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Here's the second in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's series as they describe Hillary Clinton's years in Little Rock and her narrow escape from federal charges that would have destroyed her political career for ever. PLUS KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY on how Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are failing Black America even as they hunt for votes in So uth Carolina's "Black Primary." Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now
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Today's Stories August 25 / 26, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn August 24, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Greg
Moses William Schroder Alan
Farago Jackie
Corr Jeff
Ballinger Bill
Quigley Dave
Zirin Richard
Rhames Ryan
Haygood Website
of the Day
August 23, 2007 Kathy
Kelly P.
Sainath Ron
Jacobs Christopher
Brauchli D.K.
Wilson Joshua
Frank Dan
Bacher Brenda
Norrell John
Wright David
Vest Website
of the Day
August 22, 2007 Norman
Finkelstein Marc
Levy Lawrence
R. Velvel Ray
McGovern Norman
Solomon John
Walsh Michael
Dickinson William
S. Lind Bill
Hatch Kenneth
E. Foster and John Joe Amador David
Vest Website
of the Day
Saul
Landau Alan
Farago John
Stauber Phillip
Rizk Debbie
Nathan Binoy
Kampmark Martha
Rosenberg Sunsara
Taylor Website
of the Day
August 20, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Uri
Avnery Rannie
Amiri John
Ross Harvey
Wasserman Robert
Billyard Dave
Lindorff James
Rothenberg David
"DC" Larson Website
of the Day August 18 / 19, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Saul
Landau Ralph
Nader Patrick
Cockburn Robert
Fantina Robert
S. Eshelman P.
Sainath Dave
Lindorff Anthony
DiMaggio Fred
Gardner Ron
Jacobs Tom
Turnipseed Paul
Krassner Ben
Tripp Andrew
Wimmer Nancy
Oden N.D.
Jayaprakash Rick
Smith Missy
Beattie Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
Joanne
Mariner Paul
Craig Roberts Shepherd
Bliss Dave
Lindorff John
Muthyala Patrick
Cockburn Sherwood
Ross Phil
Doe David
Michael Green Website
of the Day
Jonathan
Cook Christopher
Brauchli Norman
Solomon Lee
Sustar / George
Bisharat Binoy
Kampmark Evelyn
Pringle Hugo
Blanco Website
of the Day
August 15, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Michael
Neumann Jordan
Flaherty Sonja
Karkar Felice
Pace Joshua
Frank Dave
Lindorff Carla
Blank David
Vest Harvey
Wasserman Peter
Rost, M.D. Russell
Mokhiber Website
of the Day
August 14, 2007 Paul
de Rooij Winslow
T. Wheeler David
Rosen Gary
Leupp Clifton
Ross Muhammad
Idress Ahmad Jacquelyn
Godin Uri
Avnery Ramzy
Baroud James
McEnteer Website
of the Day
August 13, 2007 Jeremy
Scahill F.
William Engdahl Alexander
Cockburn Kathy
Kelly Chris
Floyd Paul
Craig Roberts William
Blum Kenneth
Couesbouc Rannie
Amiri Brenda
Norrell Fran
Shor Ron
Jacobs Website
of the Day
August 11 / 12, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Stan
Goff Ralph
Nader Vijay
Prashad Greg
Moses Alan
Farago Patrick
Cockburn Ben
Tripp Robert
Fantina John
Ross Seth
Sandronsky Paul
Krassner Website
of the Weekend
August 10, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Stan
Goff Marjorie
Cohn Saul
Landau Chris
Floyd Daniel
Ellsberg Anthony
Papa Farzana
Versey Sgt.
Kevin Benderman Nuri
Nuri Website
of the Day
August 9, 2007 Stan
Goff Paul
Craig Roberts Alan
Farago William
S. Lind Doug
Giebel Harvey
Wasserman Jacob
Hill Raul
Zibechi Dave
Zirin Website
of the Day
August 8, 2007 Andy
Worthington Jeff
Halper Greg
Moses Nurit
Peled-Elhanan Sukant
Chandan Robert
Fisk George
H. Strauss D.K.
Wilson Bill
Day Tim
Campbell Website
of the Day
August 7, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Andy
Worthington Kathy
Kelly Stan
Cox Sonja
Karkar Sen.
Russ Feingold Alan
Farago Norman
Solomon Binoy
Kampmark Dave
Lindorff John
Stauber Website
of the Day August 6, 2007 Bill
Quigley Kathy
Rentenbach Uri
Avnery Col.
Dan Smith Ralph
Nader James
Neshewat D.K.
Wilson Greg
Moses Fidel
Castro Mike
Whitney
August 4 / 5, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Peter
Linebaugh Saul
Landau Alan
Farago Dave
Zirin Barucha
Calamity Peller Anthony
DiMaggio Dave
Lindorff Fred
Gardner Nicola
Nasser Benjamin
Dangl Rannie
Amiri Daniel
Gross Sherwood
Ross Manuel
Garcia, Jr Missy
Beattie Ron
Jacobs Website
of the Weekend
August 3, 2007 Gabriel
Matthew Schivone Jonathan
Cook Patrick
Cockburn Little
Steven Van Zandt Christopher
Brauchli D.
K. Wilson Linda
Ford and Ira Glunts Kelly
Overton Monica
Benderman Manuel
Garcia, Jr. Website
of the Day
August 2, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Stanley Heller Eric
Ruder Robert
Fantina Alan
Farago Chris
Floyd Franklin
Lamb Sen.
Russ Feingold Anthony
Papa Norman
Solomon Website
of the Day
August 1, 2007 Debbie Nathan Fred
Gardner Gary
Leupp David
Rosen Winston
Warfield Daniel
McBride Glen
Ford Thomas
P. Healy John
V. Whitbeck David
Krieger Website
of the Day
July 31, 2007 Kathy
Kelly Clancy Sigal Paul Krassner Joe
DeRaymond Diane
Christian Chris
Floyd Ramzy
Baroud Alan
Farago Fidel
Castro Dan
Bacher
July 30, 2007 Marjorie Cohn: Independent Counsel Time Patrick Cockburn Peter Quinn Uri Avnery John Ross Ron
Jacobs David
Vest Jeffrey
St. Clair Website
of the Day
July 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Robert
Fantina Fred
Gardner
July 27, 2007 John
Ross Arthur
Neslen Dave
Lindorff Julene
Blair Christopher
Brauchli Jesse
Hagopian Charles
Modiano Bill
Day Walter
Brasch M.D.
Mitchell Website
of the Day
July 26, 2007 Kathleen
Christison Andy
Worthington Clancy
Chassay Marjorie
Cohn Susie
Day David
Price Marie
Trigona Norman
Solomon William
S. Lind Natsu
Saito John
Stauber Website
of the Day
July 25, 2007 Andy
Worthington Gary
Leupp Ray
McGovern Dr.
Susan Block Joshua
Frank Tina
Richards Ben
Terrall Farzana
Versey Mohammad
Ali Salih Laura
Carlsen Ron
Jacobs Sunsara
Taylor Website
of the Day
Saul
Landau Kathy
Kelly Russell
Mokhiber M.
Shahid Alam Patrick
Cockburn and Anne Penketh Dave
Lindorff Binoy
Kampmark Richard
Neville Cindy
Sheehan Evelyn
Pringle Norman
Solomon CP
Newswire Website
of the Day
July 23, 2007 Andy
Worthington Uri
Avnery Patrick
Cockburn Sousan
Hammad John
Walsh Harvey
Wasserman Martha
Rosenberg Collin Baber
Reza
Fiyouzat Stephen
Lendman Website
of the Day
July 21 / 22, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Werther Ralph
Nader David
Keen Fred
Gardner Gary
Leupp Robert
Fantina Saker Rannie
Amiri Mike
Whitney Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD Monica
Benderman Dan
Bacher Michael
Baney Missy
Beattie Ron
Jacobs Adam
Engel Thomas
Naylor Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 20, 2007 Eliza
Szabo Pam
Martens Alan
Farago Harvey
Wasserman Marjorie
Cohn Dave
Zirin Anthony
DiMaggio Scott
Liebertz Linn
Washington, Jr. Bill
Piper / Anthony Papa Ramzy
Baroud Website
of the Day
Subscribe Online
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Weekend
Edition CounterPunch DiaryDon't Carpool with Nouri al-MalikiBy ALEXANDER COCKBURN As he heads for the office these days Nouri al-Maliki should bid his family especially tender farewells. If the patterns of US foreign policy are any guide, the Iraqi prime minister is a very poor insurance risk. On Monday August 20 a leading Democratic senator, Carl Levin of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee returned from a weekend outing to Iraq and declared publicly that Iraq's parliament should remove al-Maliki from power. "The Maliki government is nonfunctional," Levin declared, "and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders." The next day Hillary Rodham Clinton, front-runner of Democrats seeking the nomination of their party for the presidency went before the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and reiterated her senate colleague's call. She said that al-Maliki should be replaced by a "less divisive and more unifying figure." The final grim news for al-Maliki came on Wednesday when President Bush affirmed confidence in the prime minister, declaring him to be a fine fellow. Levin, Clinton and Bush all simultaneously declared that they believe the briefings of the United States military commanders in Iraq. They exult that the "surge", advocated and presided over by General David Petraeus last winter, is now working. Baghdad is more secure. Casualties are down. The sectarian groupings in Iraq have been checked. Nation-building can proceed. None of these chirpy bulletins has anything to do with the actual situation on the ground in Iraq, where the extremely hot summer months have seen a regular annual drop in activities by Iraq's resistance groups. Even so, car bombings in Baghdad car bombings in Baghdad in July were 5 per cent higher than before the "surge" began and there has been a corresponding rise in civilian casualties from explosions. Meanwhile there are graphic reports of the extreme exhaustion of US troops, forced into multiple tours and extended time on active duty because of the overall shortage in manpower and equipment. Nor can any silver lining be detected in the larger political military picture, in terms of erosion the Shi'a majority coalition, seriously reducing the power of Moqtada al-Sadr, or denting the Sunni resistance. But here on the home front, Levin, Clinton and other leading Democrats are determined not to be wrong-footed by White House attacks accusing them of stabbing America's fighting men and women in the back by questioning the surge's supposed success. On an hourly basis, the right-wing radio demagogues are accusing them of just such treachery. Flag-wagging and drum-thumping are traditional at Veterans of Foreign Wars' conventions. In a rhetorical counter-move, the Democrats emphasize the failure of Bush's man, al-Maliki, to resolve Iraq's political divisions at equal speed. Amid their rather hollow assertions of confidence in al-Maliki, Bush and the Republicans recognize that al-Maliki is expendable and can be forced out, just as his predecessor was ditched. Here's where al-Maliki should take a look at a dark episode in Vietnam not long before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963. A few weeks earlier in that same month a coup, code-named Operation Bravo Two, pushed by U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and the CIA, and executed by South Vietnamese officers led swiftly to the murder of South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem and Diem's brother. Just as is happening today in Iraq the White House had concluded that their chosen man Diem had become an inconvenience to a political schedule that demanded "progress" , a feinted reduction in US troops pending the 1964 campaign year. Hence the coup and consequent demise of the bothersome Diem and his brother. Friendly witness claim that the Kennedys were deeply shocked at news of the murders.If so, it was akin to the shock of Henry II after the assassination of Thomas Becket. The killing of Diem committed the US more deeply than ever to bloodstained years of "nation-building". In the end the Americans withdrew because they were defeated militarily and politically by the Vietnamese. Such is the history al-Maliki can meditate each day.
"Support Their Troops?"
Bennis: INDENT Alexander Cockburn makes three
points in his "Support Their Troops?" column. One is
right, one is wrong, one is preposterous. First he says the
U.S. peace movement doesn't embrace the Iraqi resistance. Right.
Second, the U.S. peace movement is "pretty much dead."
Wrong. Third, publicly sympathizing with the Iraqi resistance
will somehow build "necessary critical mass to have a real
movement." END INDENT
Here's my answer to Bennis: Right now I don't think the peace movement is advancing the end of the war in Iraq by a single day. In fact goodly chunks of it are effectively protracting it, by marching in lockstep with the Democratic Party whose overseers strive on an hourly basis to tamp down unseemly criticism of what the Party's congressional representatives could be doing. What they have substantively done since the Democrats took over the Congress is to have given the green light to the "surge", to continued funding for the war, to the next Pentagon budget. Take the "netroots". The organizers of the recent Yearly Kos event wouldn't even schedule a strategy session on ending the war in Iraq. They denied John Stauber's request that they put on the official schedule a strategy session organized by Stauber's Center for Media and Democracy, featuring speakers frrom Iraqi Veterans Against the War. Set that wimp-out by MoveOn next to this paragraph from a New York Times news story from DesMoines, Iowa, published August 12. "Four years after the last presidential race featured early signs of war protest, particularly in the candidacy of Howard Dean, a new phase of the debate seems to be unfolding, with antiwar groups giving the Democrats latitude to take positions short of a full and immediate withdrawal. Neither MoveOn.org nor its affiliated group, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, have sought to press Democrats here in Iowa to suggest anything short of ending the war immediately." Phyllis Bennis talks vaguely of "searching for a clear strategy", but this vagueness is no more surprising than the self-restraint of MoveOn and Americans Against Escalation in Iowa. Bennis resides at the Institute for Policy Studies, whose principals are well aware that any-IPS related support for a strategy deemed discomfitting to the Democratic Party's efforts to capture White House in 2008 would result in having IPS's major funders yank them back into the kennel in short order. I don't doubt Bennis' calendar
is admirably full of speaking events, but from out here in the
progressive north west there's nothing much going on between
San Francisco and the Canadian border. Yes, there have been useful
actions in Olympia and Tacoma, but it's all awfully quiet. The
mass mobilizations of 2003 seem light years away. In 2005 UFPJ
raised over $1 million and in 2006 it raised $575,000. Those
budget Of course there's no fizzle. People here aren't being driven crazy by the war the way we were by the slaughters and bombings of Vietnamese in the war then. The horrors pressed down on one every day. Of course people were ultras, which is where the long-march radicals should always start out The alternative is to come out of the womb squealing about "the excesses of the left" and spend the rest of your life like Todd Gitlin writing op eds to that effect. It was even the same somewhat in the Central American interventions of the 19080s. You could read about contras disemboweling a rural organizer from the FSLN and tremble that it might be the same person you just met on a solidarity tour, either up here or down there. People thought I was being frivolous by evoking North American lesbians traveling to meet their Nica partners, but bed is a pretty good place in which to cement revolutionary solidarity. Iraq's mostly a blur to the peace movement. Actual Iraqis are a blur to the peace movement. Sure, towns here pass resolutions telling the president or the US Congress to do this or that. Arcata, California, 60 miles north of me, got a lot of press for doing that, at least until they threw David Meserve off the city council. It was cute, but it didn't add up to anything. Now, if a delegation from Arcata said it was sending a sister city delegation to Falujah, that would mean something. Sister cities programs can add up to something serious, which is why mainstream Jewish organizations go crazy every time Madison, Wisconsin or Olympia, Washington, try to set up official ties with Rafah, in Gaza. Both Bennis and Katha Pollitt are outraged by Lawrence McGuire's remarks about the Iraqi resistance, but I thought, and think, what he wrote was on the money. Isn't it the ultimate in cynicism to use the Iraqi resistance's successes as a stick with which to beat George Bush and the Republicans, but not the Democrats, while simultaneously saying that you'd rather not think about the Resistance, because it seems Not Very Nice. If you are too scared to look, you'll never find out anything. In mid-July important Sunni-led insurgent organizations gathered in Damascus to prepare a negotiating position in advance of US withdrawal. Leaders of three of the groups met with Seumas Milne of the UK Guardian and denounced al-Qaida, sectarian killings and suicide bombings against civilians. You can either try to inform yourself of what exactly the elements in the Iraqi resistance are actually doing, or you can take the route Pollitt did in her hysterical outburst, where she stigmatized the resistance as composed of "theocrats, ethnic nationalists, die-hard Baathists, jihadis, kidnappers, beheaders and thugs". How come she forgot to add "raghead"? I guess it wasn't PC. Alexander Cockburn
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CounterPunch Books of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy  Click Here to Buy! Click Here for Dates & Venues How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn   Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont             |
