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May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
in Tent City, But Where Do You Bathe?
Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
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
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Published March 15, 2002
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
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
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May
17, 2002
Bush Fiddled
While New York Burned
by Michael Colby
The decision to send Condoleezza Rice out before
the reporters yesterday to downplay new evidence that the White
House had credible warnings of Osama bin Laden's plans to hijack
planes was a huge slap to the face of reason. Rice's two main
arguments seeking to belittle Bush's prior knowledge lacked the
credibility that the hijacking warnings were filled with.
First, Rice declared that the hijackings
said nothing about "using the planes as missiles."
Rice's reasoning ignores the internal Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) reports that at least one student had approached a flight
school in search of training in all aspects of flying big jets
with the exceptions of taking off and landing. For an intelligence
agency with a near-unlimited budget and person power, it wouldn't
seem that hard to put two and two together on this one.
Next, Rice declared that if the Bush
administration wanted to do anything preventive in regards to
the hijacking threats it would have resulted in a widespread
disruption in commercial airline travel. Besides being rather
callous towards the nearly 5,000 people who lost their lives,
this excuse is just plain ridiculous.
As it turns out, these hijackings did
cause widespread disruption of the airline industry, but only
after the bin Laden crew carried out their tasks to what they
declared to be near-perfection. September 11th wasn't that long
ago to have forgotten that all the nation's airports were closed,
the airlines received billions of dollars in bailouts, and federal
regulators immediately (and dramatically) changed the manner
in which every man, woman, and child approaches the act of flying.
The troubling reality, no matter how
much spin the Bush administration and its fawning media put into
it, is that the credible evidence of an attack by a group of
people who every intelligence official in the U.S. knew was fanatical
and capable enough to inflict widespread damage was both kept
secret and ignored.
Imagine, for example, if the same amount
of time and hand wringing had been put into implementing a plan
to this hijacking threat as most members of the Bush inner circle
put into dumping their Enron portfolios? That is, you'll recall,
exactly what the Enron-insiders-turned-Bush-officials were up
to in the summer of 2001 when the hijacking threats were made
known to the administration.
Finally, the public should be informed
as to why it took more than eight months after this attack before
this information became publicly available. Let's not forget
that the U.S. went to war over this action, decimating a nation,
throwing world security into turmoil, and, interestingly enough,
still failing to "get our man." Every member of Congress
who rushed to their post-September 11 podiums to lust for revenge
and provide the Bush administration what amounted to a blank
check for war should now be wondering about the evidence their
own government withheld from them. What if, at the time of those
frantic days after the attacks, the public and congress knew
that the Bush team was sitting on evidence warning of the attacks?
Most of the media--particularly the right-wing
talk shows and pundits--are busy spinning the disclosure of the
hijacking warnings as much ado about nothing. But this nation
lost 3,000 citizens, the "crown jewels" of the Manhattan
skyline, our sense of security, and precious civil liberties,
not to mention unleashing a vicious war against Afghanistan while
the Bush team knew that the acts creating the entire mess were
on the way.
Ironically, the same conservative members
of Congress and the media who maniacally pursued the impeachment
of Bill Clinton for being on the receiving end of a blowjob are
now declaring that Bush's prior knowledge of what amounted to
"the worst ever attack on our soil" was really no big
deal. Go figure.
Michael Colby
is the editor of Wild
Matters. He can be reached at mcolby@wildmatters.org
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