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Recent
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May
10 / 11, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Rosenthal Faces the Music in Key
Med Marijuana Case
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Labor in the Dawn of Empire
Annie
C. Higgins
The Last Time I Saw Mus'ab
Ron Jacobs
The Devil in New England
William
Mandel
One on One with Sen. Joe McCarthy
Jason Leopold
Halliburton Still Flouts the Law as It Profits from Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Iraqi Quagmire
Larry Magnuson
William Bennett: Next Viceroy
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Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The Good Terrorists?
Anthony
Gancarski
Chalabi: Drowning in Ba'ath-water?
Steven
Sherman
A Letter to My European Friends
Khaled
El-Bizri
Mr. Bush Comes to Santa Clara
Bruce
Jackson
How Fear Curdles the Soul
Adam Engel
Flag in the Rain
Poets
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Reiss, Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/10
Website
of the Weekend
Killing Again
May
9, 2003
Rahul
Mahajan
Don't Lift the Sanctions Yet
Wayne
Madsen
When Lying Pays Off: Neo-Con Fabricators
Chris
Floyd
The Karamazov Question
Don Monkerud
The Great Christian Schism: War or Peace?
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Drunk on Power: Bush, Power and the
Pathology of the Dry Drunk
Hammond
Guthrie
Bombastic Promise Keeping
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/09
May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
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Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
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of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
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Anthony
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Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
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Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
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The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
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Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
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Hot Fun in the Summertime
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Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
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Over Our Dead Bodies
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American Bulk
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May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
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Bush's Military Defeat
John
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Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
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Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
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Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
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Peter
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May Day at Kut and Kienthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
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Bush's War Web Log 5/01
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South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
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Steve
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Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
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Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
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April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
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Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
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Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
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Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
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Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
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Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
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Bush's War Web Log 4/29
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Elaine
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May
12, 2003
Group Therapy
Bush,
Bin Laden, Bechtel and Baghdad
By CHRIS FLOYD
Veteran observers of the klepto-plutocracy that
has, lazar-like, long encrusted the American body politic were
not surprised to see the hoary name of the Bechtel Group bobbing
up in the swill of sweetheart deals now being doled out by the
Corrupter-in-Chief for the "reconstruction" of his
new fiefdom in Iraq. Decades before its comrade in cronyism,
the Carlyle Group, made its meteoric, Bush-assisted ascent to
global prominence, Bechtel had already perfected the dark art
of milking intimate government connections for fat, risk-free
contracts.
Last week, while the notorious coward
George W. Bush --who walked away from his National Guard duty
during the Vietnam War, a criminal act known as "desertion"
when committed by lesser mortals --was basking in the man-musk
of a shipload of sailors, reciting his usual lies about al Qaeda's
"alliance" with Saddam Hussein, and weasel-wording
his "victory" declaration to avoid taking full legal
responsibility for the consequences of the war of aggression
he had unleashed, Bechtel was quietly pocketing a secret, closed-bid,
open-ended Iraq contract that could give them almost $700 million
in taxpayer money before the 2004 election --with the alluring
prospect of untold billions to follow, Mother Jones reports.
What's more, as the New Yorker reports,
this public largess will also fill the coffers of a key Bechtel
partner in Saudi Arabia --a well-connected global conglomerate
that has also been a long-time financial partner of both George
Bush I and George Bush II: the Bin Laden Group.
Bechtel, which has served Saudi royalty
for more than 60 years, bristles with heavyweight kleptoplute
connections. During the 1980s, current Bush warlord Don Rumsfeld
acted as a paid shill for a Bechtel pipeline project in the Middle
East, operating with the blessing of the Reagan-Bush administration's
secretary of state, George Schultz --Bechtel's former president
(and now "senior counsel" to the company). Rummy conducted
a passionate two-year courtship of a certain Saddam Hussein,
plying him with trinkets, blandishments and sweetmeats to win
his lordly favor for a Bechtel-built line from Iraq to Jordan,
according to national security archives obtained by the Institute
for Policy Studies.
Rumsfeld's strenuous attempt to lay pipe
with Saddam happened to coincide with the latter's most extensive
use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war --gassing carried out
with the exemplary assistance of U.S. military intelligence and
technology provided by the Reagan-Bush administration and its
"special envoy" to Baghdad: Don Rumsfeld. Meanwhile,
another Reagan-Bush crony, Attorney General Ed Meese, tried to
bribe the Israeli government with $700 million in secret funds
to put the kibosh on their opposition to the Bechtel deal, the
San Francisco Chronicle reports. This skullduggery earned Meese
an investigation by a special prosecutor, but as the case lacked
the key element of any serious government crime --oral sex with
an intern --the probe was soon dropped.
In the end, Saddam --who first went on
the CIA payroll back in the early 1960s, Reuters reports --balked
at Bechtel's billion-dollar price tag and rejected the project.
Now of course, in a fitting bit of historical symmetry, the son
of the CIA's most famous director, George Bush, has handed Iraq
to Bechtel on a silver platter.
This move will delight --and enrich --the
Bush/Bechtel buddies in the Bin Laden Group. As oft noted in
these pages, in the 1980s George W. Bush received a helping hand
for his floundering oil businesses from the Saudi group's front
man, Khalid bin Mahfouz, who secretly cast bin Laden bread upon
American waters to win influence with well-connected kleptoplutes
--like, say, the wayward son of the former CIA director and then-current
Vice President.
Today, Mahfouz is under house arrest
in Saudi Arabia for allegedly financing the holy-war hijinks
of the bin Ladens' own wayward son, Osama. Or to be completely
accurate, he's accused of financing those holy-war hijinks after
the Reagan-Bush CIA finally stopped financing them. But despite
his confinement, Mahfouz (who is also Osama's brother-in-law)
is still a player in the kleptoplute nexus: for example, he's
currently a business partner of former New Jersey Governor Thomas
Kean --the very man whom George W. Bush has appointed to chair
the investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks allegedly
ordered by, yes, that ex-CIA employee and former executive of
the Bin Laden Group: Osama bin Laden.
The Bin Laden Group was also heavily
invested in the Carlyle Group, the "private equity"
firm (and major arms merchant) that, like Bechtel, specializes
in the sell-off of public services and other government-insider
deals. Carlyle's best-known bagman, George Bush I, used to make
ritual pilgrimages to bin Laden family headquarters in Saudi
Arabia to procure their potent baksheesh. When Carlyle's post-Sept.
11 orgy of war-profiteering began drawing unwanted attention,
however, the bin Ladens cashed in their Carlyle chips and, officially,
ended the partnership.
But they remain welded to Bechtel and
will now reap the fruits of the latest installment of the War
of the Wayward Sons --a conflict driven on both sides by ludicrous
and primitive religious passions coupled with a voracious lust
for power and loot. Yet although this war has now engulfed the
entire planet, it is no "clash of civilizations" or
grand agon of world-historical forces. As shown by the small
sampling of connections above, it's more of a dust-up in the
boardroom, a falling-out at the country club, a bit of bad blood
amongst a tiny clique of vicious predators threaded together
in a Byzantine web of kinship, corporate ties --and complicity
in generations of murderous crime.
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor
to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Yesterday's
Features
Alexander
Cockburn
Rosenthal Faces the Music in Key
Med Marijuana Case
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Labor in the Dawn of Empire
Annie
C. Higgins
The Last Time I Saw Mus'ab
Ron Jacobs
The Devil in New England
William
Mandel
One on One with Sen. Joe McCarthy
Jason Leopold
Halliburton Still Flouts the Law as It Profits from Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Iraqi Quagmire
Larry Magnuson
William Bennett: Next Viceroy
of Iraq?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The Good Terrorists?
Anthony
Gancarski
Chalabi: Drowning in Ba'ath-water?
Steven
Sherman
A Letter to My European Friends
Khaled
El-Bizri
Mr. Bush Comes to Santa Clara
Bruce
Jackson
How Fear Curdles the Soul
Adam Engel
Flag in the Rain
Poets
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/10
Website
of the Weekend
Killing Again
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