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CounterPunch
October
12, 2002
American
Journal
Vindication Through Violence:
Jimmy Carter and the DC Sniper
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The FBI is working on a profile of the sniper
who, by this Saturday morning, has killed ten people in the suburban
DC area. Here's CounterPunch's input. He's a He. He was in the
military. Probably in Special Forces. He's white. He's in his
40s or 50s. He lives alone. He's a psychopath.
In the DC/ Virginia/ Maryland area, surrounded
with retired military, this narrows down the suspect list to
several hundred thousand. On the freeway you're surrounded by
them. Cut one off and you risk getting your head blown open.
Watch out when you go to the Mall. Beat the guy in the white
van to a parking space and the next might be YOU. There are a
lot of retired, highly-trained psychopathic killers out there.
And some of them aren't even retired. Ask the relatives of the
wives of Fort Bragg, murdered by husbands back from Afghanistan,
so highly trained they killed if the vacuum cleaner got on their
nerves.
Congress votes Aye and gives Bush the
go-ahead to bomb Saddam Hussein the next time Harken hits the
headlines. The Delta Force and the Navy SEALS hone their killing
knives, sight their night-scopes, ready for behind-the-lines
action in Iraq. The Special Forces, the Rangers, the 81st Airborne,
and all the other elite units pore over the street maps of Baghdad
and the aerial photos of Saddam's palaces.
In some months or years they'll Come
Home from the frontiers and ouposts of Empire, many of them time
bombs. They'll become drunks or drug addicts. They'll beat their
kids or their wives or both. The kids will grow into men who'll
beat their wives or kids or both. A few of them will mature into
killers, like the Sniper. That's part of the price of always
being at war. Mostly the wives and kids pay for it on the Home
front for years to come.
Now they've given Jimmy Carter the Nobel
Peace prize. Who knows? The DC Sniper may have first started
to cook back in Carter time, when Jimmy said America would not
stand idly by while Nicaragua tried to set forth on a different
path after they threw out Anastasio Somoza.
Carter told the Sandinistas they had
to retain the National Guard, which had been Somoza's elite band
of US-trained psychopathic killers. The Sandinistas said No.
So Carter ordered the CIA to bring up the officers and torturers
running the Argentinian death squads to train up a force of Nicaraguan
exiles in Honduras, and launch them on terror missions across
the border. They called them the Contras.
Carter was a busy man. Not just content
with forming the Contras, he harkened to the pain of South Korea,
where workers and peasants were demonstrating. His envoy, Richard
Holbrooke advised the South Korean military to hit back hard,
and they did, killing around 3,000, the most horrible massacre
since the Korean war. And yes, Carter started the covert CIA
operation in Afghanistan, rallying the mujiddeen to fight the
Soviets. Soon the CIA would bring Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan
to lend a Saudi presence and Saudi cash.
Now he's a peace prize winner. He's been
campaigning for it for years. He's a white male American with
the blood of thousands on his hands. So how could he miss, unless
the Peace Prize Committee had decided to abbreviate the whole
process and give it to George Bush. Maybe next year, though Ariel
Sharon is the next in line.
Today's Features
Jason Leopold
The New
York Times, Salon, Enron and Me
Jennifer Loewenstein
Khan
Yunis:
Before the Juggernaut
Ben Tripp
Let Wag
the Dogs of War or No Peace at Any Price
Will Youmans
Israel's
Plans to "Transfer" Palestinians During Iraq War
Linda S. Heard
Israel's
Image Problem:
Fire Up the Propaganda Mill
Lawrence McGuire
Eight
Ways to Smear Chomsky
Baruch Kimmerling
Why
is the US Scaring Me?
Alexander Cockburn
Dwarf-Throwing
& the UN:
Shape of Things to Come
Tom Walker
The Work
Ethic and Its Discontents
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- How to Change the Subject: Corporate Scandal and Pension
Reform as Weapons Against Warmongering;
- Padilla's Predecessor: Court Ruling Cites 1904 War
Against Mining Union;
- Adios Hitchens: the Dorian Gray of Our Time;
- Object of Suspicion: How the FBI Watched Janis Ian
From Birth;
- First Carter, Then Clinton,
Now Sen. John Edwards:
Another "New South" Slimeball;
- Corporate Crooks: Nature or Nurture?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
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October 9,
2002
Hesham Hassaballa
Here
We Go Again:
Rev. Falwell's Slurs
Ann Pettifer
Brainwashing
in America
Anita Ramasatry
Airline Security Run Amok
Josh Frank
Iraq: It's
About Globalization
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Iraq:
the Double Standard
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Illogical War Speech
David Vest
Dylan in
Eugene
October 4,
2002
Ahmad Faruqui
The Anvil
of War and the Ailing American Economy
Norman Madarasz
The
Truth and Violence
of a Symbolic Act
William Hughes
Political
Show Trial for
Marwan Barghouti
Ron Jacobs
The Struggle
Against
Another Oil War
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Bush War
Plan:
Blind and Improvident
Michael Schwalbe
The
Costs of American Privilege
Ralph Nader
Holding
Politicians' Feet to the Fire on Corporate Crime
Robert Buzzanco
Pacifica
Caves in to Zionist Smear Campaign
October 3,
2002
Gary Leupp
Talking
to Your Kids About Fascism
Will Youmans
The New
Anti-Apartheid Movement: The Campaign to Divest from Israel
Deb Reich
Report from a Mad World
Todd Chretien & Sue Sandlin
"It's All About Power on the
Docks"
Kurt Nimmo
Poetry
as Treason
Amiri Baraka
Somebody
Blew Up America
Alexander
Cockburn
October Surprises
October 2,
2002
Carol Wolman,
MD
Is the
President Nuts?
Diagnosing Dubya
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Something
Rotten in Klamath
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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