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Today's
Stories
January 3 / 4, 2004
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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
January 3 / 4, 2004
Knocking Down Red
Herrings
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
In his Christmas message to British occupation
troops in Iraq, Tony Blair, Britain's leader of the governing
Labour Party assured them that there was "massive evidence
of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq.
Blair again made a fool of himself, and
it is interesting to examine the vulgar, shoddy affair of the
phantom laboratories in the context of what politicians and officials
imagine they can get away with in misleading their unfortunate
public.
We should never forget that Bush and
Blair (with Howard of Australia ; the US-designated white sheriff
of the Pacific region), made war on Iraq because, they assured
us all, the Baghdad government possessed enormous numbers of
weapons of mass destruction. We were told it had rockets to deliver
biological and chemical agents, and the president of the US gave
details about the exact amounts of these. ("Saddam Hussein
had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard
and VX nerve agent", quoth Bush in his State of the Union
address.) I don't know why Dean isn't making more of this in
his run for nomination, but doubtless he has his reasons, probably
associated with the quaint notion that criticism of the commander-in-chief
is in some way disloyal to the country. This is a factor in American
public life that is being fostered, manipulated and milked by
the zealots of the right and their aggressively biased media
supporters.
According to the vice-president and others
in Washington, Iraq had a functioning nuclear weapons' programme
that necessitated its invasion by the US and Britain. But the
Bush administration hirelings now want us to forget that in September
2002 Cheney announced to the world that Saddam Hussein "[has]
been free -- and we know he has -- to continue to improve his
chemical weapons capability. We know he has worked to and has
succeeded in improving his biological weapons capability. And
we're confident he has also begun, once again, to try to acquire
a nuclear weapon." He went even further on 16 March 2003
by declaring "Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for
a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that [Saddam Hussein]
has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's
had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely
devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe
he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr El
Baradei frankly is wrong." (Mr El Baradei, the highly respected
UN nuclear weapons expert, had said that Iraq had no nuclear
weapons program. He was, of course, frankly, right.)
A year ago Bush proclaimed that "Iraq
has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that
could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across
broad areas." At a press briefing on 14 July 2003 Bush stated
with cynical disregard for facts and integrity that "We
gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in,
and he wouldn't let them in." (In many countries the perpetrator
of such a brazen lie would have been mercilessly lambasted by
the mainstream media ; but not in the US.) All these claims have
been shown to be absurd, as has Cheney's declaration that there
was "evidence" of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda
which "involved training on [biological and chemical weapons].
Al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems."
All lies. Ridiculous lies. Blatant, flagrant, in-your-face, deliberate
falsity. But the Bush campaign is working very hard indeed to
encourage American voters to forget or at least ignore the deceit
and deception. The official line about the reasons for war on
Iraq is now being amended dramatically.
So, when faced with the uncomfortable
facts that there were no nuclear programs ; that there were no
chemical or biological agents (never mind Bush's 500 tons) ;
that there was no "growing fleet" of unmanned aircraft
for spraying them (a particularly stupid allegation); and that
Al Qaeda was never in Iraq (although it now operates there, according
to Washington, thanks to the chaos created by Bush's crusade),
the excuse for war has been altered, and not even subtly. Hence
the Blair contention about laboratories, which he had selected
from the interim report of Rumsfeld's team of searchers for WMD
in Iraq.
Unfortunately for the credibility of
Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest (not that they give
a damn), the searchers failed to find weapons of mass destruction.
All they managed to conjure up was "evidence" about
laboratories, not one of which has been found, either. It seems
the word 'evidence' has been given a very different meaning to
that in the dictionary, which is "the available facts, circumstances,
etc, supporting or otherwise a belief, proposition, etc, or indicating
whether or not a thing is true or valid." If one has evidence
of the existence of something, then the thing must exist. Therefore
if there is, in Blair's words, "massive evidence of a huge
system of clandestine laboratories" it follows that the
laboratories must exist. So where are they? Be assured that if
they existed there would have been photographs in all US newspapers,
and Fox News would be broadcasting exultant video of the scenes
non-stop. But all that the investigators found were some trailers
for preparing meteorological balloons.
On June 25, 2003 the New York Times reported
that ". . . Mr. Bush cited [the trailers] as proof that
Iraq indeed had a biological weapons program, as the United States
has repeatedly alleged, although it has yet to produce any other
conclusive evidence." (Note the use of the word 'other'
in this supposedly factual report. It is intended to create the
impression that there was at least some conclusive evidence,
which there certainly was not. This is compliant journalism at
its worst.) Yet in an August interview with the BBC, the US chief
weapons inspector, David Kay, said "I think [talk of the
mobile laboratories] was premature and embarrassing . . . I don't
want the mobile biological production facilities fiasco of May
to be the model of the future." It was all baloney. But
Blair is a specialist in baloney, so he picked up the non-evidence
and broadcast it, six months' later, to British soldiers. And
then the American ruler of Iraq, Paul Bremer, let him down with
a wallop.
Bremer flatly contradicted Blair's assertion
about laboratories. Last week he was asked by Jonathan Dimbleby
of Britain's Independent Television channel to comment on Blair's
second-hand assertion. According to the Daily Telegraph (a muscular
supporter of the war on Iraq), "Mr Bremer . . . ridiculed
the comment. "I don't know where those words come from,
but that is not what David Kay has said . . . I have read his
reports so I don't know who said that. It sounds like a bit of
a red herring to me. It sounds like someone who doesn't agree
with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks it down."
When Dimbleby finally managed to tell him it was Mr Blair who
made the comment, Mr Bremer beat a partial retreat, saying: "There
is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public."
He claimed there was "clear evidence of biological and chemical
programmes, ongoing". These "show clear evidence of
violation of UN Security Council resolutions relating to rockets".
War was justified "historically" regardless of the
issue of WMD, Mr Bremer said. "I invite anybody, British
or American, who thinks it was wrong to go to war, to come and
see the mass graves in Halabja. Come there and then tell me that
we were not right to liberate this country from Saddam Hussein.
We, the coalition, the British and American people have done
a noble thing by relieving 25 million Iraqis of one of the most
vicious tyrannies in the 20th century"." He went on
to say "Weapons of mass destruction or no weapons of mass
destruction, it's important to step back a little bit here, to
see what we have done historically."
Indeed it is important to step back and
look at the Iraq shambles, because what Bush administration officials
have done historically is to have lied to the entire world. And
now that their lies have been identified for what they are, they
seek to justify their war by pious, outraged complaints about
what Saddam did historically. Their line would be rather more
convincing had they protested against the gassing of civilians
at Halabja when it happened in March 1988. The fanatics seek
to justify their war by repeated reference to an atrocity 15
years after it was perpetrated, and at the time of which they
piped not one word, not a syllable, in condemnation.
An administration figure has again come
close to admitting that there were "no weapons of mass destruction".
Bremer and his masters are desperately trying to convince us
that the issue of WMD is unimportant. It is only too reminiscent
of the end of the Nixon era. Do you remember Ron Ziegler, the
Nixon spokesman who died a year ago? He uttered the everlasting
words : "The president refers to the fact that there is
new material ; therefore, this is the operative statement. The
others are inoperative."
The Bush administration's hysterical
warnings about the Iraqi nuclear program ; the 500 tons of chemicals
and biological agents ; the fleet of deadly unmanned aerial vehicles
; and the other gross figments of overheated imagination are
now, presumably, 'inoperative', and it won't be long before the
propaganda mind-benders go into overdrive to rewrite history.
The process began on the White House website (where else?), with
insertion of the word 'major' in the report of Bush's speech
on May 1. Remember the headline "President Bush Announces
Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended"? No you don't, because
the White House says it never existed. What Bush MEANT to say,
which is what we are now told he actually said, was that MAJOR
combat operations had ended. That is what is now in the historical
record, White House version. (See Dana Milbank's 'White House
Web Scrubbing' in the Washington Post, December 18.)
Orwell described this sort of thing in
'1984', which was always a chilling book to read, but is especially
so nowadays. "The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the
Day in The Times . . . is extremely unsatisfactory and makes
reference to non-existent persons. Rewrite in full and submit
your draft to higher authority before filing". You doubt
that the rewriting of truth is almost upon us in the style of
Big Brother? Then reflect on Rumsfeld's shameless lie on Sinclair
Broadcasting on September 25. Anchor Morris Jones led in to a
question by saying "Before the war in Iraq, you stated the
case very eloquently and you said . . . [the Iraqis] would welcome
us with open arms." This is well-documented, but Rumsfeld
leapt to deny it. "Never said that," he said. "Never
did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of somebody
else. You can't find, anywhere, me saying anything like either
of those two things you just said I said." Think about '1984'
again, when Orwell wrote "Very likely as many as a dozen
people were now working on rival versions of what Big Brother
had actually said. And presently some master brain in the Inner
Party would select this version or that, would re-edit it . .
. then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and
become truth." We are, alas, accustomed to being lied to,
and we can handle that. But it is a different matter when history
is rewritten, for the only defence we have is memory, which is
exactly what the mind-benders in the White House and Downing
Street are trying to defeat.
What a bunch of dilapidated, sleazebag
humbugs. They set up red herrings (what Bremer meant, presumably,
was Straw Men) and then knock them down. Just as they knock down
truth and demolish their own principles -- if they ever had any.
Brian Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, the Nation (Pakistan),
the Daily Times of Pakistan and other international publications.
His writings are collected on his website: www.briancloughley.com.
He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
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