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Today's
Stories
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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
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for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
March 20 / 21, 2004
The Senator's Inner Nixon
Which
Way John Kerry?
By JOHN STANTON
John Kerry recently chided the incoming Spanish
government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for promising to fulfill
a campaign promise to bring back to Spain its troops and support
personnel deployed in Iraq. Agence France Press reported that
Kerry's view was that if Spain did bring its soldiers home at
this point in the US occupation, "it would leave behind
a failed state that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists."
With this statement, he seems to have some Richard Nixon in him.
On the John Kerry for President website, a section outlines Kerry's
plan for "Winning the Peace in Post-Saddam Iraq" which
is eerily similar to phrasing used in Nixon's Cambodia Incursion
Address delivered in 1970 to the American people. Nixon indicated
that his plans to expand the war while ostensibly bringing US
troops home would result in "winning the just peace we all
desire". Winning the Peace would be a constant refrain of
Nixon's as would Peace with Honor. The longer the US stays on
Iraq the closer its leaders will come to uttering those phrases.
Why would John Kerry want to prolong
the misery of US troops in Iraq and their families here in the
USA with such a strangely Nixonesqe policy?
Fiasco
John Kerry must know, or at least his
advisors should know, that Iraq is, indeed, "a fiasco"
as Zapatero put it. An estimated 10,000 or more non-combatant
Iraqi men, women and children have been slaughtered or maimed
by US ordnance delivered from air, sea and land. Roughly 10,000
US troops have either been slaughtered (KIA), maimed (WIA) or
have contracted illnesses (depleted uranium syndrome among them)
that are filling VA hospitals all over the country. The cold-blooded
and very capitalist US practice of mistakenly killing an Iraqi
family member and subsequently offering $5000 in cash as a replacement
for a human soul is sure to make more enemies in Iraq. The use
by US forces of time-tested Israeli urban warfare tactics for
retribution against rebel attacks--to include destroying homes
in urban areas where suspected rebels live and in rural areas
plowing up the farms of suspected rebel families-creates more
enmity between occupation forces and the general population.
Perhaps most stingingly, no one at the
helm is listening to what the Israelis are telling the grand
brains running the US military/political apparatus. As reported
by MSNBC, Martin Van Creveld-an Israeli urban warfare expert--indicated
that the US would eventually be forced to leave Iraq because
the occupation is doomed to failure. "They are already doing
things that we [Israel] have been doing for years to no avail,
like demolishing buildings, like closing off villages in barbed
wire. The Americans are coming here to try to mimic all kinds
of techniques, but it's not going to do them any good. I don't
see how on earth the U.S. can win. I think this is going to end
the same way Vietnam did. They are going to flee the country
hanging on the strings of helicopters."
When the Going Gets
Tough, Chalabi Runs
The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) created
by the US is generally reviled by the Iraqi people not so much
because they are the marionettes of the US government but because
the composition of the IGC is guaranteed to lead to further rebel
activity against Iraqi occupation forces and the cronies who
work for them. Iraqi civilians will continue to suffer. The IGC
is a trademark American shake-and-bake government. It's artificial
to the core and guaranteed to rot under pressure.
According to islamonline.net, some of
the most powerful members of the IGC, like Ahmed Chalabi, are
not even Iraqi citizens. "The first president of the IGC,
Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, trained in medicine at Mosul University,
did not consider Iraq to be his home. In an interview with the
Associated Press, Al-Jaafari admitted that he considered London,
England to be his home." Moreover, according to islamonline.net,
the very design of the IGC is guaranteed to ensure sectarian
conflict and further rebel attacks aimed at occupation forces.
"The very members of the IGC show us just what the United
States intends to do...the Kurds have never been in a stronger
position to call for secession and the creation of an independent
Kurdistan. In-fighting will eventually tear the council apart,
with each faction withdrawing to the protections of its armed
militias. Those with foreign passports like Chalabi...will run
as soon as the situation worsens."
Read Nixon's Speech,
Learn About John Kerry?
What is most frightening about Kerry's
negativity towards Spain's intention withdraw its military personnel
from Iraq, is that he seems to endorse the view that if an electorate
votes against the US occupation of Iraq (and the perpetual war
on terror) then one is engaging in appeasement with the "terrorists".
Setting aside the tortured logic in this thought, it's clear
he agrees with prominent US warlords President Bush, Speaker
of the US House Hastert, and the Chair of the US Joint Chiefs
of Staff General Myers that somehow the Spanish people are assisting
the terrorists by exercising their right to vote out a government
whose policies they did not support.
With US political and military leaders
condemning the voters and the incoming government of Spain as
evil appeasers, they display their contempt for the will of the
people and of the individual citizen everywhere. Why does John
Kerry side with them?
Now that John Kerry has the Democratic
nomination in hand, those Americans who support him must be vigilant
and keep his feet to the fire on the issue of the occupation
of Iraq. If not, sometime in the term of President Kerry, he
will make the following remarks given by Nixon in the turbulent
year that was 1970.
"My fellow Americans, we live in
an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks
on all the great institutions which have been created by free
civilizations in the last 500 years...Small nations all over
the world find themselves under attack from within and from without.
If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation
-- the United States of America -- acts like a pitiful, helpless
giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten
free nations and free institutions throughout the world.
It is not our power, but our will and
character that is being tested tonight. The question all Americans
must ask and answer tonight is this: Does the richest and strongest
nation in the history of the world have the character to meet
a direct challenge by a group which rejects every effort to win
a just peace, ignores our warning, tramples on solemn agreements,
violates the neutrality of an unarmed people, and uses our prisoners
as hostages? If we fail to meet this challenge, all other nations
will be on notice that despite its overwhelming power the United
States when a real crisis comes will be found wanting."
Don't take America there John Kerry.
John Stanton
is a Virginia Based writer specializing in political and military
matters. He is the author-with Wayne Madsen-of America's
Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II.. Reach him
at cioran123@yahoo.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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