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New Special Double Issue on the War Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: The US vs. Iraq: the Thirteen Year War; The Sanctions That Killed; Bombing Iraq Every 3 Days Since the Ceasefire of 1991; What Would Gore Have Done?; The Rise of the Neocons; Israel's Proxy War Plan; Why Did It End So Quickly?; The Coming Occupation; Re-educating Iraqis, American-style; Those Reconstruction Contracts; Media Hawks; Christian Crusaders; Democratic Candidates and the War; Smart Bombs Go Haywire; Inside the Mind of Santorum; Gore Vidal on John Kerry; Thomas Pickering: the Bad Seed. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Recent Stories

May 1, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole

Iain Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We Are Many; They are Few"

Diana Johnstone
About Cuba

Sam Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco

Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff Their Pockets

Peter Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal

Stew Albert
Straight Shooters

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01

Website of the Day
South Bay Mobilization

 

April 30, 2003

Ashley Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History of Washington's Occupations

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30

Gary Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre

Robert Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA

Wayne Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda

Ahmad Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East

Gabriel Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition

Adolfo Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush: "You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"

 

 

April 29, 2003

Gary Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results of the Iraq War

Uri Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen

Anthony Gancarski
Brush with the Law

Mickey Z.
POWs: Then and Now

CounterPunch Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents

Robert Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?

Chris Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria

Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents

Wallace Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?

Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29

 

April 28, 2003

Ann Harrison
Fighting Back: Medical Marijuana Patients Sue Ashcroft

Robert Jensen
Lack of WMD Kills the Case for War

Peter Phillips
Total Information Control

Ron Jacobs
Get the US Out of Iraq and Its Military Out of Our Minds

Mark Hand
Peace Park: The Pentagon Solution to a Baseball Stadium Dilemma

Linda S. Heard
Repeat After Me: Iraq is Weapons Free

Kurt Nimmo
US Military Bases: the Spoils and Deceptions of War

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/28

 

April 26 / 27, 2003

Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Bush, Ashcroft and the End of Civil Liberties

Saul Landau
Iraq War: a Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism

William A. Cook
Sharon Recruits US as Mercenaries Against Syria

William S. Lind
Now the Real War Starts

John Chuckman
In Jesus's Name:
Franklin Graham's Christian Empire

David MacMichael and Ray McGovern
Ex-CIA Analysts on WMD: Where? Find? Plant?

Gary Leupp
Why the War on Iraq was (and Remains) Wrong

Robert Sandels
Cuba Crackdown: a Revolt Against Bush's National Security Strategy?

CounterPunch Wire
An Open Letter to Jerry Brown on Oakland Police Violence Against Peace Activists and Dock Workers

Mickey Z.
Our Ba'athists

Anthony Gancarski
Nader Plays Pullman

Scott Handleman
The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case in Its True Colors

Claud Cockburn
Evelyn Waugh's Ear Trumpet

Poets' Basement
Matt Simon, Sam Hamod, Hammond Guthrie and Stew Albert

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/26

 

April 25, 2003

David Vest
It's Not the Oil; It's the Art!

Steven Higgs
All About Tucker Carlson

Walt Brasch
The Shock and Awe of American Ignorance

Alexander Cockburn
The Decline of American Journalism: the Case of Judy Miller

Zeynep Toufe
A Letter to the People of Iraq from an Anti-War Activist

CounterPunch Wire
Season of the Witch: Jeane Kirkpatrick Unbound

Hammond Guthrie
Springtime in Iraq

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/25

Website of the Day
Having a Great Time, Wish You Were Here: Postcards from a War

 

April 24, 2003

Lois Whitman
An Open Letter to Rumsfeld on the Child Detainees at Guantanamo

Uri Avnery
Abu vs. Abu: It's Not About Egos

David Lindorff
Day Care in the Name of National Security? About Those Kids in Camp X-Ray

John Grebe
Rev. Pat Robertson's Message in the Temple

Dokhi Fassihian
Monster.Com: Ethnic Cleansing on the Web?

CounterPunch Wire
Israeli Army Chief Threatens Peace Activists

Sam Hamod
Our Man in Baghdad

Annie C. Higgins
Do You Regret Being an American?

Harold A. Gould
Will They Hate Us Forever?

Stew Albert
Big Brother in Bed

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/24

Website of the Day
Muscles Abroad

 

April 23, 2003

Anthony Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat

Chris Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach by Example

Marjorie Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers

William Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War

Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer

Binoy Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq

David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?

Standard Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Andrew Rodman
Lawn Poem

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23

Website of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East

 

April 22, 2003

Edward Said
The Appalling Consequences of the Iraq War are Now Clear

Sam Hamod
What's the Deal with This War?

Kurt Nimmo
Shi'a Will to Power

Gary Leupp
At last! The Necessary Evidence

Carl Estabrook
Oblivious Americans: They Distort, We Subside

John Stanton
Iran's Reza Pahlavi: a Puppet of the US and Israel?

Ramzy Baroud
What Else Hasn't Israel Told America?

Steven Sherman
About That Cuba Letter

Wayne Madsen
Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult

Stew Albert
Creep

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/22

Website of the Day
Critical Media Literacy in Times of War

 

April 21, 2003

Elaine Cassel
An Administration in Contempt

Gary Leupp
Easter Thoughts on Liberation, Jesus and Kanaka WaiWai

Roger Witherspoon
Why Michigan Needs Affirmative Action

Uri Avnery
At Midnight, a Knock on the Door

Col. Dan Smith
Early Lessons from Iraq

Jo Freeman
After the Protest Comes Politics

Michael Berry
The Friedman Absurdities

Gray Brechin
Hang Black Banners: Mourning the Cultural Loss

Bob Riedel
The Taliban from Texas

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/21

 

April 19, 2003

Gary Leupp
The Rape of History

Saul Landau
Shop, Go to Church, Support Bush's War, Wait for Armageddon

Michael J. Fellows
Off With Their Heads: the Constitution According to Scalia

Pablo Mukherjee
Roadmap to Resistance

Omar Barghouti
Sharon's Bloody Beat

Anthony Gancarski
Tony Blair: the Most Powerful Man in the World

Mickey Z.
Animals: the Other Collateral Damage

Will Potter
When Police Attack Journalists

William MacDougall
America's In-Bedded Journalism

Neve Gordon
Haunted by History

Adam Engel
Wal-Mart and Peace

Dr. Susan Block
Art Bombs: American Libertines for Peace

Poets' Basement
Albert, Buono, Guthrie

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/19

Song of the Weekend
Baghdad to Basra

 

April 18, 2003

Uri Avnery
Operation "Syrian Freedom": This One's Not About Oil

Jorge Mariscal
"They Died Trying to Become Students": the Future of Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation

Mickey Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes

Hussein Ibish
Syria and the Road to World War IV

Reza Ladjevardian
Tarqeting Iran? Do It With TV, Not Cruise Missiles

Matania Ben-Artzi
You Are Not Protecting My Son's Rights: a Letter to the President of Israel's Supreme Court

Bruce Jackson
Jews Like Us

Joe Allen
My Lai Revisited

Carl Estabrook
Support Our Euphemism

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/18

Website of the Day
Meet the Victims of War

 

April 17, 2003

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

Joanne Mariner
Looting Antiquity: the Legal Implications for the Pentagon

Issam Nashashibi
Zalmay Khalilzad: the Neocon's Bagman to Baghdad

Wayne Madsen
Another Sign of the "End Times" for American Journalism

Robert Fisk
The Army of Occupation

Boris Kagarlitsky
Virtual Saddam Takes Aim

Biljana Vankovska
A Personal View of Iraq: Where is the Truth?

Dan Brook
Oil War: Fueling the Empire

Stanley Heller
Bomb and Steal: This is What Privatization Looks Like

Tim Robbins
A Chill Wind is Blowing Through This Nation

Harold A. Gould
Iraq After the War

Steve Perry
War Web Log 4/17

 

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Arrogant Propaganda

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Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

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May 2, 2003

"They Are Sick, Deeply Sick"

Crowd Control American-Style

By CAOIMHE BUTTERLY

Baghdad, Iraq.

The road to Faluja is strewn with discarded tanks and burned out cars and palm groves whose depth of green contrasts strikingly with the parched earth leading out of Baghdad.

Its atmosphere, upon entry, is markedly different to that of Baghdad. The American military presence is much less pronounced, there is a marked absence of foreign press. Faluja, it seems, is not bleeding enough to lead.

Passing by children bathing in a river set aglow by the setting sun, families returning home from the fields, groups of old men heading to prayer, we make our way to Faluja General Hospital, whose morgue last night served as temporary home to the bodies of ten men, a young woman and a ten year old boy. The influx of the 37 wounded has ceased, the blood cleaned from the floors, the mourning keening woman brought home. The anger, howe! ver is still here. Its presence cannot be dealt with by the hospital staff as efficiently as they patched up, with limited pain killers, surgical equipment, blood bags, IV lines, the 37 people who were carried into them from 10pm onwards last night--all shot with 50mm high caliber bullets--blowing off legs, ripping open abdominal cavities, shattering bones, tearing through muscles. Searing anger and distrust and pain onto a community's collective memory.

"They are sick. They are deeply, deeply sick. Tell the Americans we don't believe in this freedom" says an elderly man. His comment is one of the many of the crowd that surround us yelling their pain and anger--demanding an explanation, a response--"why?" "why do they insist on continuing to massacre our people--how much more blood do they want?" "show them, show the world, tell them the truth."

Later, we move on, to the school occupied by the American milita! ry for the past week. It is here that - we are told--a non violen t orderly demonstration to the school took place last night. All those interviewed, all those crowded outside the school now insist that the official version is false. They gathered peacefully, and marched peacefully, past the mosque through a residential area to the barbed wire coils that surround the occupied school.

The American troops as we arrive, are packing up. This is not a media stunt--the media have come and gone--a constant traffic, all day, through the hospital. Pictures taken, grief and loss encapsulated into palatable sound bites. This withdrawal is tactical. The public relations campaign of a benign occupation will be difficult to maintain if there is follow-up to this particular massacre. If there are charges pressed by the families, by the brothers who were hit by stray bullets inside their house. If there is investigation into the legitimacy of the official army version of events. It will become d! ifficult, if there can be, in Falluja, a focal center for people's anger and frustration, an occupied school, snipers pointing guns at people entering and exited the mosque. It is easier for everyone, if the soldiers slip off into the night, avoiding the scrutiny, the fixed eye of accountability, which must be a factor in any "liberated" "democratic" country. So they do, slip off into the night--and, not recognizing us as their armoured cars and trucks pass our car on a dark highway to Baghdad, American soldiers pump their fists into the air for our cameras, giving us the victory sign.

Liberation--an ephemeral, passing phenomena has come and gone in Falluja. It came, sat uncomfortably for a week--without translators, cultural or historical sensibility, brought a temporary horde of journalists to record its only lasting impression on a community; that of violence, and pain, and loss; and left. Falluja, we are told lat! er via a news report by a BBC reporter, has always been "anti Amer ican". This should, and will, nullify or qualm any murmurings of distrust abroad as to what lies ahead.

Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish human rights activist, currently living in Baghdad with Voices in the Wilderness. She spent a year in Jenin, Palestine, and since her deportation in Dec. 2002, has been campaigning full-time in Ireland and the UK, giving over 70 talks on Palestine and Jenin. She is in Iraq indefinitely, and can be reached through: info@vitw.org

Yesterday's Features

Jeffrey St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole

Iain Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We Are Many; They are Few"

Diana Johnstone
About Cuba

Sam Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco

Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff Their Pockets

Peter Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal

Stew Albert
Straight Shooters

Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01

Website of the Day
South Bay Mobilization

 

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