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Bolivia's Third Revolution

Confused by Bolivia's upheavals? CounterPunch's Newton Garver gives you the history, the politics and a roadmap through the present great upsurge of Indians who say NO to centuries of theft and oppression. On the track of Guatemala's killers: a searing report from John Ross on the US-backed monsters who turned Guatemala into a charnel house and on the heroes who hunt them down. The rise and rise of a corporation called Halliburton: Jeffrey St Clair scours some of Texas' history's dirtiest pages and tells how Halliburton's cash helped put two presidents to the White House. 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!

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Today's Stories

Paul Craig Roberts
A War Waged by Liars and Morons

June 20, 2005

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Tariq Ali
To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel!

Mickey Z.
WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo

William Blum
Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends

Gary Leupp
Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq

Jason Leopold
Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War

Dave Lindorff
Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Uri Avnery
Condi and Hamas

Website of the Day
Crimes Against Poetry

June 18 / 19, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Is the Jury Dead?

Greg Moses
Race Bias and the Death Penalty, One More Time

Benjamin Shepard
Arrested for Stickering, Biking and Other Misadventures: Creative Direct Action in the Era of the PATRIOT Act

Stan Goff
Stuff to Do to Stop the War: 95 Days to Pre-Nixonize George W. Bush

Lee Sustar
Does Iraq's Main Labor Union Support the Occupation?

Jude Wanniski
The Tipping Point: Getting Out of Iraq

Diana Barahona
Librarians as Spooks: the Scheme to Infiltrate Cuba Via Libraries

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Justice Dodge in Haiti, Again: Impunity and the Raboteau Massacre

Fred Gardner
How Many Wins Can We Take?

Mike Whitney
Gen. Tommy Friedman's Plan to "Win" the War in Iraq: Reinstate the Draft

Ahmad Faruqui
Star Wars or Earth Wars?

Manuel García, Jr.
De-Eichmannizing America

Roger Howard
Leave Iranian Politics to Iranians

Ron Jacobs
Eros and the Grateful Dead

Ben Tripp
Situation Desperate: Why Am I Not Pleased?

Poets' Basement
Louise, Albert and Engel

Website of the Weekend
Christ's Entry into Washington

 

June 17, 2005

Ricardo Alarcón
Who Helped Posada Enter the US?

Clay Conrad
Medical Marijuana: Is Jury Nullification the Next Step?

Marc Estrin
Open-Ended Closure: the Death Penalty and the Culture of Victimhood

Colin Brown
Firebombing Fallujah: Pentagon Lied About Use of Napalm in Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Pennies for Africa: Bush's Phony Money

Joshua Frank
Blue State Warriors: How Democrats Derailed the Peace Movement

Norman Solomon
The Killing Street Memo

Mary Rizzo
Who's Afraid of Gilad Atzmon?

Bond / Brutus / Setshedi
How Bono and Trojan Horse NGOs Sabotage the Struggle Against Neoliberalism

 

June 16, 2005

John Walsh
The Iraq War Polls: Dems' Stance Even Less Popular Than Bush's

Dave Lindorff
Work 'Till You Die: the Bush Retirement Plan

Adrian Lomax
Torture in U.S. Prisons: Common, Lethal, Unreported

Tom Crumpacker
The CIA, Posada and the Bombing of Cubana Flight 455

Jeffrey Kolakowski
The Kinsley Paradigm: Downsizing the Downing St. Memo

Julene Bair
Turning Off the Ogallala Spigot: Toward a New Way to Farm on the Great Plains

Michael Dickinson
As We Forgive Our Debtors: the Madness of Money

Francois Houtart / Isabel Parra, et al.
Against Terrorism; In Defense of Humanity: an Appeal

Tom Barry
Meet Bolton's Replacement: Robert "First Strike" Joseph

 

June 15, 2005

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to US Troops on Loyalty

Daniel Wolff
The Palace at 4 A.M.

Tim Wise
Discover the Nutwork: David Horowitz and the Politics of Ad Hominem Distortion

Ricardo Alarcón
The New CIA Revelations About Posada

Joshua Frank
House Republicans vs. Bush: "This is Not a Conservative War"

John Hilary
Bloodsuckers' Summit: Why the Left Should Rendezvous at the G8

Norman Solomon
Iran's Reformers: a Threat to Theocrats and Neocons

Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair
Juries and Lynch Mobs

Website of the Day
What It Feels Like to be Tasered (Turn Up the Volume)

 

June 14, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners

Forrest Hylton
Stalemate in Bolivia

Richard Gott
The Crisis in Bolivia

Fred Gardner
The Raich Decision: All Power to the Feds

Steve Breyman
Doing the Right Thing is Also Politically Expedient

Dave Zirin
Sacred Hoops: Basketball in the Barrio

Robert Kent
Outsourcing Torture and the Stop-Loss Program

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners

 

June 13, 2005

Gary Leupp
Another Damning Document

Dave Lindorff
The Inca and Us

John Stauber
Mad Cow USA: the Cover-Up Begins to Unravel

Fred Gardner
Supreme Indignity: Medical Pot Doctors Respond to Justice Stevens

Evelyn J. Pringle
TeenScreen: the Lawsuits Begin

Norman Solomon
Letter From Tehran

Winslow T. Wheeler
Neo-Con Unfurls the Big Picture

 

June 10 / 12, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Thomas Friedman's Imaginary World

Sharon Smith
Torturers and Liars: Masters of Deception

Brian Cloughley
"Support Our Torturers!"

Chris Kromm
Home Cookin': Pentagon's Base Relignment Plan Would Increase South's Share

Heather Gray
A Day in Mississippi: Some Things Have Changed; Some Remain the Same

Kevin Zeese
What the Left Must Learn from 2004: an Interview with Josh Frank

Mickey Z.
The Pentagon Papers, 34 Years Later

Gary Leupp
A Review of Sison's "At Home in the World"

Eli Stephens
The Asshole in El Paso: Why Posada Carriles Matters

Nick Dearden
A Scottish Band in the Occupied Territories

Oscar Olivera
Recovering Bolivia's Oil and Gas

Robert Fisk
Screening "Kingdom of Heaven" in Beirut

Michael Dickinson
Oh My God!: Gunning for Blasphemers

Poets' Basement
Engel, Albert, Louise, Ford

Website of the Weekend
Gravity's Rainbow, Illustrated

 


June 9, 2005

Len Colodny
Felt Was Asked Under Oath in 1975 If He Was "Deep Throat"

Christopher Brauchli
From Baseballs to Hand Grenades

Ron Jacobs
Light a Candle; Curse the Darkness

Dave Lindorff
US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist

Katrina Yeaw / Alex Schmaus
Repression 101: Anti-War Students Sanctioned at SFSU

Alan Farago
Spin Machine Busts a Gasket in the Everglades: Fed Judge Whacks Jeb

Saul Landau
The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer

 

June 8, 2005

Jim Hougan
Strange Bedfellows
Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and the CIA

Alan Maass
Is Bolivia on the Edge of Revolution? an Interview with Tom Lewis

Jason Leopold
Enron Lives!: Former Army Sec. White Wants Govt. Money for New Energy Scam

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exit Right, Advani: Unpardonable Acts of Statesmanship

Dave Zirin
The Rotting Soul of the 49ers

Derrick O'Keefe
Bush's Terrorist: the Case of Posada Carriles

Diana Johnstone
Non, Neen, Angelene!
Why Defenders of the "Oui" are Wrong

Website of the Day
The Meatrix

 

June 7, 2005

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia's Agony of the Stalement Continues

Greg Moses / Susan van Haitsma
Pushing Back the Violence

Lenni Brenner
What Madison Would Think About the Air Force Academy's Offical Fanatics

Col. Dan Smith
Liberation vs. Survival in Iraq

Joshua Frank
Dean at the DNC: the Establishment vs. the Elites

Dave Lindorff
Fair-Weather Allies: US Denies French Fighters Emergency Landing Rights

Margot Veranes / Adrian Navarro
Xenophobia in the Desert: Racist Fever Becomes Law in Arizona

Michael Neumann
Sharing Music: Property Gone Wild

 

June 6, 2005

Stew Albert
Everybody Must Get Busted: Supremes Rule Against the Sick

Paul Craig Roberts
Federal Bureau of Entrapment

Nicole Colson
Inside Walter Reed Hospital

Ali Khan
Friendly Renditions to Muslim Torture Chambers

Jason Leopold
When Will Rumsfeld Be Indicted?

Charles Walker Poff
Rumsfeld, China and Hypocrisy

Ramzy Baroud
My Grandpa's Right of Return

Rep. John Conyers
Did Bush Deliberately Deceive America About Iraq?

Evelyn Pringle
TeenScreen's Top Pusher

Gary Corseri
25 Reasons to Impeach Bush

Website of the Day
Save This 200 Year Old Burr Oak from Bible Thumpers with Chainsaws

 

June 4 / 5, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
France's Magnificent Non!

James Petras
The Centrality of Peasant Movements in Latin America

Robert Fisk
Who Killed Samir?

Patrick Cockburn
My Father, Claud Cockburn, the MI5 Suspect

Rev. William Alberts
When Pride in Power Corrupts: the Story of a Methodist President, His Bishops and an "Incompatible" Lesbian Minister

Saul Landau
40 Interns and a Mule: Will the Dems Ever Take Advantage of the Republicans' Blunders?

Mario Lamo Jimenez
Dante with a Brush: Botero Immortalizes Bush

Dave Lindorff
What is the Media Running From?

Lance Selfa
Why Bush is Getting Away with Murder

Tom Crumpacker
On the Use of State Terrorism: the Posada Precedent

Joshua Frank
How Beltway Dems Sank Dean for America

Fred Gardner
Don't Bogart That Taxable Commodity

Michael Dickinson
Roll Out the Barrel: Blood, Oil and Baku

Roger Martin
We Can See, But Not Far Enough

Reza Fiyouzat
Welcome to the Third World

Ben Tripp
Romance: Advice from a Pro

Graeme Greenback
Pardon Me, While I Piss on this Bible

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Albert, Engel, Smith

 

 

 

June 3, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Welcome to a Has-Been Country

Joseph Massad
Witch Hunt at Columbia

Jeff Halper
The Process of Transfer Continues

Tom Barry
The Immigration Debate: Whose Side Are You On?

Bruce K. Gagnon
Bush Seeks Military Control of Space: "It's Our Destiny"

Joshua Frank
Bombing Iran: Facts Don't Matter

Mickey Z.
Deep Throat as Sideshow

Gary Leupp
"Peddling Lies About How They Were Mistreated"

Website of the Day
Tattoo on My Heart: Warriors of Wounded Knee, 1973

 

 

June 2, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Slave Traders of the Gitmo Gulag

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia: the Agony of Stalemate

Mike Whitney
Post-Mortem on the 4th Amendment: Warrants without Judges

Brian Cloughley
Anarchy in Afghanistan; Ignorance in America

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A Two-State Solution is No Solution

Russell D. Hoffman
High Tension at San Onofre

Norman Madarasz
"Le Jolie Mois de Mai": the Meaning of the French "Non"

Norman Solomon
War Made Easy: from Vietnam to Iraq

David Price
The Shallowness of Deep Throat

Website of the Day
Fallujah on Film

 

 

June 1, 2005

James Petras
Beyond Hypocrisy: the Deeper Meaning of Posada

Justin Delacour
Framing Venezuela: US Media Bias Against Chavez

Edward Jay Epstein
Was "Deep Throat" a Fictoid?

Omar Barghouti / Lisa Taraki
The AUT Boycott: Freedom vs. "Academic" Freedom

Dave Lindorff
When War Goes Off the Script

Kevin Zeese
Reality Check: Who to Believe on Iraq War and Gitmo?

Jason Leopold
When Presidents Lie

William S. Lind
Wreck It and Run

 

 

May 31, 2005

Sen. Mike Gravel
Thank You, Mark Felt: We Need a New Deep Throat

David Krieger
US Nuclear Hypocrisy

Tad Daley
The Nuclear Me-Too Club

Joshua Frank
Pelosi at AIPAC: Israel Comes First

Richard Gott
Chavez Leads the Way

Norman Solomon
Time to Get Serious About Impeachment

Tom Segev
Our Man in the Territories

Walter Brasch
Killing Americans with Secrecy

Diana Johnstone
The French "Non"

 

 

May 28 / 30, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
There's Their Way or the Galloway

Richard Lichtman
We Wuz Framed! the Consolations of George Lakoff

Sharon Smith
The Road to Abu Ghraib

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Opts for Civil War in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Whigged Out: the Dems Have Become Merely a Vestigial Opposition Party

Ramzy Baroud
Muslims Were Desecrated, Not Just Their Holy Book

Brian Cloughley
Why Are Nukes OK for You, But Not for Us?

Fred Gardner
Advice from a Lawyer About Medical Pot

Lee Sustar
Chavez Gets Proactive

Joshua Frank
Isikoff Comes Clean: "Nobody in the US Said a Word, Until the Riots"

Justin E.H. Smith
What About the People? a Report from Romania

Jackie Corr
A Montana History Lesson on Assfulness

Michael Kimaid
Bush as Ahab

Toufic Haddad
Lessons from the Reversal of the AUC Boycott

Justin Taylor
The Fear of Paul Virilio

Amir Butler
Searching for a Saladin

Ben Tripp
Insomnia and Sarcasm

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Davies and Louise

 

May 27, 2005

Gary Leupp
It Really is a Crusade!

Daniel Estulin
Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005

Kevin Zeese
Iraq Withdrawal Vote: If Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones Can See the Light, Why Can't Nancy Pelosi?

Robert Fisk
Mubarak's Goon Squads

Dave Zirin
Why Pat Tillman's Parents Are No Longer Silent

Website of the Day
Stuckists

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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June 20, 2005

A War Waged by Liars and Morons

What is Bush's Agenda in Iraq?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

For what purpose has President Bush sent 1,741 US soldiers to be killed in action in Iraq (as of June 19, 2005)?

For what purpose have 15,000 - 38,000 US troops been wounded, many so seriously that they are maimed for life?

Why has the US government thrown away $300 billion in an illegal and pointless war that cannot be won?

These questions are beginning to penetrate the consciousness of Americans, a majority of whom no longer support Bush's war.

Bush's Iraq war is the first war for which Americans have not known the reason. The reasons they were given by their president, vice president, secretary of defense, national security advisor, secretary of state, and the sycophantic media were nothing but a pack of lies.

The top secret British government memos leaked to a reporter at the London Sunday Times make it completely clear that prior to the invasion President Bush knew that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

The memos make it completely clear that Saddam Hussein had no responsibility whatsoever for the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The memos make completely clear that the British government regarded the invasion of Iraq as a war crime. The memos show the British government scrambling to find some way of creating "cover" in order to obfuscate the illegality of the invasion that Prime Minister Tony Blair had promised Bush to support.

One of the cover plans was itself illegal. According to yet another leaked top secret British memo in the Sunday Times on June 19, Bush decided to sharply increase the US bombings of Iraq in the hopes it would goad Saddam Hussein into a response that could be used as a pretext for invading Iraq.

According to the Sunday Times, the British Foreign Office advised the British Cabinet that legally "the allies had no power to use military force to put pressure of any kind on the regime."

The Bush administration falsely claimed that the bombing was legal in order to enforce compliance with UN resolutions 688 and 687. However, the British Foreign Office advised Bush's poodle, Tony Blair, that the American view "is not consistent with resolution 687, which does not deal with the repression of the Iraqi civilian population, or with resolution 688, which was not adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and does not contain any provision for enforcement."

In his June 18 weekly radio address last Saturday, Bush again lied to the American people when he told them that the US was forced into invading Iraq because of the September 11 attack on the WTC. Bush, the greatest disgrace that America has ever had to suffer, actually repeated at this late date the monstrous lie for which he is infamous throughout the world:

"We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens."

Whoever the "people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens" might be, they were not Iraqis, at least not until Bush invaded their country, killed tens of thousands and maimed tens of thousands more, detained tens of thousands others, destroyed entire cities, destroyed the country's infrastructure, and created mass unemployment, poverty, pollution and disease.

The only reason Iraqis want to harm the US is because George W. Bush inflicted, and continues to inflict, tremendous harm on Iraqis.

If the Bush administration has its way, the Iraqi insurgents will be joined by the Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Jordanians and Palestinians. The "people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens" will increase exponentially.

In print and on TV, Bush's neocons have made clear their desire to see the US at war with the entire Muslim world: Today Iraq, tomorrow the Middle East. That the neocons believe the US can win such a war when the US cannot even occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport indicates a frightening insanity at the center of the Bush administration and a criminal disregard for the lives of Americans and Muslims.

The neocons assured Americans that the war in Iraq would be a cakewalk over in three weeks!

The neocons told us that only 70,000 troops were needed to bring Iraq to heel!

Neocons fired the top generals who had truthfully told Congress that several hundred thousand troops, at least, would be needed!

Neocons told Congress that Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion and that America did not have to worry about the cost! So far that is a $300 billion mistake.

And Bush has retained and promoted these morons!

No one has been held accountable for this enormous disaster.

How many more American troops are going to be killed and maimed for Bush's lies? How many more Iraqi civilians must be killed, maimed, and locked up?

Bush's Iraq policy is based on lies, and force based on lies cannot bring democracy to Iraq or to any other country.

Bush's lies are discrediting and destroying democracy in America. His "Patriot Act" alone has done more damage to Americans' freedom than Osama bin Laden.

Why did Bush invade Iraq?

Cynical Americans say the answer is oil. But $300 billion would have bought the oil without getting anyone killed, without destroying America's reputation in the world and without stirring up countless terrorist recruits for al Qaida.

Congress gave Bush the go-ahead for the invasion because Congress trusted Bush and believed his word that Iraq had fearsome weapons that would be unleashed on America unless we preempted Saddam Hussein's attack by striking first. Congress did not give Bush the go-ahead for initiating a war in order to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives "building democracy in Iraq."

Will President Bush ever tell us the real reason why he committed America's treasure, the lives of American soldiers and the reputation of our country to war in Iraq?

Does he even know?