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A Special Report on the Presidential Elections Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch How Progressive Challenges Have Been Killed Off Since LBJ; Gagging Fanny Lou Hamer; Eugene McCarthy on "a Peasants Rebellion;" Sabotaging McGovern; The Wreck of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition; Smearing Nader, Not Once But Three Times: by Alexander Cockburn; The Thieves of the Green Zone by Patrick Cockburn; Murder in Mississippi: Could John Doar Have Saved Cheney, Schwerner & Goodman by David Kotz. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Sex, Drugs & the Blues! Serpents in the Garden CounterPunch's Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available Click here to purchase Today's Stories July 15, 2004 Bill Christison Reorganize the CIA? Of Course, But...   July 14, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold: the Green Deceivers Neve Gordon Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall Diane Christian The Priesthood of Death Stefan Wray Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab? Josh Frank The Nader / Dean Debate Conn Hallinan Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War and Education Website of the Day Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire   July 13, 2004 Ray McGovern The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence Debacle...and Worse Mark Donham The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney Ben Tripp Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Electorates? Mark Gaffney Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel in Iraq Dave Lindorff Osama Wins! Election Postponed! Chris White Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine Indoctrination   July 10 / 12, 2004 Kathleen Christison The Problem with Neutrality Between Palestinians and Israel Janine Pommy Vega Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against War Sherry Wolf From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen A Transfer of Power, Sort Of Michael Donnelly How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004 Stanton / Madsen Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda? Richard Lichtman The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology Gila Svirsky Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall Kurt Nimmo Clinton's Life Toni Solo Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means Ron Jacobs The Black Panthers and the Rest Camelo Ruiz Marrero Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize Omar Barghouti Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance Poets' Basement Curtis and Albert   July 9, 2004 Dave Zirin Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger Stands Up Against War Justin Delacour Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About Latin America Robert Fisk Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency Boris Kagarlitsky Two Congresses and a Funeral William S. Lind The October Surprises Sibel Edmonds Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth Ron Jacobs Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future Gary Leupp The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link   July 8, 2004 Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Inexplicable John McCain Toufic Haddad Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall: a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent Dave Lindorff Liberation as Martial Law Joshua Frank The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard Dean Christopher Brauchli Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card James Petras The Truth About Jimmy Carter   July 7, 2004 John Chuckman Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence of Meaning Virginia Tilley A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's Hunger Strike Susan Martinez A Letter to Bill Cosby Mickey Z Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade Michael Donnelly Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire Sean Donahue Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown Diane Christian Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq   July 6, 2004 Lisa Viscidi Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans Risk Lives to Reach El Norte Marc Norton The Felonious Five Ride Again: the Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants James Brooks Chemical Warfare on the West Bank? Ray McGovern Porter Goss as CIA Director? William Cook Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...   July 5, 2004 Forrest Hylton US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept. 11, July 4 and Systematic Torture Chris White A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning of Independence Day Joe Bageant Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July Robert Jensen Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire Kathy Kelly "Two Days an' a Wake-Up"   July 3 / 4, 2004 Elaine Cassel Bush's Police State and Independence Day Stan Goff ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive" Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti Snehal Shingavi "We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak Out Bruce Anderson The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens Sharon Smith Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush" Josh Frank Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates Robert Fisk Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing Joe Bageant Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite! Brian Cloughley Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine Justin Delacour The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons William S. Lind Saudi Spillover Linda S. Heard A Joke Called "Justice" Greg Moses "It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't Back Down Ron Jacobs "Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?" Toni Solo Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There Dan Nagengast Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It? Stew Albert Brando, a Personal Recollection Dave Zirin From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for Our Brando Patrick W. Gavin The Progressive Case for Dodgeball Steven Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911 Poets' Basement Kearney, Ford and Davies Website of the Day Global Peace Solution   July 2, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise of the Green Party Douglas Valentine Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism Gary Leupp "Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities Lee Ballinger Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights Robert Fisk Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly CounterPunch Wire "What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's Arraignment Christopher Brauchli Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right Saul Landau Buzz Words and Venezuela July 1, 2004 Katherine van Wormer Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in His Method Joe Bageant Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter? William James Martin The Dogma of Richard Perle Dave Lindorff Bush's Evacuation Moment Robert Fisk Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq Alan Maass Green Party in Reverse Website of the Day Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?   June 30, 2004 Kurt Nimmo Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush Tariq Ali Getting Away with Murder in Iraq Jennifer Van Bergen Bush and the Detainees Douglas Valentine Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen The Quiet American David Price Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass Roger Normand America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq Stan Cox Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's War on Art Henry David Thoreau On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming Ben Tripp Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof     June 29, 2004 Patrick Cockburn The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover Robert Fisk Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland Troy Selvaratnam New York Times Boosts Pet Developer Harry Browne Bush in Ireland Ray McGovern The CIA According to Anonymous Elaine Cassel Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really Won?   June 28, 2004 Patrick Cockburn / Leyla Linton Grisly Rituals in Iraq Amira Hass Confronting Myths and Deadly Power   June 26 / 27, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Venezuela: the Gang's All Here Patrick Cockburn Iyad Allawi, the CIA's New Stooge in Iraq Dennis Hans Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney, the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11 Ben Tripp Adventures in Fuel Efficiency Dave Lindorff That State Department Terrorism Report: What They Knew, But Didn't Tell You Chris Floyd Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit Ali Tonak Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives, Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela Keith Rosenthal The Withering of the Anti-War Movement Bryan Sacks The Failure of the 9/11 Commission Wayne Madsen Another Case of Blowback Thomas St. John L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating in the Wizard of Oz Niranjan Ramakrishnan American Swadeshi     June 25, 2004 Stephen Gowans US to North Korea: "Trust Us" Saul Landau 2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction Amir Butler Iraq: the Deadly Embrace Jack McCarthy Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News? Greg Bates Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader       June 24, 2004 Gary Leupp John Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links Patrick Cockburn A Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing Death Threats Harry Browne On the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe Bill Kaufman Another Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli Bush, Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did They Tell? Rick Gioimbetti Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence? John Chuckman Call Center ID Hypocrisy Diana Johnstone Kerry and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"     June 23, 2004 Laura Carlsen Bush and Castro Face Off Dave Zirin Barry Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism" Kurt Nimmo From Saddam, With Love Patricia Wolff Foundation Wars Mahboob A. Khawaja "They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son" Patrick Cockburn The Pretense of an Independent Iraq Website of the Day The Road to Abu Ghraib   June 22, 2004 Dave Lindorff The Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption Ron Jacobs Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq? Vanessa Jones Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings Mickey Z An Open Letter to the People of Iraq John L. Hess Clinton Exhales Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity Committee for Pacho Cortés An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés Bruce Jackson Saying No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify Website of the Day From Boot Camp to Boot Hill   June 21, 2004 Gary Leupp Putin's Helpful Remarks Lucson Pierre-Charles Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos Upon Chaos Cockburn / Khan Saddam May Face Death Penalty Uri Avnery Irreversible Mental Damage     June 19 / 20, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid and Isolated Bruce Anderson Frozen Gringos Diane Christian Morality and Death: a Meditation on Bush and Blake Walter A. Davis Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib Josh Frank How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature Col. Dan Smith Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan Brian Cloughley A Profound Disruption of the Senses Christopher Brauchli Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later Prudence Crowther Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me! Poets' Basement Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert Kathy Kelly Dying to See Their Kids     June 18, 2004 Chris Floyd Blood Victory Dave Zirin Danielle Green, Basketball Player & Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War Justin E.H. Smith The Christian Question in American Politics Gary Leupp The "Long-Established" Link?: Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi   June 17, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons     June 18, 2004 Noel Ignatiev Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine Kurt Nimmo The Bush-Kerry Conundrum Ed Cardoni The Persecution of Steve Kurtz Ron Jacobs Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do Dave Lindorff Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years" Greg Moses Geneva Ignored Norm Dixon How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons     June 16, 2004 Lenni Brenner A Question for Kerry Supporters Davey D Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan Daniel Wolff Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner Abuse? Bruce Jackson Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake Patrick Cockburn Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power Facilities Gary Handschumacher Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads JG Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop Mario Benedetti Obituary with Cheers Vicente Navarro Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who is Rodrigo Rato? Website of the Day Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch     June 15, 2004 Harry Browne Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe Neve Gordon The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited David Palmer Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI John Blair Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming Dave Lindorff God Wins in TKO Bill Quigley Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step In Patrick Cockburn Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast John Chuckman John Kerry, Political Placebo   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 Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

July 15, 2004 What Does the Bush Regime Object To? Whaddaya Got? By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY As I began writing this piece I looked on the Internet at the Washington Post of July 5 and glanced at the lead-in to a report. It was "The elderly physician who exposed the government's coverup of the SARS epidemic has been detained since June 1 and faces interrogation by the government." OK, so it was a quick look; but my immediate thought was "What on earth has that psychotic savage Ashcroft done now?" which is a pretty grim reaction to a newspaper headline that, given a momentarily longer examination, was obviously about Beijing's persecution of yet another innocent citizen. When a foreigner can look at such words in a Washington newspaper and think, even fleetingly, for the tiniest moment, that they could possibly apply to the democracy that is the United States rather than the totalitarian state that is China, it is obvious there is something badly wrong with the way the Bush administration is conducting the affairs of the nation. Only four years ago, not one reader on earth would have imagined for an instant that such a sentence could possibly, in the furthest flights of fancy, apply to the United States of America. No longer. Most of the peoples of the world (and many governments) now look with bewilderment and despair at the extraordinary embrace of autocratic, underhand and sinister control measures by the administration of a country that formerly practised and reveled in an open system of governance. After all, the basic American sense of decency, probity and honor actually forced the resignation of a president who betrayed the trust of the American people, an event that shook and impressed the world at large. Even the viciously partisan pursuit of Clinton for deceit about his grubby peccadilloes showed, albeit it in a mean-spirited party-political fashion, that presidents could not get away with telling lies. But now the world's democracies look at America and regard with horror the establishment's ferocious protection of a president who not only tells lies but wages war on his own people by denying them freedoms supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. Foreign governments that welcome loss of freedom by ordinary Americans are those which, by inclination and through urgent desire to remain in unelected power, are themselves given to energetic suppression of protest and discontent. There are plenty of them, and many of their leaders are regarded as valuable allies by the White House which, through manipulation of laws and avoidance of democracy's checks and balances, is giving encouragement and support to dictators everywhere. The conduct of internal affairs by any government is a prime indicator of how it will approach the world as a whole, because a policy of repression at home is invariably complemented by an aggressive, intolerant and xenophobic attitude to those beyond its borders. This is happening in Bush America, where ludicrous instances of persecution of individuals caught up in Kafkaesque nightmares are becoming more frequent. Concurrent with this manifestation of internal autocracy there is fatuous and immature distrust of nations whose governments are reluctant to accept the Bush demand that they be "either with us or against us." In America there has been an explosion of unbelievably Alice-in-Wonderland, government-initiated, capricious prosecutions, relentlessly pursued by dedicated morons in the teeth of all evidence that their grounds for federal charges were deficient, imperfect and derisory. The victims, such as Professor Steven Kurtz of Buffalo, Captain James Yee of the Guantanamo Bay prison, and the lawyer Mr Brandon Mayfield (to name the high-profile cases), have gone through hell. Their lives have been destroyed by the Government of the United States. Rejoice, ye tyrants everywhere, because the Bush administration is providing you with precedent, aid and comfort in repression of your citizens. Professor Kurtz (admittedly an eccentric of some magnitude; but what's the matter with that?) is suffering a campaign of desperation to find the tiniest thing legally wrong about his actions. There is no possibility that he can be found guilty of any offence of substance, but Ashcroft and the FBI are still trying. No doubt they will get him on something or other, because, these days, under the Patriot Act, you can be clapped in jail for almost anything, providing those who charge you can state, without evidence being produced, that you are in some way possibly associated with terrorism. The treason charges against Captain Yee collapsed ignominiously, but when it was realized that the court would throw them out he was unnecessarily and intentionally humiliated in front of his family by production of evidence of dalliance with a female colleague. His wife and small daughter were brought into the courtroom specifically to hear details of the affair. The people who did this are by any standards the scum of the earth. The sort of a person who arranges for a man to be discredited, degraded and shamed in front of his little daughter is fairly typical of the Bush administration zealots. If someone is even a minor threat to their credibility they must destroy him. And if they can't destroy him, well, they make sure he suffers unto the next generation. Good Christian stuff, all this. The macabre little piece of malevolent titillation about adultery (which is not indulged in by any God-fearing judge, bureaucrat or politician, of course) had nothing, nothing whatever, to do with the charges against Captain Yee that fell apart because they could not be supported in any way. Production in court of the evidence of the woman with whom he had had an affair was designed specifically to crush and mortify Captain Yee and to destroy his family and make his daughter forever, throughout her whole life, ashamed of her father, courtesy of the Bush administration's obsession with persecuting people who don't conform to their ideology. This disgusting and deliberate act of vindictiveness on the part of individuals representing the US government had no bearing on the charges of treason against Captain Yee, which were, of course, laughed out of court. So what the hell is happening to American justice? You have to remember that most of us foreigners used to think that if somebody went in front of a US court they would get, by and large, a pretty fair deal. Lots of foreigners, especially in countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, Russia, most of South America, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, and the entire African continent used to think that the American legal system was as fault-free as could be expected in this imperfect world. In their own countries the chances of a fair trial are uncertain, and in some places non-existent, and they regarded American legal procedures as being decidedly better than their own. No more. Because Bush has destroyed international trust in America. The bizarre and grotesque illegalities of Guantanamo Bay have altered world-wide perceptions of US justice. The appalling denial of basic human rights and contemptuous violation of international law regarding the helpless and suicidal victims of the Bush administration have caused despair among the countless millions who seek and are not given justice in their own countries. They had at least the hope that the example of America would encourage their own horrible governments to gradually introduce reforms to their legal systems. But the Supreme Court's ruling about the non-persons in Guantanamo is being fought by the Pentagon which is using every ploy and ruse at its disposal to deny basic justice to these illegally-held captives. That is, the commander-in-chief is approving all moves by his military representatives to avoid decent treatment for the prisoners held in his name, none of whom has been charged with any crime. This is what happens to foreigners in the current climate of McCarthy-style fear and persecution. But as the cases of Kurtz, Lee and Mayfield have shown, native-born Americans, too, had better not fall foul of the latter day McCarthy tendency, for suspicion of non-conformity is rife. The smelling-out, hanging and stoning to death of alleged witches in Salem in 1692 was evil, and is hideously relevant to current circumstances. As Paul Johnson wrote in his magnificent 'History of the American People', "The Salem trials can be seen as an example of the propensity of the American people to be convulsed by spasms of self-righteous rage against enemies, real or imaginary, of their society and way of living." The farcical and fanatical persecution of innocent citizens in the name of a warped patriotism that is colored by ignorance and mixed with deep-seated distrust of unfamiliar peoples is only too reminiscent of past periods of intolerance and spite. And this persecution of non-conformists has shown America's enemies, to their satisfaction, that the US is what they declare it to be : a land in which rich, powerful barons rule the peasants with the connivance of religious bigots, a compliant media, and a jurisprudence that has been warped by its practitioners' political allegiance. America's friends, who are becoming fewer and fewer, despair because they cannot defend the juridical contradictions that are detracting from the nation's formerly reasonable claim to be leader of the world in fairness and legal equability. There is little wonder that current US foreign policy is regarded by so many countries as small-minded, parochial, vindictive, malevolent and puerile. The recent action by Bush in withdrawing US representatives from UN Peacekeeping missions is but one example of childish behavior, and behind the laughter and scorn among the nations providing contingents to UN forces round the world there is a degree of sadness that Bush has felt it necessary to indulge in schoolyard posturing in the interests of his election campaign. (I had some emails from UN friends at the time that were truly more in despair than anger; and the refrain was to the effect : "Doesn't Washington realize the damage this is doing to the US position on almost everything?") It isn't as if the US contributes many soldiers to UN peacekeeping operations. There has not been a ripple in the missions from which Americans have been summarily removed by the orders of Bush, because his unilateral action is trivial in terms of manpower support for peacekeeping. Of the 16 UN peacekeeping missions, involving 48,830 troops and 1823 military observers from 97 countries the US military contribution is . . . . well, how many? Have a guess. A thousand, perhaps? (Remember there are 507 US police-qualified personnel with the UN in the Balkans, under contract to a private security firm.) Or maybe the figure is a bit higher. Perhaps two or three thousand (like India, Ghana and Nigeria), or even six or seven thousand (like Bangladesh and Pakistan), as would fit well with the convictions of a president who pronounced in his State of the Union Address in September 2002 that "The United States is committed to lasting institutions like the United Nations . . . [concerning which] international obligations are to be taken seriously. They are not to be undertaken symbolically to rally support for an ideal without furthering its attainment." So : if the Bush administration is serious about its international obligations, which by definition include international peacekeeping under the auspices of the UN, how many military personnel has it committed within the total of 50, 653 soldiers wearing blue berets in the 16 missions round the world? Twenty-five. There are 18 observers and 7 support personnel in uniform representing the United States in UN peacekeeping activities, and it was announced on July 2 that nine of the 25 would be withdrawn because there is a "risk not appropriate to our forces", according to Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita. The risk of physical or any other danger is tiny, to the point of being non-existent. His claim is manifest rubbish. The real reason for this demonstration of immature petulance is the existence of the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC), which is detested by Bush, as is every single international institution, agreement, accord or initiative that might even in some purely symbolic manner appear to detract from his control-freak obsession with appearing global boss-man. The ICC represents an international attempt, modest and flawed as it is, to deal justice to those who would escape prosecution in their own country for monstrous crimes. It is a prime limitation to the Court's power that it cannot deal with individuals who have already been subject to their own country's legal procedures. Yet the paranoid Bush and his band of revolving-eyeballed zealots imagine the Court presents a threat to Americans. This is an incorrect contention that is patently absurd. But, always on the lookout for an opportunity for confrontation, the Bush administration has alienated its friends and cheered its enemies by fatuously fulminating that the Court is a menace to freedom. There was no need for this battering-ram approach. There could have been discussions, negotiations, compromise and agreement involving mutual respect for each other's views. But no. The Bush administration solution to all its problems (or what it perceives as problems), is to shriek "Bring 'em On" and brandish the biggest cudgel it can find, while malevolently denigrating and defaming those who seek to achieve civilized remedies for the ills that beset the world. A paraphrased line from the character portrayed by Brando in 'The Wild One' is appropriate for the Bush administration's foreign policy. When Bush and his arrogant screwballs are asked "What are you objecting against?" the inevitable snarling reply is "Whaddaya got?" It's a slick riposte for an immature black-leather kid, but no way to present America to the world. Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com Weekend Edition Features for July 10 / 12, 2004 Kathleen Christison The Problem with Neutrality Between Palestinians and Israel Janine Pommy Vega Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against War Sherry Wolf From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen A Transfer of Power, Sort Of Michael Donnelly How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004 Stanton / Madsen Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda? Richard Lichtman The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology Gila Svirsky Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall Kurt Nimmo Clinton's Life Toni Solo Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means Ron Jacobs The Black Panthers and the Rest Camelo Ruiz Marrero Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize Omar Barghouti Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance Poets' Basement Curtis and Albert WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /