2005 Sen. Russ Feingold Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America Carl G. Estabrook Obama the Enabler Ramzy Baroud Rhetoric and Reality of War Dave Lindorff What Opposition Party? Mike Whitney Brownie's Comic Opera Jozef Hand-Boniakowski What Noble Cause? Gary Handschumacher Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan Winslow T. Wheeler No Leaders in Congress Against This War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans   September 28, 2005 Dr. Eyad Serraj Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement Sounds Like William A. Cook Bush's Security Barrier Liaquat Ali Khan The Invention of Porno Torture Mike Whitney Apartheid Justice in America Joshua Frank Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home? CounterPunch Wire New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters Chris Genovali Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest Linn Washington, Jr. White Affirmative Action: How John Roberts Got to the Top   September 27, 2005 Forrest Hylton Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a Matter for Our Movement Jason Leopold The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist Jennifer K. Harbury Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration Ray McGovern Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent? Mike Ferner Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon Antony Loewenstein When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel in Australia Harry Browne Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms   September 26, 2005 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI Murders a Legend Joshua Frank Democrats Flee Peace Protests Lamis Andoni The Railroading of Taysir Alony Mike Marqusee Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals": Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement Rep. Cynthia McKinney They Can't Fool Us Anymore Ron Jacobs A Small March for Me, a Giant March for the Antiwar Movement Norman Solomon The Media and the Antiwar Movement John Chuckman Bush in a Bottle Paul Craig Roberts America is Running Out of Time   September 24 / 25, 2005 Kathy and Bill Christison Polluting Palestine: Settlements & Sewage Ralph Nader Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina Saul Landau The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada Greg Moses A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau Roger Burbach Hugo Chavez's Mission Vijay Prashad America's Shame Laura Carlsen After NAFTA Robert Fisk When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful Dave Lindorff A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They? Kirkpatrick Sale / Thomas Naylor Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration Maj. Anthony Milavic The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti: the Time for Action is Now   September 23, 2005 CounterPunch News Service In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes Bill O'Reilly Diane Farsetta Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks Robert Sandels Militarizing the Market Christopher Brauchli Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations Alan Farago Bird Flu Takes Flight Dave Zirin When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968 Maxine Conant A Simple Test for Bush David Price Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and Davis-Bacon Profiteering   September 22, 2005 Smith, Wood, Leas, and Greenfield Which Way Forward for the Green Party? a Report from Tulsa Patrick Cockburn Iraqis: This Government has No Authority Manuel Garcia, Jr. Thinking is Religious Freedom Lucia Dailey Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One Mokhiber / Weissman Are You a Speed Freak? Russell D. Hoffman The Nukes in Rita's Path Kona Lowell God's Hurricane? Jason Leopold GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina Website of the Day Robert Pollin on the Global Economy   September 21, 2005 Jorge Mariscal Military Recruiters: Counselers or Salesmen? Linda S. Heard Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak Joshua Frank NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan Eric Ruder "The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with Camilo Mejia Pierre Tristam The Struts and Bull Presidency Dave Lindorff The Real Story of the German Elections Mike Ferner Sit Down in DC Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Katrina Bling Bling Jeffrey St. Clair W Marks the Spot Website of the Day New Orleans: Survivor Stories   September 20, 2005 Steve Breyman Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental Justice George Galloway Et Tu, Greg Palast? Patrick Cockburn What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion? M. Shahid Alam Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out? Mike Whitney The Gitmo Hunger Strikers Winslow T. Wheeler It's Not Rocket Science Niranjan Ramakrishnan Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit Paul Craig Roberts Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?         Subscribe Online

October 13, 2005 Connected at the Roots? Miller, Libby and the June Notes By GARY LEUPP On May 6, 2003, just days after President Bush had triumphantly declared the Iraq invasion based on lies "Mission Accomplished," Nicholas Kristof published an article in the New York Times revealing that a key lie---the now-infamous allegation that Saddam's Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger that highlighted Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech---had been debunked almost a year before by a former U.S. ambassador after traveling to Niger to investigate. On June 12, Walter Pincus in the Washington Post followed up with more details. The former ambassador in question, Joseph Wilson, was a source for both articles, but Wilson himself didn't go public until he published his op-ed piece in the New York Times on July 6. On July 8 Vice President Cheney's chief deputy and key neocon, Lewis "Scooter" Libby met with the NYT's Judith Miller and apparently discussed Wilson with her. On July 14 Robert Novak in his syndicated column announced that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative and might have had some say in his being chosen for the mission. "Two senior administration officials," Novak wrote, "told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" what Novak called "the Italian report." (Recall that Bush attributed the report to British intelligence, and that some have suggested the neocon and Office of Special Plans operative Michael Ledeen, with many Italian ties, is a likely source of the original forgery.) The somnolent mainstream press, prodded by the Nation's David Corn, began to awaken to a potential scandal involving White House officials violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. The CIA naturally demanded an investigation of the outing of one of its own; the Justice Department was obliged to launch a criminal probe, and Bush to appoint a special prosecutor, Patrick "Bulldog" Fitzgerald. And now the investigation is apparently nearing completion. The incarceration and release of Judith Miller is of course at the core of the investigation. Following her release Sept. 29 after almost three months in confinement, having refused to cooperate with Fitzgerald in order to protect her sources and some concept of journalistic freedom, it's been revealed that she had a conversation with Libby including reference to Wilson on June 25, eleven days before Wilson's op-ed. The existence of a notebook containing notes about that meeting, which has been stored in the offices of the NYT, has just been revealed. It has or will occasion further discussion between the Special Prosecutor and the principals in the investigation. Its content may be critical, and explain the confusion about Libby's waiver of confidentiality and earlier permission to Miller to answer the special prosecutor's questions. It may be that Libby while partly cooperative with the investigation for some reason hoped to conceal details about the June conversation. Thus Libby may have identified Wilson to Miller, as the unnamed subject of the Kristof and Pincus columns, as early as June and insinuated that he'd gotten his Niger assignment due to the influence of his CIA wife. He may have been deeply and personally concerned about the exposure of the lie even before Wilson went public. Maybe his judgment was clouded by rage or fear, or he had forgotten that the outing of undercover CIA operatives is a punishable crime. He probably expected (and maybe knew from intelligence sources) that Wilson was about to blow the whistle and become a problem. Having great trust in Miller, as a fellow-traveler in a heroic movement, he may have wished to bounce around some ideas about how to discredit the former ambassador in the press. Maybe she (worrying about legal consequences?) hesitated to write about Wilson, and let Novak do the job instead, prompted by Karl Rove. (The excellent documentary "Bush's Brain," a political biography of Karl Rove, notes how Rove was fired from the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 for leaking information to Novak.) Nevertheless she was the one who did the jail time. Questions for discussion: Given that the Bush administration has more or less acknowledged that the "War on Terrorism" requires the planting of disinformation to obtain U.S. goals; that the administration has been caught red-handed subsidizing journalists promoting its version of reality; that the neocons speak matter-of-factly about "perception management" to abet their goals; that the Office of Special Plans (involving Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby, Luti, Feith, Shulsky, Wurmser, Hadley, etc.); and that Miller proved herself to be a shameless purveyor of pure disinformation, for which the NYT has itself after a fashion apologized--is it not probable that Miller was an intimate partner in the OSP program all along? And isn't it likely that her otherwise inexplicable claim, contradicted by Libby's own lawyer, that she could only recently leave prison because Libby finally gave her unequivocal permission to testify, cover for some other reason or purpose (maybe involving a delaying tactic) coordinated with others? Is it not probable, too, that Libby's "aspens are turning" love letter to Miller specifically authorizes her to discuss "anything in July 2003" in order to discourage her from discussing their exchange pertaining to the "Wilson-Plame matter" on June 25? Is not Libby's declaration that Miller's readers want her back "doing what you do best---reporting" a statement to the discredited reporter that he continues to appreciate her service to the neocon mission? (Note how he especially looks forward to her coverage of "suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program"---stories that will have to be skewed to justify more aggression to remold the Middle East.) And is it not possible that the much-derided concluding passage of the letter, about the aspens which "turn in clusters because their roots connect them," is Libby's way of saying, "you and I are in the same cluster, and if they chop me down, you die too"? "Come back to work---and life," he ends, perhaps pleading for her to save his political neck. Many have wondered why Miller, having never gone public with the story of Wilson's spouse, has been so central to Fitzgerald's investigation. One can only hope it's because the investigation has expanded beyond the relatively small matter of Ms. Plame to the huge matter of official deception, undertaken by the administration and its agents in the corporate media alike, in the interest of building mass support, in the fashion of the Nazi propagandists, for criminal wars.   * * * * * I understand that Jon Stewart had some fun with the "aspens are turning" letter on his October 5 Daily Show, and that he derided the literary talents of Libby, who in fact is a sometimes novelist. For my part I will just note that when Shakespeare alludes to aspen leaves they are always trembling (Henry IV, II, II, iv; Titus Andronicus, II, iv), a metaphor for fear. May the liars tremble in the cold autumn breeze until they're blown to the ground and scattered. Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu                                       CLARIFICATION ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH We published an article entitled "A Saudiless Arabia" by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the "Article"), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the "Website"). Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism. As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi's lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website. We are pleased to clarify the position. August 17, 2005

Coming in the Fall from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz WHAT'S INSIDE Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair