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Recent
Stories
July
8, 2003
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Saul Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
July
3, 2003
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Thomas
W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
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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July
8, 2003
To Hell With the Lot
of Them
They
Tell Lies to Nodders
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
Last week a newspaper editor expressed surprise
about my peacenik views and emailed me accordingly. "I wonder",
he wrote, "if you could do a bit of self-psycho-analysis,
and examine how a British-Australian former soldier of fairly
mainstream views (as I think you were) has evolved into [your
present form]." (See www.briancloughley.com.)
I was outraged, and replied that far
from having had "mainstream views", I possessed in
the fairly recent past decidedly right-stream views. Never at
a loss for a cliche, I state that not long ago I was several
leagues to the right of Genghiz Khan, and replied to Ye Ed that
"I was a thorough-going, kill-a-commie-for-Christ, jackboot-wearing,
there's no-Gook-like-a-dead-Gook, card-carrying, liberal-hating
fascist". I am not and never have been anti-American, but
I am decidedly against Bush and his Washington weirdoes, who
have steered their country to aggressive and needless confrontation
with every country that does not accept servile subordination
to the Bush doctrine of imperial supremacy.
There was one main reason for moving
from fascist to liberal, and that was the fact that Washington
and London tell us lies and that these lies are accepted and
resold by people who should know better. My reaction to the announcement
that the British Parliament's report concerning Blair's exaggerations
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was going to be published
was that it would be a whitewash, otherwise they wouldn't publish
it. Now that is unhealthy, knee-jerk cynicism, but I didn't get
this way without a lot of help.
When PG Wodehouse wrote humorously about
Hollywood he invented a genus called nodders. First there was
the film company's president, then legions of vice-presidents,
then there were the nodders whose job it was to attend conferences
and agree, by deferential head inclination, with everything that
was said. Far too many reporters and legislators are nodders.
Take, for example, the botched attack
on some vehicles and the rocketing of a tiny smugglers' hamlet
near the Iraq-Syrian border by a deeply secret bunch of US killers
supported by aircraft armed with more firepower than a trio of
tank squadrons. The affair was a ludicrous, ham-fisted stuff-up.
They killed a young woman and her one year-old child, and wounded
then took prisoner six Syrian border guards and held them for
almost two weeks without explanation. The sheer arrogance of
the latter action is staggering. (We won't even discuss human
rights and murdering Iraqi civilians; there's no point.) The
affair was almost as bizarre as the detention of a dozen Turkish
soldiers in northern Iraq, about which we were told nothing,
either. Nothing, that is, that we can believe.
These operations, I remind you, took
place in our name. It was for the safety of the world that Bush
and Blair went to war on Iraq, so they say, and that is you and
me. And if killings and cock-ups are committed in our name, then
we want to know about it. The reason we are told nothing, or
lied to with blatant contempt, is that the operations were bungled,
therefore they don't want us to know about them. The Bush cabal
and the Blair government-within-a-government told us grotesque
lies, before, during and after their war. We all know the device
of "senior government source" and "senior administration
official", and those of us who have our own sources, here
and there, know on many occasions exactly who these people are.
It is time - it is more than time - that the media refused to
publicise 'information' unless the source can be named. ('Cabal'
was the name given to a clique of devious ministers appointed
by Charles II; their surnames begin with the letters of the word.
What about Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Powell?)
If the Bush and Blair ju-ju men want
to give the world some facts, they should go on the record. Here
is one example of needlessly unattributable nonsense, from the
New York Times on July 7 : "Speaking on the condition of
anonymity, a senior Defense Department official said the soldiers
who stormed the Turkish compound in Sulaimaniya on Friday were
'acting on intelligence about possible illicit activities that
were being planned against municipal officials in the region.'
A senior American military official, also speaking on the condition
of anonymity, confirmed this account, saying the plot appeared
to be aimed at the governor of Kirkuk, a nearby city."
I don't believe a word of it. Associated
Press recorded that "Emel Begler, a Turkish cook who was
among the detained together with her 15-year-old son, told reporters
the US troops broke down the doors, placed sacks over their heads
and handcuffed their hands behind their backs." So she was
plotting to kill the governor of Kirkuk, was she? Ratbane in
his Freedom Fries, perhaps. But if the Turkish soldiers she cooked
for were indeed plotting assassination, why were they then set
free? What's the real story?
Why the anonymity in this and so many
other cases? It appears to be a reflex action, like manacling
and blindfolding male Iraqi civilians in order to humiliate them
in front of their families. This sort of cave-man thug-stuff
never used to happen. What is the point of it? All it does is
feed the fires of fury against the US in Iraq, just as anonymous
-- cowardly, gutless, amoral -- briefers exasperate and deceive
us to the point that we don't believe a damn word they say. Rumsfeld
often insists he be described as a "senior defense official",
which is cowardice. If he's got anything to say, let him be named
as saying it. Creeping behind the shield of bureaucratic anonymity
is the action of a lily-livered sleazebag. But the sycophantic
nodders of the media hang on his every deceitful word.
When you trawl the news sites on the
Internet you can obtain a lot of accurate first-hand information
from Reuters, AP, AFP and other reputable agencies, but when
I see a story is sourced to Fox News or CNN I don't even bring
it up on the screen. After months of slewed and slanted rubbish
from these unbelievably piffling, bimbo-ridden, nodder-outlets
how could anyone trust them to give the right time of day?
Do you remember the "defence department
official" who told the Washington Post (which had a pretty
iffy news source in one particularly well-embedded reporter)
that Private Jessica Lynch had fought gamely to the last bullet
and all that nonsense? She was injured, certainly -- but in the
shambles of a panic-stricken vehicle crash. The story about her
"heroism" was fabrication. It was a downright damned
lie. So who was the "official" who concocted this rubbish?
He may have only briefly crawled out from beneath the large flat
slimy stone under which he normally resides, but why was he not
punished for telling us lies? Of course nothing of the sort will
ever happen, and the reason for this is that the information
system is rotten to its nodding core.
The BBC, one of the last bastions of
objectivity and truth, has been attacked by Blair's scummy little
ratbag mumbo-jumbo-meister, Alastair Campbell ('Calamity Ali'),
for helping reveal that the Downing Street campaign to mislead
the British public about reasons for the war on Iraq was largely
successful. The outcome of the British parliamentary inquiry
into this squalid affair was predictable, and not just by cynics
like me. How on earth can one credit the results of an inquiry
that was not allowed to interview the main liar (the prime minister),
or have access to all classified reports? How could you believe
a man like Blair, anyway, when he is on record, in a moment of
political panic, as demanding his nodders think up some "eye-catching
initiatives with which I personally can be associated"?
Nothing that would benefit his country or its unfortunate citizens,
you understand. Nothing of principle; just something that would
look good. The man is a grubby charlatan.
In any event the inquirers were a majority
of nodder Labour MPs, and the committee's clearing of Campbell
for his shoddy behaviour was achieved by the chairman (a Blair
man to his bootstraps) using his casting vote. This is nodder
democracy. On no account would Blair permit an independent inquiry
by a trio of impartial judges, with access to every detail of
the affair. Such an inquiry would be, well, impartial, and that
can't be allowed, because we might learn the truth, presented
to us by people we trust. And Blair and his people wonder why
we don't trust them. They couldn't stretch out straight in bed;
that's why we don't trust them.
The same holds in the US. The Senate
committee's whitewash will be exactly the same as the Blair parliament's
lapdog performance, and there is no possibility that a Republican-dominated
Congress could ever be critical of Bush, no matter how many lies
he told. (Remember these repulsive lulus? : "Iraq possesses
ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles";
Iraq "has trained Al Qaeda in bomb making and poisons and
deadly gases"; "a report came out of the IAEA that
[Iraq was] six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon".
All lies.)
This is why I changed from Genghiz Khan
mode. The people we should be able to trust have been lying outrageously
to political and journalistic nodders, who happily passed the
lies on to us without question and even with embellishment. If
you fed them nails, they'd crap corkscrews. The hell with the
lot of them.
Brian Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, Dawn and other
international publications. He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
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