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CounterPunch's
Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
April
20, 2004
Stan
Goff
The Democrats and Iraq
April
19, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The "Central Hand" of the
Resistance
Mike
Whitney
Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles
Douglas
Valentine
52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1
Rule
John
Chuckman
The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often
Triumph
Doug
Giebel
Welcome to the Club
Rahul
Mahajan
Hospital Closings and War Crimes
April
16 / 18, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Bush Legitimizes Terror
Saul
Landau
Subverting Brazil and Cuba
Dave
Lindorff
Paying for War: $2,150 per Family
and Counting
Brandy
Baker
Fallujah's Collateral Damage
Mickey
Z.
The Left Attacks from the Right
Bruce
Jackson
The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit
Uns
Norman
Solomon
How the "NewsHour" Changed
History
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the
World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes
Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion
April 10 /
12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other
Delicacies
Robert Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview
with Lee Evans
Brandy Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website of
the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9, 2004
Robert Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L. Hess
The
Non-Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8,
2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6,
2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William Blum
The
Anti-Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
April 5, 2004
John Farrell
Lessons
from El Salvador and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Bloodbath
a Bad Omen for Bush
Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare
Scenario"
April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B.
Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry
Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher
Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez
del Solar
A
Year Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The
Illegal Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated
US and International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
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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April
20, 2004
Presidential Occupations
Bush
and Kerry Share a Problem
By DAVE LINDORFF
These days, presidential candidates
George Bush and John Kerry have a lot in common, and I don't
mean the fact that both are rich New England preppies and Yale
Skull and Bones Club alums. I'm talking about how both are walking
a knife's edge, trying to avoid political disaster.
First look at Bush. Confronted
with the very real risk of losing the war in Iraq before the
November election, he has in desperation turned for help to
a bunch of Saddam Hussein's own top military brass. The U.S.
did the same thing with key Nazi's from Germany's secret police
and its military scientists, but this was done secretly, only
coming to light years later. Bush has had to hire his Baathist
villains in public, and now has to hope that the project won't
so poison public attitudes in Iraq towards the occupation that
the whole country turns on us and boots us out.
As for Kerry, he and his Clinton/Gore
campaign advisers have decided (surprise, surprise!) that the
key to victory in November is for him to convince disenchanted
Republicans and the uncommitted that he's no liberal, while still
letting the liberal Democratic base feel he is one of them, or
at least enough of one of them that they'll still vote for him,
and not Ralph Nader.
Neither job will be easy and
both strategies run a good chance of failure.
In Bush's case, the administration
and the Pentagon don't have much choice. After the collapse
of Hussein's army, and the establishment of the U.S occupation
authority, a process of radical de-Baathification was begun.
Anybody who had been a member of the ruling Baath Party was tossed
out of her or his job, including civil servants who had simply
signed on the dotted line in order to be able to hold a job.
It's pretty standard procedure in one-party states---every professor
in China, for example, has to be a Party member. L. Paul Bremer's
approach of chucking everyone with a Baath Party card out of
his or her job was clumsy and stupid, leaving the country without
anybody who knew how to run anything, and creating a whole lot
of angry desperate people-especially among the military. It was
also cruel, since many decent people were tossed out of work.
But at least it had the advantage of making it clear that there
was a clean break between the new colonial power and the old
regime.
Now, the opposite is happening.
Instead of bringing back those decent folk who had been purged,
Bremer and the Pentagon are bringing back the top military brass-the
very people who really benefited under Hussein's brutal dictatorship-who,
indeed, made it happen and did Hussein's dirty work, and who
rightly were purged from the military.
Bush needs these guys, because
the Iraqi colonial army he has been trying to create to take
over the dangerous job of being cannon fodder at the front of
the U.S. occupation army has shown itself unwilling to line up
and be shot by soldiers of the rapidly expanding insurgency.
The hope in the Pentagon and the White House is that these bloodstained
officers from Hussein's army will be able to intimidate the new
Iraqi army into doing America's bidding.
Maybe they will, and maybe
they won't. If they can't pull it off, the occupation is in big
trouble, because the killing of U.S. troops is going to continue
to rise through November. If they do succeed, however, in
getting Iraqi soldiers to do most of the dying in the struggle
against insurgents, all the U.S. will have done is demonstrated
to Iraqis that it has no intention of establishing democracy
and freedom in Iraq; just another vicious dictatorship, this
time under America's thumb. That will only feed the insurrection.
Bush's challenge is to try
to tiptoe along this knife-edge through November, tamping down
the insurrection with as many of the occupation's casualties
as possible being among the Iraqi troops, not American forces.
Kerry, for his part, appears
to have wholeheartedly adopted the losing strategy of Al Gore.
Trapped by his unwillingness to condemn the Iraq War as a hopeless
disaster, he is finding less and less that he can point to that
distinguished his own Iraq policy from Bush's. That leaves him
struggling to find an issue on the domestic side that will fire
up the masses. So far, all he's been able to come up with is
a limp call to require companies to announce their plans to outsource
jobs in advance, and a call to reduce the deficit by shifting
more taxes onto the wealthy. And even that proposal is so Bush-like
in its focus on tax cuts that Kerry has been forced to say he
will probably not really do many of the progressive things he
earlier said he wanted to do, because he won't have the money
to do it-a classic Clinton line.
It's hard to get very excited
about a plan to warn people that they're losing their jobs in
a couple of months, and let's face it, nobody but a few academics
working on tenure or promotion projects gives a rat's ass about
the deficit. Tax reform might make a potent campaign theme,
but Kerry is so luke warm on this topic that nobody's really
paying much attention. If he wanted to get people excited, he'd
call for a massive cut in the Social Security payroll tax, application
of the payroll tax to all income, with no cap, and an increase
in the tax on upper incomes to a 50-percent rate. Add to that
restoration of the estate tax for inheritances of over $1 million
and a tax on stock transactions, and you'd have a bunch of excited
Democratic voters-and no budget deficit.
The trouble is, Kerry can't
do this. He's so in hock to the Lieberman wing of the Democratic
Party-what Howard Dean used to refer to quite accurately as the
Republican wing of the Democratic Party-that he can't take such
a progressive position.
That means he too has to walk
on a knife edge, offering up campaign proposals that are cold
oatmeal to an electorate that's hungry for red meat, and hoping
that by running as a smarter, friendlier, less racist Republican
he can eke out a victory in the fall.
It might work. Al Gore came
close, after all. But what Kerry and his strategists seem to
be forgetting is that for all his negatives and all his problems,
last time Bush was the governor or Texas. This time he's the
president and the commander in chief. That gives him a lot of
votes right off the bat.
Of the two candidates, my guess
is Kerry is the one who's going to get skewered on his blade
first. His only hope is to recognize the dead end a centrist
Clinton/Gore-inspired campaign is leading him towards, and to
come out, and soon, for a radical program of ending the war now,
shifting the war budget to domestic human needs, and reforming
the tax code to make corporations and the rich pay more.
Don't hold your breath. The
Bush campaign already has Kerry backtracking on his 1971 claim
that he and his fellow soldiers in Vietnam committed atrocities.
Before long he'll be claiming the Vietnam War was a noble effort,
and the Iraq War too.
Dave Lindorff is completing a book of Counterpunch
columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" to be published
this fall by Common Courage Press.
Weekend
Edition Features for April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B.
Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry
Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
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