home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

Red Alert for CounterPunchers! Annual Fundraising Appeal We interrupt your regular reading habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch needs your financial support! We're not in the habit of making idle threats and this isn't one. Either we meet our fundraising goal of $70,000 over the next three weeks or we'll be forced to drastically curtail the operation of our website. It's near the end of our year and the wolves are gathering at the door. CounterPunch's website is supported almost entirely by subscribers to the print edition of our newsletter. We don't clutter the site by selling annoying popup ads. We tried getting money out of Google, but they gave us the boot. We aren't on the receiving end of six-figure grants from big foundations. George Soros doesn't have us on retainer. And we don't sell tickets on cruiseliners. The continued existence of CounterPunch depends solely on the support and dedication of our readers. And we know there are a lot of you. We get thousands of emails from you every day. Our website receives nearly 100,000 visits each day-and those numbers grow by the month. Of course, all these readers chew up a lot of bandwidth and that costs money. Through the Iraq war, the daily traumas of the Bush administration, hurricanes, fires, the loss of Habeas Corpus and the betrayals of the Democrats, many of you have found a refuge at CounterPunch and made us your homepage. You tell us that you love CounterPunch because the quality of writing you find here every day and because we never flinch under fire. We appreciate the support and are prepared for the fierce battles to come as the Bush administration desperately expands its wars abroad and at home. And, if the Democrats manage win back Presidency, you know that CounterPunch--almost alone on the Left--will hold them to account. Unlike many other outfits, we don't hit you up for money every month ... or even every quarter, like our friends at Antiwar.com. We only ask for your support once a year. But when we ask, we mean it. Please, use our secure server make a tax-deductible donation to CounterPunch today or purchase a subscription and a gift sub for someone or one of our award winning books (or a crate of books!) as holiday presents. (We won't call you to shake you down or sell your name to any lists--even Dick Cheney's.) To contribute by phone you can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683 Onward, Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky. Alya and Deva

Today's Stories November 3 / 4, 2007 David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition November 3 / 4, 2007 Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran? The Deadly Merry-Go Round By ROBERT FANTINA The U.S. government appears to be caught in a vicious cycle of its own making. It can still be stopped, but before long that option will have disappeared like a city in a cloud of nuclear dust. A look at the facts is all that is required to see this situation. In 2003, President Bush invaded Iraq, claiming that that country had weapons of mass destruction, was close to developing nuclear weapons and therefore presented an 'imminent threat' to the United States. Against the advice of trusted allies, the United Nation and millions of Americans, Mr. Bush, from the safety of the White House, sent tens of thousands of dedicated soldiers to kill and die in Iraq. Apparently, but not surely, to Mr. Bush's surprise, there were no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear devices being prepared and therefore no threat to the United States. Iraq was left in a state of civil war, its infrastructure destroyed and its people suffering worse than they ever did under the now-deposed Saddam Hussein. Terrorist activity in and from that nation has skyrocketed. And the war continues. Now Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others are all accusing Iran of developing nuclear weapons. Mr. Bush has even gone so far as to propose defense systems be installed in eastern European countries, much to the entirely-justifiable consternation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin stated that it appears as if Mr. Bush is attempting to resurrect the Cold War, that nearly fifty-year period during which the U.S. and the Soviet Union were engaged in fierce competition to outdo each other in weapons and public relations. It took the courage and foresight of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to take the lead in ending this dangerous period during and following a summit with President Ronald Reagan. Congress, complicit in all of Mr. Bush's crimes to date, seems to once again be an all-to-willing accomplice. From declaring Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization to stepping up the rhetoric on Iran in general, there seems to be little need for additional evidence that either the members of Congress are incapable of learning from their past mistakes, or fear appearing 'soft' on terrorism. So the U.S. marches almost inevitably off to war with Iran. What must Iran's response be to these actions? After having witnessed the carnage reaped by the U.S. on their neighbor, Iraq, would one expect Iran to wait around to experience the same fate? Or might one reasonably expect that Iran would increase its weapons production, including either starting or accelerating a nuclear program, in order to protect its 70,000,000 citizens? As Iran does so, the U.S. points its self-righteous finger at it and says "See? We told you so!" And Congress's lemming-like members can all agree. "You see," they may say, "we were wrong about Iraq, but we were right about Iran. Don't go calling us soft on terror." So what is wrong with this picture? One can consider another, far less likely scenario. Mr. Bush blathers away about Iran (one cannot expect him to stop), but cooler heads prevail in Congress. There is no resolution naming the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Talk by Mr. Bush of defense missiles based in Europe are given scant attention by the Congress that must fund them; they are dismissed as the simple ramblings of a desperate, lame-duck president. Mr. Putin, at first alarmed by Mr. Bush's statements, recognizes that his proposals have no support in Congress, and makes a passing remark that Mr. Bush should somehow bring himself into the twenty-first century, and comments no more on the matter. With the U.S. busy with the civil war in Iraq, and Mr. Bush alone ranting and raving about Iran with no one of any consequence listening, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can worry about the economic and other concerns of his people without needing to worry about being the next target of violent U.S. imperialism. He has no need to take a defensive posture against the U.S. because the U.S. is not harassing him in any way. So there is no spiral, because there is nothing to give it impetus. Unfortunately, this scenario is a fairy tale. In its most basic form, the following appears to be what is happening: Iraq is in civil war, its people dying by the hundreds of thousands, all caused by the U.S. invasion and continually worsened by U.S. presence. Mr. Bush proclaims that Iran is now a threat to the U.S. Iran, seeing what happened to Iraq, prepares to defend its people. Mr. Bush sees Iran's preparations, and claims he was right all along, and that Iran is a threat to the U.S., and proposes missile sites in Eastern Europe. Mr. Putin, having watched the increasingly dangerous Mr. Bush for years, says his lunacy has gone far enough, and opposes the missile sites. Mr. Ahmandinejad watches the increasing tension between his ally, Russia, and his enemy (and Russia's ally), the U.S., and accelerates his measures to protect Iran. Mr. Bush sees Iran's increased efforts, frequently in the form of support for Iraq's freedom fighters, and issues sanctions against Iran. Iran suffers as a result of these sanctions, and takes additional steps to prepare for war. Mr. Bush can now proclaim that Iran is preparing for war. Ms. Rice stated this week that Iran poses "perhaps the single greatest challenge" to U.S. security. She further stated, if you please, that the U.S. wanted to resolve this crisis, one of the U.S.'s making, through diplomatic means. Why she wasn't making such commitments four and a half years ago is anybody's guess. But she kept the war-mongering rhetoric high. Said she: "If they (Iran) choose to continue down a path of confrontation, the U.S. will act with the international community to resist these threats of the Iranian regime." It appears that it is the U.S. that is continuing 'down a path of confrontation,' and one can hardly expect the 'international community' to provide much more support to Mr. Bush's invasion of Iran than it did his invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many nations who bought into that earlier folly may be difficult to persuade to follow the U.S. down that dead end road again. But it appears increasingly likely that Congress will not hesitate to buy the same farm it purchased lock, stock and barrel five years ago. In order to protect U.S. interests from the next imaginary threat, more Americans will die, and another country in the Middle East will be reduced to ashes. If at least 1,000,000 of Iraq's 25,000,000 citizens have died since Mr. Bush's invasion, how many of the 70,000,000 Iranians will experience horrific deaths long before their time? Congress can stop this from happening, but there is nothing to suggest that the members of that august body, elected to end the Iraqi war, will prevent the next one from occurring. Mr. Bush, when he leaves office in January of 2009, will leave behind a bloody legacy, and three disastrous wars. The consequences for the U.S. and the world are beyond comprehension. Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006.'   The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! Israel's Very Dangerous Gamble STEPHEN GREEN reports on the real motivations behind Israel's MISSILE STRIKE on SYRIA. PETER MONTAGUE on the NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE or How the Nuke Industry is using Gore's Prize and Global Warming to Plot Its Big Comeback. WILLIAM BLUM on the DEVALUING of "ANTI-SEMITE" or How to Make a Term Meaningless. 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 Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Your Ad Here

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"