Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
June
4, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's
Animal House
June
3, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma
Dr.
Susan Block
America in tha Hood
Michael
Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin
John
Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number
One in the Deranged
Christopher
Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome
on $12,000 a Month
Samia
Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq
Mike
Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case
Diane
Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead
Scott
Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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June
4, 2004
The
Fall of a Fall Guy
Exit
Tenet
By
RUPERT CORNWELL and ANNE PENKETH
The Independent
"Don't worry, it's
a slam dunk."
George Tenet may come to rue his confident
prediction to George Bush about the threat from Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction. His abrupt resignation yesterday
crowns a track record of faulty intelligence-gathering on his
watch that blinded the world's most powerful espionage agency
to the dramatic events since the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
"Who lost Russia?"
was the cry after the Central Intelligence Agency failed in the
1980s to predict the demise of the Soviet Union. "Who lost
Iraq and the war on terror?" may be a similar refrain of
the early 21st century. The Bush administration would prefer
America and the world to put the blame squarely on the shoulders
of Mr Tenet, who headed the agency from 1997, rather than the
administration ideologues who made the political case for toppling
Saddam.
But 11 September was not the
first world-shaking event in the making that Mr Tenet's team
failed to detect. In May 1998, the CIA was caught off guard by
India's surprise nuclear tests that sparked fears of holocaust
on the sub-continent when Pakistan followed suit in a series
of tit-for-tat explosions.
Mr Tenet ordered an outside
investigation into that intelligence failure which pointed up
flaws that are still being criticised in the context of Iraq
- first and foremost the lack of "humint": in plain
language, spies on the ground. By the time of the 11 September
attacks, the agency had manifestly not learnt the lessons of
the cold war and reformed itself to deal with the threat of stateless
terrorists practising "assymetrical" warfare against
the world's lone superpower.
He missed the warning signs
of al-Qa'ida's attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
in 1998 and, when the Clinton administration chose to retaliate
against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, it was bad CIA intelligence
that led to a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum to be bombed
in the mistaken belief that it was a chemical weapons facility.
The following year, more faulty
intelligence led to the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy
in Belgrade.
Calls for Mr Tenet's resignation
reached a peak in April, when he was flayed by a panel investigating
the 11 September attacks for failing to fully appreciate the
threat posed by al- Qa'ida. Mr Tenet acknowledged that the agency
had not hired the right people, or ensured the correct channelling
of data.
In his mea culpa to the bipartisan
commission, he said: "We all understood [Osama] bin Laden's
attempt to strike the homeland. We never translated this knowledge
into an effective defence of the country." But when asked
whether, in retrospect, anything could have been done to prevent
the attacks, he defended the agency, saying: "I don't believe
so. The plot was off and running. Operators were moving into
the country. Decapitating any individual, even Bin Laden, in
this context would not have stopped this plot."
On that occasion, he may have
saved his skin because, while he held overall responsibility
for the intelligence failures as CIA director, Mr Tenet could
not be personally blamed. But the blame for President Bush's
most public intelligence gaffe, in which he alleged in his January
2003 State of the Nation address that Iraq had tried to smuggle
uranium from Niger for its secret nuclear weapons programme,
can be laid at his door.
Mr Tenet signed off on the
final text of the address, which was delivered three months before
the invasion of Iraq. In July last year, as the controversy over
Saddam's apparently non-existent weapons of mass destruction
gripped Washington, Mr Tenet took the blame for allowing the
disputed claim into the text. In return, just as he was yesterday
at the moment of his departure, he was lavishly praised by Mr
Bush. "I've got confidence in George Tenet," declared
the President, who on occasion is loyal to a fault.
However, others in the administration
had even greater grounds for a personal grudge against the CIA
director. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, has let it be
known that he was furious to have been fed dud information by
the agency before he delivered his crucial speech in February
last year at the United Nations, in which he set out the Bush
case for war. In what at the time seemed a bravura performance,
employing maps using satellite photos and communications intercepts
(and even a make-believe phial of anthrax), General Powell said
to the Security Council: "These are not assertions. What
we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
Sitting directly behind the
Secretary of State as he delivered his speech was Mr Tenet, his
presence lending a personal imprimatur to the evidence. The intelligence
was anything but solid. A year later Gen- eral Powell admitted
that he did not know whether he would have recommended the invasion
of Iraq had he known there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.
Hans Blix, the former chief
UN weapons inspector, has castigated the Bush administration
for its "faith-based" approach to intelligence and
lack of critical thinking. It may also be asked whether the CIA
checked thoroughly enough the allegations of Ahmed Chalabi and
his Iraqi National Congress before the Iraq war. Mr Chalabi,
who is now accused of having passed on US secrets to the Iranians,
was once a CIA protege, though in recent years the agency had
come to regard him as a charlatan. At the very least it may be
said - as it may also of in the uranium-from-Africa debacle -
that the CIA had failed to head off a disaster in the making.
Paradoxically, however, Mr
Tenet leaves an agency which - by its own clandestine and nefarious
standards - is in somewhat better shape than when he took over
in 1997. For years the CIA had been buffetted by scandal (Aldrich
Ames), internal controversies (such as the dispute over whether
it discriminated against women employees) and a loss of nerve.
The new director symbolised his approach by putting on prominent
show in his office a photo of Richard Helms, a Nixon-era predecessor
who was much reviled but whose loyalty was such that he even
perjured himself before Congress to protect the agency's secrets.
The message was plain: Mr Tenet would put the agency first.
A start at least has been made
to rebuilding "humint". The 9/11 catastrophe and the
Iraqi WMD embarrassment exposed the structural flaws at the heart
of the US intelligence bureaucracy. Possibly the 2001 attacks
might have been prevented, had the CIA and the FBI pooled their
resources. Then there is the proliferation of intelligence agencies,
of which Mr Tenet is in charge of only one.
Just possibly, Mr Tenet's departure
will be the catalyst for a root-and-branch shake-up.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
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