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New Special Double Issue of Print Edition of CounterPunch

The Trial of Milosevic: What Does It Portend for Saddam? by Tiphaine Dickson; Dr. Dean Wraps It Up...or Does He? by Alexander Cockburn; Bush Oil Grab in Alaska: How Clinton Opened the Door by Jeffrey St. Clair; The Magnificient 9: CounterPunch's Annual List of Groups That Make a Difference; The Sabotage of Matt Gonzalez by Ben Terrall; Arnold and Parole: Already Better than Gray Davis! by Scott Handleman. CounterPunch Online is read by 70,000 visitors each day, but 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!

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Today's Stories

January 14, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Bush, Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last

 

January 13, 2004

William S. Lind
How 2004 Looks from Potsdam

M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?

Mickey Z
Snipers: No Nuts in Iraq

Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro: The Prisoner and the Presidents

Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?

 

January 12, 2004

Ben Tripp
No Stan for the Kurds

Norman Solomon
The Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South

Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge

Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq

Uri Avnery
Syria's Peace Proposal

 

January 10 / 11, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair

Susan Davis
Dangerous Books

Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell

Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past

Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq

Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety

Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?

Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List

Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost

Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War

Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry

Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?

Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common

Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike

Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page

Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball

Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon

Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert

 

January 9, 2004

David Lindorff
The Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses

Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand

Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non-existent WMDs

Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable

David Vest
Disabled Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld

 

January 8, 2004

Neve Gordon
Israeli Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail

Lenni Brenner
Dr. Dean and the Godhead

Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks

Mark Scaramella
Inside the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium

Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit

James Hollander
Journalists Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad

 

January 7, 2004

Democracy Now!
Uncharitable Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured

Greg Weiher
The Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem

Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003

Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors

Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky

Bob Boldt
God Talk

Ramon Ryan
Small Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising

 

January 6, 2004

Dave Lindorff
RNC Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads

Ron Jacobs
Drugs in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism

Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia

Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go

John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto

Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake

John L. Hess
A Record to Dissent From

Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT

David Price
"Like Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation

 

January 5, 2004

Al Krebs
How Now Mad Cow!

Kathy Kelly
Squatting in Baghdad's Bomb Craters

Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons

Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm

Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution

Gary Leupp
North Korea for Dummies

 

 

January 3 / 4, 2004

Brian Cloughley
Never Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History

Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time

William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11

Glen Martin
Jesus vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse

Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage

Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble

Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia

Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left

Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case

Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy

William Blum
Codework Orange!

Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara

Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA

Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler

Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100

Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick

Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes

Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis

 

 

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

 

 

 

 



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January 14, 2004

The O'Neill / Suskind Bombshells

Bush, Oil & Iraq: Some Truth at Last

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Here we have former US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill disclosing that George Bush came into office planning to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and MSNBC polls its audience with the question, Did O'Neill Betray Bush?

Is that really the big question? The White House had a sharper nose for the real meat of Leslie Stahl's 60 Minutes interview with O'Neill and Ron Suskind, the reporter who based much of his expose of the Bush White House, The Price of Loyalty, on 19,000 government documents O'Neill provided him.

What bothers the White House is one particular National Security Council document shown in the 60 Minutes interview, clearly drafted in the early weeks of the new administration, which showed plans for the post-invasion dispersal of Iraq's oil assets among the world's great powers, starting with the major oil companies.

For the brief moment it was on the tv screen one could see that this bit of paper, stamped Secret, was undoubtedly one of the most explosive documents in the history of imperial conspiracy. Here, dead center in the camera's lense, was the refutation of every single rationalization for the attack on Iraq ever offered by George W. Bush and his co-conspirators, including Tony Blair

That NSC document told 60 Minutes' vast audience the attack on Iraq was not about national security in the wake of 9/ll. It was not about weapons of mass destruction. It was not about Saddam Hussein's possible ties to Osama bin Laden. It was about stealing Iraq's oil, same way the British stole it three quarter of a century earlier. The major oil companies drew up the map, handed it to their man George, helped him (through such trusties as James Baker) steal the 2000 election and then told him to get on with the attack.

O'Neill says that the Treasury Department's lawyers okayed release of the document to him. The White House, which took 78 days to launch an investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA officer, clearly regards the disclosure of what Big Oil wanted as truly reprehensible, as opposed to endangering the life of Ms Plame. It's going after O'Neill for this supposed security breach.

Forget about O'Neill "betraying" Bush. How about Bush lying to the American people? It's obvious from that document that Bush, on the campaign trail in 2000, was as intent on regime change in Iraq as was Clinton in his second term and as Gore was publicly declaring himself to be.

Here's Bush in debate with Gore, October 3, 2000:

"If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. I'm going
to prevent that."

The second quote is from a joint press conference with Tony Blair on January 31, 2003. Bush rationalizes:

"Actually, prior to September 11, we were discussing smart sanctions. We were trying to fashion a sanction regime that would make it more likely to be able to contain somebody like Saddam Hussein. After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water. The strategic vision of our country shifted dramatically because we now recognize that oceans no longer protect us, that we're vulnerable to attack. And the worst form of attack could come from somebody acquiring weapons of mass destruction and using them on the American people. I now realize the stakes. I realize the world has changed. My most important obligation is to protect the American people from further harm, and I will do that."

In his cabinet meetings before 9/11 Bush may, in O'Neill's words, have been like a blind man in a room full of deaf people. But, as O'Neill also says, in those early strategy meetings Bush did say the plan from the start was to attack Iraq, using any pretext. Bush's language about "smart sanctions" from the press conference at the start of last year was as brazen and far more momentous a lie as any of those that earned Bill Clinton the Republicans' impeachment charges.

Weekend Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair

Susan Davis
Dangerous Books

Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell

Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past

Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq

Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety

Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?

Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List

Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost

Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War

Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry

Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?

Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common

Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike

Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page

Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball

Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon

Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert


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