Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia

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The war on Iraq didn’t being with the lethal pyrotechnics of Shock and Awe and it didn’t end with George W. Bush’s made-for-tv aircraft landing. Undetected by the mainstream press, the US campaign against Iraq began many years before, featuring cruel sanctions, weekly bombardments and CIA-hatched assassinations. With Saddam deposed, the US now finds itself mired in a grinding and bloody occupation, its troops under constant attack with no exit in sight.

Iraq was just one of three major imperial crusades in the last decade, orchestrated by a new generation of American politicians, both Democrat and Republican, who backed pre-emptive strikes to overthrow unruly regimes in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan under the pretext of humanitarian intervention. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair reported on these wars as they happened. Years ahead of the pack, they exposed the economic motives behind the wars and how fraudulent intelligence, a spaniel press corps, a servile United Nations and corporate propaganda techniques were used to foist them upon the public.

Imperial Crusades chronicles the lies that are now returning almost daily to haunt the liars in Washington and London, the secret agendas and the under-reported carnages of these wars. It is a ripely vivid and blow-by-blow commentary in the tradition of Tacitus and Macaulay.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: THE LAPTOP BOMBARDIERS

1. The Laptop Bombardiers
Alexander Cockburn

2. Sieg Heil!
Alexander Cockburn

3. May Day Missiles
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

4. Yes, Peace is at Hand
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

5. Wesley Clark: a Vain, Pompous Brown-noser
Andrew Cockburn

6. The War Behind the Briefings
Jeffrey St. Clair

7. Tom Friedman: the Maddest Dog
Alexander Cockburn

8. The Anti-War Left
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

9. Epic Poetry
Alexander Cockburn

10. First, Pick Your War Criminal
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

11. Humanitarian Adolf
Alexander Cockburn

12. The Anti-War Right
Alexander Cockburn

13. A Fraud Called Bernie Sanders
Alexander Cockburn

14. The Cost
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

15. The Liberals’ War
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

16. The John McCain Story
Jeffrey St. Clair

17. Here Comes Elie Wiesel
Alexander Cockburn

18. Where Tomorrow’s Bombs Will Fall
Jeffrey St. Clair

19. The First Lady as Therapeutic Cop
Alexander Cockburn

20. The Pentagon’s Presidential Auction
Andrew Cockburn

21. Genocide in Kosovo?
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

22. Clinton’s Good Side
Alexander Cockburn

23. Liberation Four Years After
Chad Nagle

Part Two: Overview

24. Why the War on Terror Won’t Work
Bill Christison

Part Three: Afghanistan

24. W: First Blood
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

25. Who Saw It Coming?
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

26. The Price, Mrs. Albright?
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

27. Retribution
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

28. Nukes: Small is Beautiful
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

29. The Left and the ‘Just War’
Alexander Cockburn

30. FBI Eyes Torture
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair

31. Alter Asks: ‘Can We Torture Just a Teensy Bit?’
Alexander Cockburn

32. Where Were They When It Counted?
Alexander Cockburn

33. Fathers and Sons: the Bushes and Bin Ladens Go Way Back
Jeffrey St. Clair

34. Pebbles and Poppies
Alexander Cockburn

35. Anthrax as Normalcy: 500 Cases a Year
Jeffrey St. Clair

36. Daniel Pearl: Should His Editors Have Sent Him There?
Alexander Cockburn

37. Politics of a Bumper Crop:
Opium and Afghanistan
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

38. Karzai’s Bodyguard
Gary Leupp

39. The Tenth Crusade
Alexander Cockburn

40. The Trouble with Normal
Jeffrey St. Clair

41. Rummy: the Most Dangerous Man in Washington
Alexander Cockburn

42. Dogs of War, Bears of Wall St
Alexander Cockburn

43. Dwarf-throwing and the UN
Alexander Cockburn

44. Anatomy of Fear
Carol Norris

Part Four: War on Iraq

45. Iraq as Prison State
Jeffrey St. Clair

46. Iraq: When the Going Was Good
Vanessa Jones

47. From Marine to Anti-war Organizer
Scott Cossette

48. The Anti-war Mvt. and Its Critics
Alexander Cockburn

49. Torquemadas in Birkenstocks
Jeffrey St. Clair

50. Deceptions in Military Recruiting
Chris White

51. Bombing Iraq: They’ve Been Doing It For Eighty Years
Alexander Cockburn

52. Condition Orange as a Way of Life
Alexander Cockburn

53. Colin Powell and the Great Intelligence Fraud
Alexander Cockburn

54. Rummy’s Account Book: Who Armed Saddam?
Stephen Green

55. The Weekend the World Said No to War
Gary Leupp

56. Meet the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg
Alexander Cockburn

57. Why Let the Facts Stop a Good War?
Alexander Cockburn

58. When Jeffrey Goldberg Did Brazil
Alexander Cockburn

59. Forging Intelligence: Whose Deliberate Disinformation?
Ray Close

60. Fourth Generation Protesting
Scott Handleman

61. Roadtrip in Wartime
Daniel Wolff

Part Five: the Thirteen Years’ War

62. US Propaganda During the First 10 Days of the War
Paul de Rooij

63. Hating Wolf Blitzer’s Voice
Bruce Jackson

64. Baghdad: Farewell to a City Under Siege
Jo Wilding

65. War Means Almost (Never) Having to Say You’re Sorry
Joanne Mariner

66. Ego, Cruelty and Lies
Diane Christian

67. Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and War
Doug Lummis

68. The NYT and the Peace Movement
Susan Davis

69. Patriot Gore: the Fatal Flaws in the Patriot Missile System
Jeffrey St. Clair

70. What is Happening in the United States?
Edward Said

71. The Continuing Danger of Cluster Bombs
Joanne Mariner

72. Labor in the Dawn of Empire
JoAnn Wypijewski

73. The Dixie Chicks Cross the Road
Dave Marsh and Lee Ballinger

74. WMDs: Who Said What When
Jeffrey St. Clair

75. The Rat in the Grain: the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Jeffrey St. Clair

76. Decieved into War
Ray McGovern

77. Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Ray McGovern

78. War Pimps: a Confidence Game on Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair

79. Judy Miller’s War
Alexander Cockburn

80. Meet the Real WMD Fabricator: Rolf Ekeus
Alexander Cockburn

81. Handmaiden in Babylon: the Decline and Fall of the UN
Alexander Cockburn

82. Bush’s Iraq Mess: Getting Worse by the Day
Patrick Cockburn

83. The Thirteen Years’ War
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

 

 

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Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink co-written with Joshua Frank. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. Alexander Cockburn’s Guillotined! and A Colossal Wreck are available from CounterPunch.