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SHOULD SCOOTER LIBBY'S LAWYER BE DISBARRED? Law school dean Lawrence Velvel says, Maybe he should, if he sat idly by while client Libby spouted lies. What lies at the core of Zionism? Michael Neumann tortures Alan Dershowitz, without a warrant! "Sex-mad adulterer from British aristocracy claims to have 'revolutionized' philosophy." Yes, Bertrand Russell, they mean you! Alexander Cockburn on Smearing 101 in the British press. 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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November 29, 2005 Phil Gasper Behzad Yaghmaian Joshua Frank Walter A. Davis Gary Leupp Len Colodny Jeffrey St.
Clair Bill Quigley Website of
the Day
November 28, 2005 Chris Reed David Isenberg Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Justin E.H. Smith Mickey Z. Mike Whitney David Swanson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
November 26 / 27, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley John Ross Gary Leupp Fred Gardner Christopher Brauchli Dave Lindorff P. Sainath Timothy J.
Freeman Lila Rajiva Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Joaquin Bustelo Lewis Alper Will Youmans Phyllis Pollack St. Clair /
Vest Barbara LaMorticella Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
November 25, 2005 David Price Brian McKenna Jeff Halper Ray McGovern Leigh Saavedra Ingmar Lee Website of the Day
November 24, 2005 James Petras Bob Shirley Mike Fox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Greg Moses Alexander Cockburn
November 23, 2005 Ramzy Baroud Mike Whitney Stan Cox Linda S. Heard November 22, 2005 Kevin Gray
/ Mike Hersh Ralph Nader Michael Donnelly Mike Ferner Pierre Tristam Marshall Auerback Website of
the Day
November 21, 2005 Mike Marqusee Josh Frank Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Russ Baker Robert Jensen Paul Craig
Roberts
November 19 / 20, 2005 Fred Gardner Rep. Cynthia McKinney Ron Jacobs David Vest J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. John R. Bomar John Ross Phillip Cryan Dave Lindorff Dick J. Reavis Jeremy Scahill Dan Wright John Stanton St. Clair / Vest / Walker Phyllis Pollack Dr. Susan Block Poets Basement
November 18, 2005 Michael Neumann Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer Don Monkerud Tom Kerr Trish Schuh
November 17, 2005 John Walsh Rep. John Murtha Brian J. Foley CounterPunch
News Service Dave Lindorff Mark T. Harris Cockburn /
St. Clair
November 16, 2005 John F. Sugg Noam Chomsky Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Sam Husseini Pierre Tristam Greg Bates Farrah Hassen Bill Christison Website of
the Day
November 15, 2005 Todd Chretien Leah Caldwell Frederick Hudson Harry Browne Jason Leopold Ingmar Lee Diana Barahona Tom Andre Website of the Weekend
November 14, 2005 Diana Johnstone Paul Craig Roberts Conn Hallinan Joshua Frank Christopher
Reed
November 11 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gwyneth Leech Elmas Mallo Michael Neumann Saul Landau Sam Husseini Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Michael Donnelly Joe Allen Roland Sheppard Justin E.H.
Smith Ben Tripp St. Clair /
Vest Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
November 10, 2005 Peterside,
Ogon, Watts and Zalik Pat Williams Steve Higgs Jimmy Massey Lucson Pierre-Charles Anthony Newkirk Lawrence R.
Velvel Website of the Day November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp Tariq Ali Chris Floyd Elaine Cassel Joshua Frank Alison Weir Diana Johnstone
Paul Craig
Roberts Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Jim McGrath David Bloom Stan Goff
November 7, 2005 Dick Reavis Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff Eli Stephens David Swanson M. Junaid Alam Matt Reichel Naima Bouteldja Jeff Halper Website of the Day
November 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Diana Johnstone Roosa / Nevins Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Ross Mike Whitney Mark Engler Juliano Mer-Khamis Ron Jacobs Jill S. Farrell Missy Comley
Beattie Mitchel Cohen Evelyn J. Pringle Reza Fiyouzat Charles Sullivan Zachary Richard Ben Tripp St. Clair / Vest
November 4, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Lindorff Phillip Cryan Christopher Brauchli William S.
Lind Daryl G. Kimball George Beres Peter Montague
November 3, 2005 James Petras Saul Landau Rep. Cynthia McKinney Michael Dickinson Joshua Frank Remi Kanazi Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
November 2, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Robert Oscar Lopez John Walsh Brian J. Foley Ramzy Baroud M. Junaid Alam Todd Chretien Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
November 1, 2005 Ron Jacobs Gary Leupp John Ross Bill Quigley Joseph Nevins Dave Lindorff Linda S. Heard Heather Gray Michael Dickinson Jeffrey St. Clair
October 31, 2005 Elaine Cassel Mark Weisbrot Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Farooq Sulehria Nicole Colson Madis Senner Paul Craig
Roberts
Cockburn /
St. Clair Peter Linebaugh Tim Wise John Chuckman Steven Higgs Brian Cloughley M. Shahid Alam Nikki Robinson Ralph Nader Joe DeRaymond Joshua Frank Laura Santina Fred Gardner Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs Dr. Susan Block Vanessa S. Jones Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
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
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November 30, 2005 Still Craven After All These YearsColin Powell: Always Willing to Let Someone Else Deliver the Bad NewsBy NORMAN SOLOMON Newspapers across the United States and beyond told readers Wednesday about sensational new statements by a former top assistant to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state. After interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson, the Associated Press reported he "said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that 'the president of the United States is all-powerful,' and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant." AP added: "Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because 'otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.'" Such strong words are headline grabbers when they come from someone widely assumed to be speaking Powell's mind. And as a Powell surrogate, Wilkerson is certainly on a tear this week, speaking some truth about power. But there are a few big problems with his zeal to recast the public record:
Appearing on the BBC's "Today" program Tuesday, Wilkerson said: "You begin to wonder was this intelligence spun? Was it politicized? Was it cherry-picked? Did, in fact, the American people get fooled? I am beginning to have my concerns." So Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief of staff from 2002 till early this year, has started to "wonder" whether the intelligence was spun, politicized, cherry-picked. At the end of November 2005, he was "beginning" to have "concerns." "Beginning to have my concerns" is a phrase that aptly describes the Colin Powell approach. Overall, appearances remain key. And so, Wilkerson included this anecdote in his AP interview: "Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone at Rumsfeld: 'Donald, don't you understand what you are doing to our image?'" Now there's a transcendent reason to begin to have concerns: Torturing prisoners is bad for "our image." Rest assured that if the war had gone well by Washington's lights, we'd be hearing none of this from Powell's surrogate. The war has gone bad, from elite vantage points, not because of the official lies and the unrelenting carnage but because military victory has eluded the U.S. government in Iraq. And with President Bush's poll numbers tanking, and Dick Cheney's even worse, it's time for some "moderate" sharks to carefully circle for some score-settling and preening. In its account of Wilkerson's BBC appearance, the British Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday: "Asked whether the vice president was guilty of a war crime, Mr. Wilkerson replied: 'Well, that's an interesting question -- it was certainly a domestic crime to advocate terror and I would suspect that it is ... an international crime as well.' In the context of other remarks it appeared he was using the word 'terror' to apply to the systematic abuse of prisoners." Strong stuff, especially since it's obvious that Wilkerson is channeling Powell with those statements. But Powell was a team player and a very effective front man for the administration that was doing all that politicizing and cherry-picking -- and then proceeding with the policies that Wilkerson now seeks to pin on Cheney as possible war crimes. White House war makers deftly hyped Powell's "moderate" credibility while the Washington press corps lauded his supposed integrity. Powell was the crucial point man for giving "diplomatic" cover to the Iraq invasion fixation of Bush and Cheney. So, typically, Powell proclaimed three weeks into 2003: "If the United Nations is going to be relevant, it has to take a firm stand." When Powell made his dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, he fudged, exaggerated and concocted, often presenting deceptions as certainties. Along the way, he played fast and loose with translations of phone intercepts to make them seem more incriminating. And, as researchers at the media watch group FAIR (where I'm an associate) pointed out, "Powell relied heavily on the disclosure of Iraq's pre-war unconventional weapons programs by defector Hussein Kamel, without noting that Kamel had also said that all those weapons had been destroyed." But the secretary of state wowed U.S. journalists. Powell's televised U.N. speech exuded great confidence and authoritative judgment. But he owed much of his touted credibility to the fact that he had long functioned inside a media bubble shielding him from direct challenge. It might puzzle an American to read later, in a book compiled by the London-based Guardian, that Powell's much-ballyhooed speech went over like a lead balloon. "The presentation was long on assertion and muffled taped phone calls, but short on killer facts," the book said. "It fell flat." Fell flat? Well it did in Britain, where a portion of the mainstream press immediately set about engaging in vigorous journalism that ripped apart many of Powell's assertions within days. But not on the western side of the Atlantic, where Powell's star turn at the United Nations elicited an outpouring of media adulation. In the process of deference to Powell, many liberals were among the swooners. In her Washington Post column the morning after Powell spoke, Mary McGrory proclaimed that "he persuaded me." She wrote: "The cumulative effect was stunning." And McGrory, a seasoned and dovish political observer, concluded: "I'm not ready for war yet. But Colin Powell has convinced me that it might be the only way to stop a fiend, and that if we do go, there is reason." In the same edition, Post columnist Richard Cohen shared his insight that Powell was utterly convincing: "The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise." Inches away, Post readers found Jim Hoagland's column with this lead: "Colin Powell did more than present the world with a convincing and detailed X-ray of Iraq's secret weapons and terrorism programs yesterday. He also exposed the enduring bad faith of several key members of the U.N. Security Council when it comes to Iraq and its 'web of lies,' in Powell's phrase." Hoagland's closing words sought to banish doubt: "To continue to say that the Bush administration has not made its case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the most serious statement he will ever make, or was taken in by manufactured evidence. I don't believe that. Today, neither should you." On the opposite page the morning after Powell's momentous U.N. speech, a Washington Post editorial was figuratively on the same page as the Post columnists. Under the headline "Irrefutable," the newspaper laid down its line for rationality: "After Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction." Also smitten was the editorial board of the most influential U.S. newspaper leaning against the push for war. Hours after Powell finished his U.N. snow job, the New York Times published an editorial with a mollified tone -- declaring that he "presented the United Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have." By sending Powell to address the Security Council, the Times claimed, President Bush "showed a wise concern for international opinion." And the paper contended that "Mr. Powell's presentation was all the more convincing because he dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a struggle of good and evil and focused on shaping a sober, factual case against Mr. Hussein's regime." Later, in mid-September 2003, straining to justify Washington's refusal to let go of the occupation of Iraq, Colin Powell used the language of a venture capitalist: "Since the United States and its coalition partners have invested a great deal of political capital, as well as financial resources, as well as the lives of our young men and women -- and we have a large force there now -- we can't be expected to suddenly just step aside." Now, after so much clear evidence has emerged to discredit the entire U.S. war effort, Colin Powell still can't bring himself to stand up and account for his crucial role. Instead, he's leaving it to a former aide to pin blame on those who remain at the top of the Bush administration. But Powell was an integral part of the war propaganda machinery. And we can hardly expect the same media outlets that puffed him up at crucial times to now scrutinize their mutual history. This article includes an excerpt
from Norman Solomon's new book "War
Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death."
For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
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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          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.               |
