home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

New Edition of CounterPunch

Baghdad Diary: Going from Bad to Worse by Patrick Cockburn; Kerry in Vietnam: Part two; Silver Star or Simply Murder? by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair; Is Your Child's Teacher Working for the Pentagon? by Jorge Mariscal. In March, CounterPunch Online was read by 15.4 million viewers--by far our biggest month ever. 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!

Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

St. Clair in the Heartland

CounterPunch's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Order Now / Available in April

 

Today's Stories

April 9, 2004

Bill Christison
9/11 Commission is Bush's New Lapdog

April 8, 2004

Wayne Madsen
Rice (and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act

Kurt Nimmo
Will Bush Flatten Fallajuh?

Patrick Cockburn
Guided Missile; Misguided War

Laura Flanders
Steamed Rice

Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding

Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia

M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins

Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence

Douglas Valentine
Echoes of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq

Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics

April 7, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Those Pulitzers!

Sen. Robert Byrd
Deeper into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Tet in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?

Patrick Cockburn
Battles Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts

Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?

Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?

Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell

Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar

Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!

Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger


April 6, 2004

C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries and Occupiers

William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report: the Israel Lobby

Col. Dan Smith
The Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones

Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?

Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do

Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?

Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda

Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight

Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy

 

April 5, 2004

John Farrell
Lessons from El Salvador and Iraq

Robert Fisk
Bloodbath a Bad Omen for Bush

Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare Scenario"

 

April 3 / 4, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants a Problem? We're Shocked

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business Without Really Trying

Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God

Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine

Frederick B. Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer

Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising

Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney

Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard

Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless

Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti

Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld Quiz

Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?

Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time

Nader/Kerry Quandary

Stephen Gowans
Communists for Capitalism?

Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto

Mickey Z
Turn ON

Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?

Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?

Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp

Website of the Weekend
Missing

 

 

April 2, 2004

Dave Lindorff
Barbaric Relativism: the Press and Fallujah

Kurt Nimmo
Wherever Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow

Emma Miller
The Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide

Dr. Susan Block
Same Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition

Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick

Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey

Christopher Brauchli
The Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee

Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.

 

April 1, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq

Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree

Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons

Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo

Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers

Laura Flanders
Elaine Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son


March 31, 2004

M. Junaid Alam
Israel: Suicide Nation?

John L. Hess
Condi Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?

Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year Since My Son's Death in Iraq

Sofia Perez
Spain's U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action

David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath

Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination

Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge

Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI

Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great

Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and International Law

Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks

 

 

March 30, 2004

William S. Lind
An Occurrence in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't

Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail & Justice

Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"

Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination

Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way

John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi Rice's Idea of Democracy

Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order

Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power in Venezuela

Bill Christison
The 9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future

Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl

 


March 29, 2004

John Maxwell
Crisis in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold

J. Michael Springmann
Email Spying & Attorney Client Privilege

Robert Fisk / Severin Carrell
Coalition of the Mercenaries

The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror

Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made

David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Bargain

Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism

Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American Family

Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again

Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests

Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11

Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing

Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?

 

 

March 27 / 28, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts

Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria

William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the US

Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army

Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?

Larry Birns / Jessica Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America

John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"

John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus

Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?

Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists

Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy

Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids

Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?

The Kerry Quandry

Joel Wendland
Marxists for Kerry

Josh Frank
Scary, Scary John Kerry

Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy

Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer

 

 

March 26, 2004

Christopher Brauchli
There's a Chill Over the Country

Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal of Mordechai Vanunu

Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again

Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon

Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead

Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago

CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?

John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb

Website of the Day
Dick is a Killer

 

March 25, 2004

Lee Sustar
Who is to Blame for Lost Jobs?

Standard Schaefer
An Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers

Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins to Throw Off the Austerity Planners

Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"

Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups

Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela

Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded

Saul Landau
Is Venezuela Next?

Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway

 

 

March 24, 2004

Gary Leupp
General Musharraf's IOU

Richard Oxman
Shakespeare for Kerry

William Lind
The Beginning of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq

Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later

Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again

Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn

Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media in Cuba

John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke

Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"

Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela

Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?

Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only Fuel More Suicide Bombings

Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey

 

 

March 23, 2004

Phillip Cryan
The Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks

Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?

Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections

Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George

Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble

JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"

Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black CD

Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track

Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]

M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie

 

March 22, 2004

Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial Executions

Uri Avnery
The Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime

Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage

Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee

Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy Scam

Greg Moses
Stop Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March

Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation

Lenni Brenner
Report from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace

Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations

Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment

Website of the Day
Enviros Against War

 

 

March 20 / 21, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Gay Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path

Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne Do?

Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities

Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act

Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"

William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall

Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism

Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War

John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon

Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man

Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity

Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss

Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?

Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism

Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun

Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!

Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill

Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet

Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility

Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election

 

 

March 19, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home

Ann Harrison
So Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?

William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"

Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote

Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup, Mr. Bush

Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future

John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs

Vicente Navarro
The End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend

Website of the War
Naming the Dead

 


March 18, 2004

Gila Svirsky
Rachel Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency

Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million from Saddam

William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing

Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative

Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment

Josh Frank
The Nader Question

Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy

Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey

Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain

Gary Leupp
The Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost

Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key

 

March 17, 2004

Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on Terror or Civil Liberties?

David MacMichael
Untruth and Consequences

Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer

Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware

Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out

Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections

Peter Linebaugh
Bush: Blanc Blanc

 

March 16, 2004

Lenni Brenner
James Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights

Scott Boehm
Madrid Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days

Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History Behind the Spanish Elections

Sam Hamod and Alfredo Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way: Executing David Clayton Hill

Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran

Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War on Terror"

Bill Christison
The Aftershocks from Madrid

CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa

Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!

 

March 15, 2004

Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe

Mike Whitney
Justice Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism

Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation

Greg Moses
Lessons from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs

Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health

Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer

CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!

 

March 12 / 14, 2004

Gabriel Kolko
The Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power

Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!

William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)

William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks

Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us All Less Safe

Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars

Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists

Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor

Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge

Helen Scott and Ashley Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?

Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy of the American Prison

Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On

Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding

Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith

Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier

 

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


Search CounterPunch

 

April 8, 2004

The War's One Simple Truth

Iraqis Do Not Want Us

By ROBERT FISK

A war founded on illusions, lies and right-wing ideology was bound to founder in blood and fire. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He was in contact with al-Qa'ida, he was involved with the crimes against humanity of 11 September. The people of Iraq would greet us with flowers and music. There would be a democracy.

Even the pulling-down of Saddam's statue was a fraud. An American military vehicle tugged the wretched thing down while a crowd of only a few hundred Iraqis watched. Where were the tens of thousands who should have pulled it down themselves, who should have been celebrating their "liberation"?

On the night of 9 April last year, the BBC even managed to find a "commentator" to heap abuse on me and The Independent for using quotation marks around the word "liberation".

In fact, freedom from Saddam's dictatorship in those early days and weeks meant freedom to loot, freedom to burn, freedom to kidnap, freedom to murder. The initial American and British blunder--to allow the mobs to take over Baghdad and other cities--was followed by the arrival of the far more sinister squads of arsonists who systematically destroyed every archive, every government ministry (save for Oil and Interior which were, of course, secured by US troops), Islamic manuscripts, national archives and irreplaceable antiquities. The very cultural identity of Iraq was being annihilated.

Yet still the Iraqis were supposed to rejoice in their "liberation". The occupying power sneered at reports that women were being kidnapped and violated--in fact, the abductions of men as well as women were at the rate of 20 a day and may now be as high as 100 a day--and steadfastly refused to calculate the numbers of Iraqi civilians killed each day by gunmen, thieves and American troops.

Even this week, as the promises and lies and obfuscations fell apart, the American military spokesman was still only able to give military casualties--this when more than 200 Iraqis are reported to have been killed in the US attack on Fallujah.

Over the months, the isolation of the occupation authorities from the Iraqi people they were supposed to care so much about was only paralleled by the vast distance in false hope and self-deceit between the occupying powers in Baghdad and their masters back in Washington.

Paul Bremer, America's proconsul in Iraq, started off by calling the resistance "party remnants", which is exactly what the Russians used to call their Afghan opponents after they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Then Mr Bremer called them "diehards". Then he called them "dead-enders". And, as the attacks against US forces increased around Fallujah and other Sunni Muslim cities, we were told this area was the "Sunni triangle", even though it is much larger than that implies and has no triangular shape.

So when President Bush made his notorious trip to the Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of all "major military operations"--beneath a banner claiming "Mission Accomplished"--and when attacks against US troops continued to rise, it was time to rewrite the chapter on post-war Iraq. "Foreign fighters" were now in the battle, according to the US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld. The US media went along with this nonsense, even though not a single al-Qa'ida operative has been arrested in Iraq and of the 8,500 "security detainees" in American hands, only 150 appear to be from outside Iraq. Just 2 per cent.

Then as winter approached and Saddam was caught and the anti-American resistance continued, the occupying powers and their favourite journalists began to warn of civil war, something no Iraqi has ever indulged in and which no Iraqi has ever been heard discussing. Iraq was now to be frightened into submission. What would happen if the Americans and British left? Civil war, of course. And we don't want civil war, do we?

The Shia remained quiescent, their leadership divided between the scholarly and pro-Western Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and the impetuous but intelligent Muqtada Sadr. They opened their mass graves and mourned those thousands who were tortured and executed by Saddam's butchery and then asked why we used to support Saddam, why it took us 20 years to discover the need to stage our humanitarian invasion.

If the occupation authorities had bothered to study the results of a conference on Iraq held by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut recently, they might be forced to acknowledge what they cannot admit: that their opponents are Iraqis and that this is an Iraqi insurgency.

An Iraqi academic, Sulieman Jumeili, who lives in the city of Fallujah, told how he discovered that 80 per cent of all rebels killed were Iraqi Islamist activists. Only 13 per cent of the dead men were primarily nationalists and only 2 per cent had been Baathists.

But we cannot accept these statistics. Because if this is an Iraqi revolt against us, how come they aren't grateful for their liberation? So, after the atrocities in Fallujah just over a week ago when four US mercenaries were killed, mutilated and dragged through the streets, General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, sanctioned what is preposterously called "Operation Vigilant Resolve". And now that Sadr's thousands of Shia militiamen had joined in the battle against the Americans, General Sanchez had to change the narrative yet again.

No longer were his enemies Saddam "remnants" or even al-Qa'ida; they were now "a small (sic) group of criminals and thugs". The Iraqi people would not be allowed to fall under their sway, General Sanchez said. There was "no place for a renegade militia".

So the marines smashed their way into Fallujah, killing more than 200 Iraqis, including women and children, while using tanks fire and helicopter gunships against gunmen in the Baghdad slums of Sadr City. It took a day or two to understand what new self-delusion had taken over the US military command. They were not facing a country-wide insurgency. They were liberating the Iraqis all over again! So, of course, this will mean a few more "major military operations". Sadr goes on the wanted list for a murder after an arrest warrant that no one told us about when it was mysteriously issued months ago--supposedly by an Iraqi judge--and General Mark Kimmitt, General Sanchez's number two, told us confidently that Sadr's militia will be "destroyed".

And so the bloodbath spreads ever further across Iraq. Kut and Najaf are now outside the control of the occupying powers. And with each new collapse, we are told of new hope. Yesterday, General Sanchez was still talking about his "total confidence" in his troops who were "clear in their purpose", how they were making "progress" in Fallujah and how--these are his actual words, "a new dawn is approaching".

Which is exactly what US commanders were saying exactly a year ago today--when US troops drove into the Iraqi capital and when Washington boasted of victory against the Beast of Baghdad.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.


Weekend Edition Features for April 3 / 4, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants a Problem? We're Shocked

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business Without Really Trying

Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God

Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine

Frederick B. Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer

Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising

Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney

Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard

Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless

Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti

Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld Quiz

Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?

Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time

Nader/Kerry Quandary

Stephen Gowans
Communists for Capitalism?

Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto

Mickey Z
Turn ON

Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?

Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?

Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp

Website of the Weekend
Missing



Keep CounterPunch Alive:

Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /