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November 11, 2005 Alexander Cockburn November 10, 2005 Peterside,
Ogon, Watts and Zalik Pat Williams Steve Higgs Jimmy Massey Lucson Pierre-Charles Anthony Newkirk Lawrence R.
Velvel Website of the Day November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp Tariq Ali Chris Floyd Elaine Cassel Joshua Frank Alison Weir Diana Johnstone
Paul Craig
Roberts Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Jim McGrath David Bloom Stan Goff
November 7, 2005 Dick Reavis Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff Eli Stephens David Swanson M. Junaid Alam Matt Reichel Naima Bouteldja Jeff Halper Website of the Day
November 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Diana Johnstone Roosa / Nevins Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Ross Mike Whitney Mark Engler Juliano Mer-Khamis Ron Jacobs Jill S. Farrell Missy Comley
Beattie Mitchel Cohen Evelyn J. Pringle Reza Fiyouzat Charles Sullivan Zachary Richard Ben Tripp St. Clair / Vest
November 4, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair Dave Lindorff Phillip Cryan Christopher Brauchli William S.
Lind Daryl G. Kimball George Beres Peter Montague
November 3, 2005 James Petras Saul Landau Rep. Cynthia McKinney Michael Dickinson Joshua Frank Remi Kanazi Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
November 2, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Robert Oscar Lopez John Walsh Brian J. Foley Ramzy Baroud M. Junaid Alam Todd Chretien Bruce K. Gagnon Website of the Day
November 1, 2005 Ron Jacobs Gary Leupp John Ross Bill Quigley Joseph Nevins Dave Lindorff Linda S. Heard Heather Gray Michael Dickinson Jeffrey St. Clair
October 31, 2005 Elaine Cassel Mark Weisbrot Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Farooq Sulehria Nicole Colson Madis Senner Paul Craig
Roberts
Cockburn /
St. Clair Peter Linebaugh Tim Wise John Chuckman Steven Higgs Brian Cloughley M. Shahid Alam Nikki Robinson Ralph Nader Joe DeRaymond Joshua Frank Laura Santina Fred Gardner Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs Dr. Susan Block Vanessa S. Jones Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 28, 2005 Jared Bernstein Virginia Tilley Phil Gasper Jennifer Matsui Manual Garcia,
Jr. Monica Benderman Jason Leopold Dave Lindorff
Saul Landau Stuart Hodkinson Ingmar Lee Lila Rajiva Ilan Pappe Niranjan Ramakrishnan Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Cockburn / St. Clair
October 26, 2005 Kathy Kelly Gary Leupp Mike Marqusee Eric Ruder Patrick Cockburn Joshua Frank J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Website of
the Day
October 25, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn Conn Hallinan Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed Jackie Corr Robert Day John Sugg
October 24, 2005 Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Bill and Kathleen
Christison
October 22 / 23, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Billy Sothern Saul Landau Ralph Nader Behrooz Ghamari Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Fred Gardner Lee Sustar Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen James Petras Joshua Frank Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Michelle Bollinger Missy Comley
Beattie Kona Lowell Ben Tripp Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
October 21, 2005 Dave Lindorff Winslow T. Wheeler Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Madis Senner Michael Donnelly
Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Jeremy Brecher
/ Patrick Cockburn Kevin Zeese Ross Eisenbrey Randy Shields Justine Davidson After Lucas
Cranach Joe Allen
October 19, 2005 Christopher Reed Stephen Soldz Chet Richards Patrick Cockburn Scott Richard
Lyons Ralph Nader Website of
the Day
October 18, 2005 Chet Flippo Ron Jacobs Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor Dave Lindorff Virginia Rodino Thomas Healy Ralph Nader Stephen Lendman Patrick Cockburn
October 17, 2005 Peter Linebaugh Norman Solomon Cockburn /
Sengupta Mike Whitney Uri Avnery Harold Pinter Website of
the Day
October 15 / 16, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Neve Gordon Moshe Adler Christopher Brauchli Diane Farsetta Sam Husseini Monica Benderman Mickey Z. Douglas C.
Smyth Lee Sustar Fred Gardner Elizabeth Schulte Joshua Frank David Vest Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
October 14, 2005 Farrah Hassen Ron Jacobs Sasha Kramer Katrina Yeaw Nicole Colson Raúl Zibechi Nikolas Kozloff Website of the Day
Jeremy Scahill Jeff Birkenstein Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher Stan Cox Anis Memon Gary Leupp Dave Zirin Matthew Koehler Werther Website of
the Day
Omar Waraich William Cook Phil Gasper Dave Lindorff Matt Vidal John Gautreaux Diana Johnstone Mark Weisbrot Brian J. Foley Website of
the Day
October 11, 2005 Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt Lila Rajiva Bill Quigley Paul Craig Roberts Dave Lindorff Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Mitchel Cohen Tariq Ali Website of
the Day
October 10, 2005 Cindy and Craig
Corrie Joshua Frank Gideon Levy Alan Wallis Mickey Z. CounterPunch News Service Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ralph Nader Jennifer Van Bergen Saul Landau Jeff Halper Lenni Brenner Nikolas Kozloff Brian Cloughley Alice Slater John Gautreaux Fred Gardner Niranjan Ramakrishnan M.G. Piety Tom Gorman Mike Whitney Aseem Shrivastava Ben Tripp Poets' Basement
October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson Will Youmans Dave Lindorff Judith Scherr Russell D. Hoffman Jared Bernstein Jennifer Van
Bergen Website of
the Day
P. Sainath Scott Parkin Paul Craig
Roberts Andréa Schmidt Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank M. Junaid Alam Matthew Koehler Robert Pollin
October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Robert Jensen Ramzy Baroud Col. Dan Smith Dave Zirin Paul Craig Roberts Alan Maass
October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Mike Roselle Joshua Frank John Chuckman Alan Farago Mickey Z. Christine & Ethan Rose Gary Leupp Website of the Day
October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank Seth Sandronsky Jeffrey St. Clair
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November 11, 2005 Bush Pounds His 9/11 Theme, AgainSleaze, Deceit and TortureBy BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
Few people in the world trust anything George Bush says on any subject. But there are still some True Believers in the US who would applaud him and emit animal squeals and hoots of approval were he to declare he was the embodiment of the Second Coming of Christ. His credibility is zero among thinking people, but the domestic and international damage he can still do is immense. This third rate fellow and his vile cohorts are now circling their wagons, and some of us remember with despair what happened in the Nixon administration when it had a similar siege obsession, because what little moral sense had obtained in that sleazy empire vanished entirely and the White House became even more remote and detached from the world. The announcement that members of Bush's staff are to be counseled in ethics is not funny (so please stop laughing : stop at once, I beg . . .), but it is indicative of the last-ditch mentality -- because the stinking crumbling bunker must be defended at all costs. Bush cannot deny what was revealed about oil-planning by Colonel Wilkerson, and it is little wonder that the content of Cheney's Energy Task Force discussions have been declared a national secret, not to be disclosed on any account. Because as sure as fate the record would show that Wilkerson was only touching the surface when he recounted the lunatic (and criminal) scheme to "take the oilfields in the Middle East". Which brings us to Riverbend's wise observation that Bush and his zealots have succeeded in bringing Iraq ever closer to becoming a theocratic regime closely allied with Iran -- Bush Washington's worst enemy on the planet apart, possibly, from North Korea. And when the oil weapon becomes serious, there won't be a drop for America from two of the world's biggest producers, because Bush has destroyed the trust and admiration for his country that so many people in the region used to have. Think about that, Cheney, you nauseating blot, because this is where your malevolent scheming has led your country. In the course of pushing Iraq towards a government of extremist Islamists who will delight in denying oil to the US should the fancy take them, Bush's occupying troops have discarded even a pretence of humanity, as their disgusting treatment of Doctor Walid demonstrates. This is but one of thousands of instances of hideous brutality against Iraqis by ill-disciplined and vengeance-seeking soldiery whose vicious excesses have created hatred of their country that will last for generations. But to Bush, this is nothing. It is not important. Because everything is going to plan, according to the White House. You doubt he really thinks this? But reflect : you are of sound mind and aware of what is happening in the world. He receives no real news of what is happening outside his fortress. Both domestic and international news is filtered through morally-challenged zealots who cannot, will not, and -- we are told, now -- dare not, present unpleasant facts to this bullying coward. One of the most theatrical and deceitfully misleading political speeches ever delivered by George W Bush, the patron and patsy of the neocons, was staged in Virginia October 28. His address was entirely political in intent and content. So it is sad that in the audience, mindlessly mooing 'Hooo-ahhhh', were dozens of gung-ho veterans of past wars and a bunch of senior military officers who sat there and reinforced the conviction of the draft-dodging Bush that he is a macho 'War Commander'. These senior officers were worshipping at the feet of their Commander-in-Chief. They were mentally prostrating themselves at the decayed and festering trotters of a porcine prat who has sent men to die for nothing. Bush announced "I want to thank the military commanders who are here, Lieutenant General Anthony Jones and Lieutenant General Mark Curran, Lieutenant General Bob Wagner, Major General Jim Solligan. Thank you all for being here. John McCarthy -- Major General McCarthy of the Marine Corps, Rear Admiral John Acton, Rear Admiral Steve Turcott. I'm honored you all took time to come." This was despicable and tawdry stuff. His naming of these pathetic puppets was aimed quite flagrantly at the patriotism nerve of America, which is a very sensitive fiber. These military officers attended a Republican Party political gathering of their own free will. Even given the limited savoir faire of many senior US officers, they must have known what they were letting themselves in for, which was a requirement to demonstrate enthusiastic approval of a man whose orders have caused the deaths of over 2000 of their comrades and the hideous maiming in body and mind of thousands of others. The presence of senior officers at an entirely Republican cheer-fest was bizarre. They may be Republicans -- and they have every right to be, should they choose -- but to publicly support a rabidly Republican political jamboree was bizarre. The example they set to thousands of soldiers, sailors and marines is that supporting the Republican party is Good. Perhaps they think that this is what they are paid for. Well ; happy promotions, guys. Don't you just love the medals? And after his sword-brandishing patriotic beginning Bush gave the predictable and mandatory lead-in about 9/11, like a desperate dog drawn back to its cold and congealing vomit. He repeated the mantra of his faltering, last-gasp, faux patriotic neocons by declaring : "On the morning of September the 11th, 2001, we saw the destruction that the terrorists intend for this nation. We know they want to strike again. Our nation has made a clear choice. We will confront this mortal danger to our humanity, and we will not tire and we will not rest until the war on terror is won. (Applause.) In the four years since September the 11th, the evil that reached our shores has reappeared on other days, in other places, in Mombassa and Casablanca . . . and Baghdad and elsewhere." Yes indeed ; there have been many atrocities round the world. But the only reason there are atrocities in Iraq, and especially Baghdad, is because Bush invaded that country, which had done America no harm and posed no threat whatever to the US or its people. It is forgotten that for three years before the Bush War dozens of US and British strike aircraft scoured two thirds of Iraq every day, photographing every square inch and trying to provoke reaction from the Iraqis in order to provide justification for them to attack. Each time an Iraqi radar was switched on, they obliterated it, to make things easier for the forthcoming war that Bush had already ordered. They killed only a few goat herders and suchlike nonentities in their live-fire yippee excursions. What the hell? --- they were only ragheads. They had wives and children, maybe ; who knows? And who gives a damn, anyway? What's a human life to a jet-jockey who is given open slather to unleash a radar-seeking missile whose effectiveness the crazed scientists want to analyze? For years there was 24/7 surveillance of Iraq by US technical means that can hear an ant fart from fifty paces and see a bee pee at five hundred. The US electronic interception capability is mind-blowing in what it scoops up and records. You want to know the precise place on a map of a Mongolian Army postal section? Or what the officer commanding the 503rd Mobile Bath and Laundry Unit in the Third Military District of Kyrgyzstan said to the colonel of the 871st Death's Head Regiment on the phone at 0933 hours on Saturday July 9? ---- It's all there. And lots more. And we are expected to believe, after all that surveillance of Iraq, over years and years of recording Saddam's conversations (and millions of others) which produced absolutely nothing about any sort of weapons, never mind the Cheney-Rice 'Mushroom Clouds', that the neocons' interpretation of national intelligence was more accurate than that of expert analysts. But Bush cannot admit that his cronies were wrong in every statement they gave him to spout to justify his war on Iraq. In similar fashion, in no speech his speechwriters give him to deliver can Bush admit that hundreds of atrocities in Iraq have been committed by the troops who so blindly follow him. (Hooo-Ahhhh.) The fact that an enemy who had nothing to do with Iraq carried out an atrocity against America on 9/11 does not make it mandatory for American troops to beat up doctors or kill other civilians in Iraq, although the attitude of thousands of soldiers is that the lives of Iraqis don't matter and that their slaughter is justified by "9/11". Back to the Bush dog vomit. The Big Lie has worked, and thousands of ingenuous GIs have been made to believe that they are at war in Iraq to avenge the Twin Towers. To be sure, they are of limited intelligence ; but what about the "military commanders" who Bush so publicly welcomed to his war-justifying tirade in patriotic, freedom-loving Virginia? Are they stupid, as well? The president who made the choice for war is now disapproved of by 60 per cent of the citizens of his country. Fifty-five per cent of Americans say "the Bush administration intentionally misled the public in making its case for war [on Iraq]". 68 percent state that their country is on the "wrong track". Millions of Americans and many outsiders have known that Bush is on the wrong track for years. He entered that track when he obeyed the neocons and chose to confront the world by ordering every nation to follow Washington or be deemed an enemy. Some of his closest supporters are being charged with gross financial irregularities, lying on oath, and other squalid crimes. His vice president is pressuring Congress to approve laws permitting torture by a cabalistic crew of clandestine cowboys. His secret agencies are out of control, are subject to no laws, and have interrogation camps around the world that would have been admired by the semi-human inquisitors who worshipped and followed Stalin and Hitler. In May this year the White House scorned an observation by the head of Amnesty International that the US was operating "the Gulag of our time". The foolish spokesman for Bush, the incompetent liar Scott McClellan, declared that Amnesty's statements were "ridiculous and unsupported by the facts." But now we realize the CIA gulag is not only extensive but a suppurating sore on the body of America's democracy. The soldiers of Bush have committed and continue to commit appalling atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. They burn, kill and destroy without fear of judicial proceedings, and their jamborees of torture and murder, when they cannot be disguised, are met with derisory lenience. They try to disguise their excesses by lying. Then they try to cover up the facts once their lies are revealed for what they are, which is dishonorable practice by the very people who should live by a spotless code of honor, and in whom there should be ultimate trust by their country and indeed the world. But they, in turn and as a result of their savagery, are subjected to ferocious retributive attacks by equally barbaric resistance forces on a scale that beggars description, which is kept from the public by the Pentagon's knaves of spin and fabrication and their allies in the media. The entire Bush administration is rotten. It is vile, stinking and corrupt to the depths of its malevolent inner being. It is ever-ready to attack, smear and destroy anyone who does not agree with every one of its vicious policies. It relishes and encourages sleaze, deceit and torture. It has alienated most of America's formerly closest allies. But all true friends of the United States hope that the American public will vote in the 2006 mid-terms to restrain, fetter and curb this evil regime. Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs.
He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com
The War So Far: a Failure Worse Than Vietnam by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad "The need for the White House to produce a fantasy picture of Iraq is because it dare not admit that it has engineered one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worse than Vietnam because the enemy is punier and the original ambitions greater." Get the answers you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! 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 donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair                       |
