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The War So Far: a Failure Worse Than Vietnam by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad "The need for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worse than Vietnam because the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater." Get the answers you're looking for in the 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! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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October 29 / 30, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Peter Linebaugh Tim Wise John Chuckman Brian Cloughley M. Shahid Alam Nikki Robinson Ralph Nader Joe DeRaymond Fred Gardner Michael Dickinson Dr. Susan Block
October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Virginia Tilley Phil Gasper Jennifer Matsui Manual Garcia,
Jr. Monica Benderman Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff
Saul Landau Stuart Hodkinson Ingmar Lee Lila Rajiva Ilan Pappe Niranjan Ramakrishnan Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Cockburn / St. Clair
October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly Gary Leupp Mike Marqusee Eric Ruder Patrick Cockburn Joshua Frank J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of
the Day
October 25, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Jackie Corr Robert Day John Sugg
October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Bill and Kathleen
Christison
October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Billy Sothern Saul Landau Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Fred Gardner Lee Sustar Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen James Petras Joshua Frank Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Michelle Bollinger Missy Comley
Beattie Kona Lowell Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
October 19, 2005 Christopher Reed Stephen Soldz Chet Richards Patrick Cockburn Scott Richard
Lyons Ralph Nader Website of
the Day
October 18, 2005 Chet Flippo Ron Jacobs Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor Dave Lindorff Virginia Rodino Thomas Healy Ralph Nader Stephen Lendman Patrick Cockburn
October 17, 2005 Peter Linebaugh Norman Solomon Cockburn /
Sengupta Mike Whitney Uri Avnery Harold Pinter Website of
the Day
October 15 / 16, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Neve Gordon Moshe Adler Christopher Brauchli Diane Farsetta Sam Husseini Monica Benderman Mickey Z. Douglas C.
Smyth Lee Sustar Fred Gardner Elizabeth Schulte Joshua Frank David Vest Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 14, 2005 Farrah Hassen Ron Jacobs Sasha Kramer Katrina Yeaw Nicole Colson Raúl Zibechi Nikolas Kozloff Website of the Day
Jeremy Scahill Jeff Birkenstein Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher Stan Cox Anis Memon Gary Leupp Dave Zirin Matthew Koehler Werther Website of
the Day
Omar Waraich William Cook Phil Gasper Dave Lindorff Matt Vidal John Gautreaux Diana Johnstone Mark Weisbrot Brian J. Foley Website of
the Day
October 11, 2005 Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt Lila Rajiva Bill Quigley Paul Craig Roberts Dave Lindorff Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Mitchel Cohen Tariq Ali Website of
the Day
October 10, 2005 Cindy and Craig
Corrie Joshua Frank Gideon Levy Alan Wallis Mickey Z. CounterPunch News Service Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader Jennifer Van Bergen Saul Landau Jeff Halper Lenni Brenner Nikolas Kozloff Brian Cloughley Alice Slater John Gautreaux Fred Gardner Niranjan Ramakrishnan M.G. Piety Tom Gorman Mike Whitney Aseem Shrivastava Ben Tripp Poets' Basement
October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson Will Youmans Dave Lindorff Judith Scherr Russell D. Hoffman Jared Bernstein Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of
the Day
P. Sainath Scott Parkin Paul Craig
Roberts Andréa Schmidt Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank M. Junaid Alam Matthew Koehler Robert Pollin
October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Col. Dan Smith Dave Zirin Paul Craig Roberts Alan Maass
October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Mike Roselle Joshua Frank John Chuckman Alan Farago Mickey Z. Christine & Ethan Rose Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank Seth Sandronsky Jeffrey St. Clair
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Weekend Edition Tongue-Tied on IraqWhy Aren't the Democrats Screaming Bloody Murder?By LAURA SANTINA A recent Boston Globe article focused on the fact that the Democrats are struggling to find one voice on Iraq. We don't need one voice from the Democrats. We need every Democrat who voted for this war to apologize for this illegal and immoral war and to insist that we leave Iraq immediately. On October 11, 2002, the Senate voted 77-23 and the House voted 296-133 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refused to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by UN resolutions. It didn't matter that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and hadn't had any since 1995, according to UN Weapons Inspector, Scott Ritter, a fact he says was known by US, British, Israeli and German intelligence. It didn't matter that Iraq harbored no Al Qaeda terrorists. It didn't matter that the weapons inspections were moving along, despite Hussein's moodiness on the subject. It didn't matter that the whole world was watching Hussein and there was no way he could possibly bring any more harm to his own or any other people. To get the Congress and we-the-people on board, in the words of General Anthony Zinni, the administration "cooked the books" and the majority of us nodded approvingly. On March 20, 2003, President Bush, well armed with the unchecked power handed to him by Congress, declared pre-emptive war against Iraq. Well over two thousand Americans and, according to the Iraq Body Count Project, over 42,000 Iraqis have died to date. Thousands have been wounded. Many have been tortured. An anti-American insurgence has grown long, sharp teeth. No one has been held accountable. The truth was available to all members of Congress at the time of the vote and some chose to heed it. Senator Mark Dayton said, "There was never any suggestion in any briefings I attended that Iraq had or was about to acquire a nuclear weapons program." Senator Kent Conrad took it upon himself before the Iraq vote to read the book, "1919," a history of Iraq's independence. He learned about the long-standing conflicts between ethnic factions and knew that the Iraqi people would not be waving US victory flags. "I knew none of that was true," he said. Senator Dick Durbin didn't believe the hastily produced national intelligence document about Iraq's weapons, stating "I knew that much of the document was conjecture." According to Senator Lincoln Chafee, the only Republican to oppose the war, "I never believed that the Iraq war was about weapons of mass destruction. It was this grand vision of changing the Middle East." Grand vision of the Middle East? How grand is a vision that requires bombing a country and depriving its children of medical care for ten year during sanctions? How grand, even effective, can the vision be if the visionaries don't even know the history of the region? How grand is a vision that requires killing over 42,000 people, over 26,000 of whom were civilians. How grand is a vision that destroys the infrastructure of another county and pays your own people big bucks to build it back up again? Even though many of the dead and wounded are their own constituents and the children of their own constituents, the High Profile Democrats--the ones who have announced or who are rumored to be preparing to announce a bid for the Presidency--are not hollering about having been lied to. They are not apologizing to the families of the dead for their misguided votes. They are not insisting upon an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. These Democrats who voted for the war, including Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Diane Feinstein and Joe Lieberman, are muttering about political divisions, stewing on mindless strategy about why the US should stay in Iraq or mildly asking the administration for exit strategy plans. To his credit, John Kerry has proposed a tepid plan for withdrawing the troops, but insodoing, he referred to the war as "a foreign policy misadventure." It is not a misadventure. It is a bloody, immoral foray backwards into cruel US colonialism which was illegally manipulated by a bankrupt administration and approved by a large majority of our elected officials. The only possible choice open to us is to denounce the action and bring it to an end as quickly as possible. The best way to support our troops is to bring them home before any more lives are lost. Melvin Laird, former Republican Secretary of Defense, urges expeditious withdrawal contending, "Our presence is what feeds the insurgency in Iraq." Howard Zinn, historian and author, argues that "because the US occupation lies at the root of the civil war in Iraq, the slower you phase it out, the slower you end the insurgency. Troops should begin leaving as fast as ships and planes can bring them out." It is time for the elected Democrats who supported this tragic debacle to come clean and start running. Laura Santina lives in San Francisco, where she
writes on political affairs. She can be reached at: LSantina@sbcglobal.net
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair                      |
