Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May 1 / 3, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders, Useless
Spies, Angry World
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome Death
of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the Banality
of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the Ultimate
Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
| Weekend
Edition
May 1 / 3, 2004
Watching Niagara
Stupid
Leaders, Useless Spies, Angry World
By ALEXANDER
COCKBURN
The
stark fact that significant portions of our planet are under the supervision
of quite exceptionally stupid and ill-informed people is provoking unwonted
expressions of anger and alarm. It is hard to think of people more demure
in rhetorical comportment than senior envoys of the United Nations or
of the British foreign office. Yet here we have Lakhdar Brahimi, a UN
undersecretary general and special adviser to Kofi Annan erupting in
Baghdad like a soapbox orator.
"There
is no doubt”, Brahimi told French Inter radio last week, "that
the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination
and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians, as well as the perception
of all of the population in the region and beyond of the injustice of
this policy and the equally unjust support...of the United States for
this policy…There are quite a few other people on this planet
and the Americans should also make an effort to learn how to live with
them.”
Then
a couple of days later Brahimi was at it again, this time on ABC, talking
to George Stephanopoulos. "I think that there is unanimity in the
Arab World, and indeed in much of the rest of the world, that …Israeli
policy is brutal, repressive and that they are not interested in peace
no matter what you seem to believe in America…What I hear [here
in Iraq ] is that...these Americans who are occupying us are the Americans
who are giving this blanket support to Israel to do whatever they like.
So how can we believe that the Americans want anything good for us?"
Of course there was a tactical motive in both Brahimi’s outbursts.
As the Baghdad-based executive of the UN’s role as after-sales
service provider for the United States, Brahimi is trying to establish
some street cred with Iraqis as he labors to cobble together a puppet
government, with roll-out ceremonies scheduled for the end of June.
So he can afford to thumb his nose as protests about his indiscretions
roll in from New York and Washington, not to mention Tel Aviv.
Brahimi’s
ripe denunciations were echoed by a squadron of 52 retired British diplomats--former
British ambassadors, high commissioners, governors and senior international
officials--who fired off an unprecedented Striped-Pant Manifesto to
Bush’s poodle in 10 Downing Street at the start of this week.
They denounced Bush’s recent endorsement of Sharon’s plans
as “one-sided and illegal” and as an “abandonment
of principle” occurring in the midst of what is “rightly
or wrongly … portrayed throughout the Arab and Muslim world as
… an illegal and brutal occupation in Iraq.” After further
withering denunciation of the leadership and conduct of the Coalition
in Iraq the diplomats warned Blair that “there is no case for
supporting policies which are doomed to failure.”
Anyone
questioning the charge that we are enduring exceptionally stupid leaders
(with no relief in sight, given John Kerry’s recent public statements
on the Middle East) need only skip through Bob Woodward’s account
in his latest respectful Palace hand-out, Plan of Attack, of the Bush
administration’s route march towards the attack on Iraq. There
are a few interesting disclosures, such as that my heroine, Laura Bush,
was deeply opposed to the war, but the prime impression one carries
away from Woodward’s airless pages is of a White House utterly
secluded from reality.
If
George Bush had marched out of the front gate into Pennsylvania Avenue,
hailed any taxi and asked its driver to give him a briefing on the world
situation he would have done better than with what was served up to
him by his staff on a daily basis.
Now,
all evidence suggests that Bush doesn’t want to hear any briefing
that might perturb his fixed opinions. He consults only God and Dick
Cheney. But even if the President had ever displayed any unwonted curiosity
it would have remained unslaked. You have only to read the declassified
and ridiculous Presidential Daily Briefing of August 9, 2001, on Osama
bin Laden to see that. On page after earnest page Woodward has the president
being served up dossiers marked Secret, or Top Secret, or being briefed
in underground chambers by intelligence officials. It’s all rubbish,
most aptly resumed in the tremulous pages Woodward allocates to the
effort, just as the attack on Iraq was starting, to “decapitate”
the regime by killing Saddam along with his family.
A
CIA officer in the Kurdish zone in northern Iraq has secured, by dint
of colossal cash bribes, Iraqi informants inside Saddam’s security
apparat. Along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars he dispenses
on a weekly basis he gives these informants cell phones. They report
that Saddam and his sons are headed for a farm outside Baghdad. They
tell him they have paced out the dimensions of a bunker at the farm
and relay it to the CIA man who relays it to CIA hq, whence the details
are rushed to the White House whence Bush finally relays the order from
Cheney to have F-117s bomb the farm. Graphic descriptions of Saddam
being hauled from the debris are duly relayed from the informants. As
the CIA officer finds when he inspects the farm, there was no bunker.
On
October 2, 2003, The Guardian published an interesting piece by another
retired senior British diplomat, Sir Peter Heap, asserting that on his
observation in several embassies around the world the whole system of
secret intelligence gathering was pretty much useless as regards the
provision of useful information. Year after year he had watched MI6
officers professionally eager to inflate their resourcefulness ladling
out off-the-books money to informants with every incentive to inflate
their discoveries. Sometimes the MI6 officers would simply copy out
stories from the local paper and remit it to London as top-secret info.
Nor were electronic intercepts much better.
“Working
twice in London on Foreign Office desks dealing with countries at war,”
Sir Peter wrote, “ I saw a flood of intercepts which retrospectively
quite often accurately forecast what was about to happen.
But
since there were countless other intercepted reports that predicted
events wrongly, it was virtually impossible to choose in advance the
accurate from the false. Moreover, intercepts were usually fairly random
and rarely worked when planned.” Moral: reduce America’s
intelligence agencies to a hundredth of their present size and budget,
tell the spies to become taxi drivers.
There
have been stupid, poorly informed leaders throughout history. But seldom
if ever has the world been afforded, as we are now with the unfolding
disasters in Iraq and Israel, the knowledge of this savage stupidity
and misinformation on a real time basis, with absolutely no relief in
sight. As the Englishman said, when the American asked him to admire
the velocity of the water pouring over the Niagara Falls, “What
is to stop it?”
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