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Recent Stories

April 3, 2003

Uri Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and the Theater of Operations

David Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?

Anthony Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer

David Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused to Fight

Michael Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits

Ramzy Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?

Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears

Anton Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon

Alison Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie

Bruce Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice

Eliot Katz
War's First Week

Steve Perry
War Web Log 04/03

 

April 2, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The Politics of Casualties

David Lindorff
Making America Safer...for Iraqi Fighters

William Blum
Some Observations on the Recent Behavior of the Empire

Gustavio Sierra
The Morning After the Slaughter at Nasser

Patrick Cockburn
Playing Into Saddam's Hands

Robert Jensen
Peter Arnett: Whipping Boy of the Pentagon

Jeremy Brecher
Uniting for Peace Update

N.D. Jayaprakash
The Siege of Basra

LaDawn Haglund
You Can Jail the Resisters, But You Can't Arrest the Resistance

Robert Fisk
Truth and Subterfuge

Jemima Khan
I'm Ashamed to be British

Steve Perry
War Web Log

Stew Albert
Total War

Website of the Day
Traitor List: Sign Up Now!

 

April 1, 2003

Jason Leopold
Rumsfeld: "Get Me Rewrite"

William S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning

Jorge Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again

Paul de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda

Jo Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"

Tarif Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly

Lee Sustar
Labor's War at Home

Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil

Bernard Weiner
The Vietnam Connection

Robert Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North Gate

Steve Perry
War Web Log 04/01

Website of the Day
A Collectible War

 

March 31, 2003

David Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes

Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair

John Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions

Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on War

Wayne Madsen
The Siege of Washington

Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death

Robert Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent

Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home

Anthony Gancarski
Investigate Perle

Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary

Steve Perry
War Web Log 03/31

 

March 29, 2003

Kathy and Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper

Ben Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography American Style

Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's Berserk Cops

Kurt Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There

Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the War Profiteer

Ann Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?

Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere is Safe

Ramzy Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya Shelter

David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting Continues

John Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International Law

Robert Fisk
Bombing the Phone System

Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla

Tom Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell

Alexander Cockburn
"War Not Going According to Plan"

 

March 28, 2003

Robert Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra

Daniel Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime

Chris Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers

David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington

Pierre Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris and Iraq

Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising Hawk

Saul Landau
Technological Massacre

Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs

Riad Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101

Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe

Steve Perry
War Web Log

 

March 27, 2003

Anthony Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad

Rahul Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as Military Target

Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan

William S. Lind
No Exit

Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning

The Black Commentator
Onward Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War

Mickey Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan: Genocide in East Timor

Richard Thieme
The Problem of Empathy

Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California Out of Billions

Tariq Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power

Alexander Cockburn
Up the Creek

 

March 26, 2003

Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell

Pablo Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips

David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe

Linda Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush-Style

Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America

Adam Engel
Buckets of Blood

Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed

David Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy

Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen

April Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad

Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame

Reema Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me

 

March 25, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime

Gary Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo

Bill and Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi

Bruce Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?

Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on the War

Jason Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market

Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country

 

March 24, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs

David Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero

Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice

Kathy Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe

John Stanton
US Bombs Iran

Wayne Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower

Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West

David Vest
Earth vs. Bush

Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective

Robert Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer

 

 

March 22 / 23, 2003

Edward Said
The Other America

Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire

Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank

Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh

Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco

Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire

Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell

Chris Floyd
Memory Lane

Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack

Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy

Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch

Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?

Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?

Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!

Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?

Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global

Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges

Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity

Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart

Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana

Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler

 

March 21, 2003

Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil: the Exchange Rate

Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits

Scott Handleman
Fourth Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco

Vanessa Jones
Paint Them Red

Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest for Professors

Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?

Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons

Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror

Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup

Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce

Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets

Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)

Website of the War
Iraq Body Count

 

March 20, 2003

Jo Wilding
From Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad

Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier Once

Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become an Outlaw Nation?

Shane Claiborne
Nomadic Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War

Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack

Anthony Gancarski
Michelle Makin's "Liberty Shields"

Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and Facts About the War on Iraq

Jason Leopold
Cheney's Lies About Halliburton and Iraq

Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual

Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War

Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign

Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace

William Hughes
War is Theft

Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from Iran

Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa

Website of the Day
Iraq Body Count

 

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April 5, 2003

Hell for Leather

Bullets, Bombs, Bibles and Bush

By CHRIS FLOYD

Even as the sleek techno-wizardry of "Shock and Awe" gives way to the old-fashioned slog of "Blood and Guts" on the battlefields of Iraq, the Bush Regime's postwar plans continue apace. It's now clear that the Bushists aim to turn Iraq into an American protectorate--a supine dependency like Guam, Puerto Rico or Britain--by controlling every aspect of life in the conquered land.

The blueprint for colonial rule, being drawn up by Project for the New American Century alum Paul Wolfowitz (without any input from those silly-billy Brits or--it goes without saying--that discarded hunk of junk, the UN), will install an American arms merchant, former general Jay Garner, as civilian supremo, the Guardian reports. Garner--who has publicly declared his admiration for Israel's highly successful methods of administrating occupied Arab territories--will oversee a coterie of American proconsuls and Iraqi factotums, including the self-proclaimed, Washington-paid "leader" of the Iraqi opposition, Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted bank fraudster who has not lived in his native land since 1956.

American masters will determine Iraq's domestic government, foreign policy, economic system, even the education of its children. (The ones who haven't been killed by their liberation, that is.) Reconstruction contracts will be awarded to favored American companies, and the Bushists will seize control of the UN's "food-for-oil" program to finance this ladling of prime political pork. As imperial architect Wolfowitz himself puts it: "There's a lot of money out there. To assume we're going to pay for this war is just wrong."

But you mustn't think that all this moolah-mongering means Iraq' spiritual needs are being ignored. As always with your classic Anglo-American imperial conquest, sword, flame, bullet and bomb will be accompanied by the maniacal whacking of Biblical leather. Just this week, Bush of Arabia's favorite preacher announced he was mustering an evangelical army to Christianize the defeated heathen hordes, Newhouse News Service reports.

Of course, Christianity has existed in Iraq for two thousand years--rather longer than in, say, Texas--but such nuances are lost on the Bushist Party's much-coddled "core supporters" in the hardline Christian Right. And so the Reverend (sic) Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, declared that his relief group, Samaritan's Purse, will follow the Anglo-American invaders with blankets, food--and Jesus on tap. He was quickly joined by America's largest--and most Bushist--Protestant sect, the Southern Baptists, who proclaimed their plans to launch a second front of their own in the bread-for-souls campaign.

As we all know, Daddy Graham sealed his place in history about 15 years ago by convincing the booze-guzzling, nostril-burning--but eminently well-connected--George W. Bush to trade Jack Daniels for Jesus Christ. Graham also schooled his acolyte in the inherent damnability of perfidious Jewry--a lesson little Georgie was a bit too apt to repeat in mixed company, until his handlers finally got him under control.

[Yes, we know about the influence of the small group of Likud -leaning, war-whooping Jewish "neo-conservatives"--Wolfowitz, the disgraced Richard Perle, the convicted perjurer Elliot Abrams, etc.--whom Bush has brought into power. But these figures--representing a tiny, extremist sliver of the vast and variegated glory of Jewish thought--are merely useful tools for the "Dominion Christians" who serve as the fedayeen of the Bushist Party. For believers of Bush's primitivist ilk, Israel's only importance is its role as the staging ground for the universal genocide of Armageddon--a feast of carnage and obliteration for which the Dominionites yearn with a deep, erotic fervor. Come the Rapture, they will joyfully ship the Jews to Hell.]

Now, with Billy ailing, son Franklin has taken over the pastoring of Bush's soul (or the "Jack Daniels watch," as it's sometimes called). He even gave the invocation at Bush's inauguration (or the "Loser Takes All Ball," as it's sometimes called). We're sure that Franklin's deep and sensitive understanding of Islam--which he calls "a very wicked and evil religion"--will serve him well as, with the president's blessing, he spreads the good news of Christ Militant amongst the smoldering ruins and uranium-choked dust of Basra and Baghdad.

But of course, the war is not yet won. Young American men and women are still in the field, caught in a vortex of fear, death, rage and atrocity. And so another group of busy Bushist beavers is helping these war-battered troops stay focused on the most important thing of all: praying for George W. Bush.

Leather-whacking televangelist Charles Stanley has supplied thousands of U.S. soldiers with a list of daily prayers for the Dear Leader--and his holy family too. There's even a tear-out card to mail the pledge directly to the White House: "I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops." (Note the careful ordering here--gotta get your priorities straight!) Soldiers are directed to ask that God keep the precious Bushist leaders "safe, healthy, well-rested and free from fear" (unlike the poor suckers praying for them).

Finally, the ritual supplications adjure our well-rested Crusader chieftains to "recognize their divine appointment" and rule according to holy scripture--perhaps by following the postwar policy of the Lord Himself (Numbers, Chapter 31) after His troops routed the Midianite army: "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

Yep, that old whacked leather is just chockfull of handy wartime hints.

Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com


Today's Features

Uri Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and the Theater of Operations

David Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?

Anthony Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer

David Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused to Fight

Michael Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits

Ramzy Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?

Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears

Anton Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon

Alison Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie

Bruce Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice

Eliot Katz
War's First Week

Steve Perry
War Web Log 04/03

 

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