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New Edition CounterPunch: a Special Investigation in the Rise and Fall of Ahmed Chalabi The Truth About Chalabi: the Looting of Jordan; His Ties to Iran; Conduit to the NYTs and the Neocons; His Stake in the Privatization of Iraq; Why the US Raided His Baghdad Compound by Andrew Cockburn; Kerry Administers CPR to Stricken President: "Give Bush Slack on Iraq; Bush Deserves Credit for Job Growth; I'll Appoint an Anti-Abortion Judge" by Alexander Cockburn. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Now Available: Hot New CounterPunch T-Shirts! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories June 8, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse? June 7, 2004 Jason Leopold New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes Patrick Cockburn The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing Dennis Hans From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy Tracy McLellan Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics Bill Blum The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War Ben Tripp What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter Susan Davis Reagan, In a Nutshell Phil Gasper Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance Website of the Day A Child's ABCs of Terrorism June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations       June 4, 2004 Chris Floyd Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House Cornwell / Penketh Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy Wayne Madsen Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink Greg Moses Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq Yitzak Laor Before Rafah Ghali Hassan Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte? Jane Stillwater God, the Rapture and Vera Casey CounterPunch Wire D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage? John Borowski Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush Mike Griffin Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW Alexander Cockburn Has Bush Gone Over the Edge? Website of the Day Aquae Urbis Romae: Water and Empire   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.     Subscribe Online

June 8, 2004 Reagan and Saddam The Unholy Alliance By ALEX DAWOODY According to the corporate media and the two major political parties, Ronald Reagan was one of the greatest presidents in American modern history. They attribute to the man the myths of ending the Cold War, reviving America's economy, and uplifting the sense of pride and nationalism. They also belittle and dismiss as insignificant some of Reagan's policies that even the institutional establishment had admitted to their fallacy and the harm that they had caused, such as defying and lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra affairs, supporting reactionary regimes in Latin America and the Middle East, creating the biggest deficit in modern US history, assaulting the labor unions and fighting the working class for the benefits of the wealthy, shifting the political process in the United States (including the opposition party) toward the right, and giving rise to the neoconservatives and their drive toward Pax Americana and the rise of American imperialism. To begin with, we need to clear a few facts and expose the presiding myths. Reagan did not win the Cold War. The Soviet Union collapsed from within due to decades long of struggle to remain alive through artificial engineering of outmoded state machinery. If the pundits claim credit for Reagan to end of the Cold War, then they also need to acknowledge the roles of Soviet President Mikel Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II. As for lifting-up America's sense of pride and nationalism, Reagan lifted the spirit of American capitalism in rescuing its myth in the world as enemy of the workers and the oppressed to one that was the engine of freedom, prosperity, and moral values. Reagan managed to dress up US capitalism both at home and abroad as a friend of the little man, finding support for this exploiting economic and political system even within the very people that it was exploiting. Perhaps this was Reagan's biggest achievement. Yet, the greatest damage that the Reagan's policy caused and we continue to suffer its consequences was in Iraq by supporting the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein despite Saddam's clear violation of human rights and threats to his neighbors. In fact, it was Reagan that supplied Saddam with the means to develop his weapons of mass destruction that Bush Jr. later used as an excuse in 2003 to launch his war and occupy Iraq. Concern about the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to a gradual warming of relations between Iraq and the United States. American National Security Advisor Zbignew Brzezinski publicly encouraged Iraq to attack Iran and take back the Shat-al-Arab waterway. Most American foreign service officers despised the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran for having held diplomats of the US embassy hostages for 444 days. The "Carter Doctrine" was established in 1980, stating that America would intervene militarily in the region to assure its access to oil. In that same year, Saddam's armies invaded Iran, instigating a ruinous war that lasted for eight long years. The invasion was prompted as much by American urging as it was by Saddam's dislike for Islamic fundamentalism. There was a sea change in relations between America and Iraq when Ronald Reagan became president. Fearing the rise of Soviet influence in Iran, and fearing an Iranian takeover of the region, the Reagan administration began actively arming and supporting Saddam. By 1982, Iraq was removed from the list of terrorist sponsoring nations. By 1984, America was actively sharing military intelligence with Saddam's army. This aid included arming Iraq with potent weapons, providing satellite imagery of Iranian troops deployments and tactical planning for battles, assisting with air strikes, and assessing damage after bombing campaigns. Following further high-level policy review, Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD-114) on November 26, 1983, concerning U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The directive reflected the administration's priorities, calling for heightened regional military cooperation to defend oil facilities, and measures to improve U.S. military capabilities in the Persian Gulf. Soon thereafter, Donald Rumsfeld, the head of the multinational pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co. at the time, was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish "direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld met with Saddam, and the two discussed regional issues of mutual interest, shared enmity toward Iran and Syria, and discussed U.S efforts to find alternative routes to transport Iraq's oil. Rumsfeld made no reference to Iraq's chemical weapons. The Reagan administration allowed the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. The shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's security police, helicopters to transport Iraqi officials, television cameras for video surveillance applications, chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and numerous shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. The bacteria cultures were used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. A US Senate inquiry in 1995 accidentally revealed that during the Iran-Iraq War the United States had sent Iraq samples of all the strains of germs used by Iraq to make biological weapons. The strains were sent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Type Culture Collection to the same sites in Iraq that UN weapons inspectors later determined were part of Iraq's biological weapons program. The Senate Banking Committee reported in 1994 that the U.S. Commerce Department had traced shipments of biological materials identical to those later found and destroyed by U.N. inspectors. These shipments continued at least until November 1989. Assisted by Pentagon expertise, which secretly seconded its Air Force officers to work with the Iraqis, Iraq began using its air force more aggressively, hitting Iran's economic and infrastructure targets and extending its air strikes to the Iranian oil terminals in the Lower Gulf. U.S. support for Iraq blossomed further in 1983 when the United States provided economic aid to Iraq in the form of Commodities Credit Corporation guarantees to purchase U.S. agricultural products ($400 million in 1983, $513 million in 1984, and climbing to $652 million in 1987). This allowed Iraq to use money it otherwise would have spent on food to buy weapons and other military supplies. With Iraq off the terrorism list, the U.S. also provided quasi-military aid. An example of U.S. sales during this time of germ warfare and other weapons to Iraq included "deadly pathogens," with government approval, some from the army's center for germ research in Fort Detrick. The British government also conceded after the Scott Inquiry Report was published that it continued to grant licenses to British firms to export materials to Iraq usable for biological weapons at least until December 1996. So strong was the hold of pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President Reagan that it succeeded in getting the White House frustrate the Senate's attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, which it had signed. This led Saddam to believe that Washington was firmly on his side, a conclusion that paved the way for his invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War. On April 18, 1988, the United States conducted Operation Praying Mantis. In response to Iran's mining of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy engaged the Iranian Navy in the Gulf, sunk two of Iran's biggest surface ships and crippled a third. On July 3, 1988 U.S. forces once again engaged some of the remnants of the Iranian Navy in the Strait of Hormuz and an Iranian civilian jet strayed over the battle area. The USS Vincennes mistook the airliner for an Iranian fighter and shot it down. Although it was a mistake, in Tehran it was viewed as a sign that the United States was now actively allied with Iraq and would take any action to defeat Tehran. In August 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini, who had resisted all previous pleas to end the war, was forced to concede that Iran could not fight both Iraq and the United States any longer. Tehran accepted a cease-fire with Iraq that brought the war to an end. The most reprehensible of Saddam's actions that the Reagan administration chose to overlook was his campaign against Iraq's Kurds known as al-Anfal, a twisted reference to a verse in the Koran. In March 1987, Saddam appointed his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, as governor of northern Iraq. Less than six weeks after his appointment, Majid employed chemical warfare to wipe out several towns in the Balisan valley, where one of the Kurdish opposition group was located. In February 1988, Majid unleashed the al-Anfal campaign. Iraqi forces began clearing areas of Kurdish residence with massive bombardments of chemical weapons and high explosives, followed by army sweeps that often killed anyone left alive and razed to the ground anything left standing. On March 15, 1988, Majid conducted his most famous attack, swamping the Kurdish town of Halabcha with several varieties of chemical weapons and killing at least five thousand Kurdish civilians. When the campaign finally ended in 1989, some two hundred thousand Kurds were dead, roughly 1.5 million had been forcibly resettled, huge swaths of Kurdistan has been scorched by chemical warfare, and four thousand towns had been razed. The U.S. Senate passed a bill to impose sanctions on Iraq, but the Reagan administration prevailed upon the Congress to drop the matter. Today, Saddam is held in US custody, awaiting trial for his crimes. It would be interesting to listen to his testimonies (granted if he stayed alive for his trial and did not die of some mysterious cause while in prison) and reveal the support and aid that he received from Bush's hero, the great communicator Ronald Reagan, in waging wars on the oppressed. Alex Dawoody lives in Battle Creek, Michigan. He can be reached at: AlxDawoody@cs.com Weekend Edition Features for June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /