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Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories May 21 / 22, 2005 David H. Price CIA Skullgery in Academia May 20, 2005 Dave Lindorff Newsweek and White House Hypocrisy Kevin Zeese As Insurgency Increases, New US Military Recruits Fall Paul de Rooij "Private": a Film in Search of a Cliché Christopher Brauchli How Insurance Companies Exploited 9/11 Mark Engler Triumph Over Debt? Joshua Frank Bush to Dine with Porn Star Robert Jensen TV Talk, No Evidence Required Jeffery R. Webber Bolivia Erupts May 19, 2005 Bill Forman An Interview with Alexander Cockburn Stan Goff Hey, Democrats, Listen to Galloway and Learn Something Neve Gordon From Ghettos to Frontiers: What Will Happen After Israel Withdraws from Gaza Michael Dickinson The Trouble with Menwith: Tagging British Peace Activists Karyn Strickler The Texas Nexus: How Racial and Political Gerrymandering United Andrew Freedman Nazi Science at NIH Paul Craig Roberts The Politics and Economics of Outsourcing   May 18, 2005 Jean Bricmont Vive La France? Laura Carlsen Bush's Posada Carriles Quandry: an Anti-Cuba Terrorist is Still a Terrorist Mike Whitney The Secret Raids of Alberto Gonzales: 10,000 Swept Up Joshua Frank Flushing the Koran: Why Newsweek Got It Right George Galloway Thusly, I Humiliated Norm Coleman (and Christopher Hitchens) Manuel Garcia, Jr. Writing Tickets for American War Crimes Dwight D. Eisenhower How the GOP will Destroy Itself Dave Lindorff The Plot to Make the PATRIOT Act Even Worse May 17, 2005 Mickey Z. GIs Behaving Badly Petuuche Gilbert The People of Acoma Still Fight to be Free Paul Craig Roberts Lies That Kill: Why Isn't Bush in the Dock? Ramzy Baroud The New Palestinian Uprising Robert Jensen / Pat Youngblood Pinning the Blame on Newsweek Stan Cox Poisoning Patancheru: the Severe Side Effects of India's Drug Industry Dave Zirin American Anthem: Ozzie Guillen and Fining for Freedom Diana Barahona Reporters Without Borders Unmasked Website of the Day Revolutionary Flower Pot Society May 16, 2005 Michael Gillespie The Family Released a Statement: Death Notices for the Warrior Theocracy Jason Leopold BP Stains the Arctic Jesse Muldoon How Many Schools Left Behind? Norman Solomon Media and the War: "The Bombs in Iraq Explode at Home" Robert Cray Twenty Patrick Cockburn Iraq is a Bloody No Man's Land Website of the Day Bolton's Divorce Papers: She Took It All Away, Including Most of the Furniture May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Join the 14 Per Cent Club! Saul Landau Lessons from Vietnam: Wars Kill Empires as Well as People Gary Leupp Whither Yale? Towards the Imperial University JoAnn Wypijewski The Glory that is Lockhart, Texas Ben Tripp The Wayward Airplane: a Cautionary Tale Brian J. Foley Was Jesus Gay? Tom Barry Bolton the Eavesdropper Mitchell Verter Barbarous Oaxaca: Indigenous Rights Groups Meet the "Law of the Club" Mike Ferner War on COs: Army Files Additional Charges Against Kevin Benderman Dan Smith Perceiving Darfur Mark Scaramella Death with Pitfalls Don Fitz Mommy, Is This a Finger in My Rice Puffs?: Splicing Human DNA into the Food Chain Diane Farsetta PR Industry Imitates Big Tobacco: the Senate's "Fake News" Hearings Michael Dickinson Soldier Crawling: Military Conscription in Turkey Ron Jacobs The Jackson State Murders Fred Gardner "Hydroponics? Ridiculous!": A Real Farmer Looks at Medical Marijuana Farrah Hassen Far From Heaven: a Review of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" Douglas Valentine 50 Cent's Plea Poets' Basement Louise, Ford, Engel, & Albert Website of the Weekend Military Base Closings and the South May 13, 2005 Tom Stephens A Chronology of US War Crimes and Torture, 1975-2005 Patrick Cockburn "They Destroyed Everything" Mike Whitney Tom Friedman, Imperial Chronicler Chris Floyd Miami Vice: the Sleazy World of Jeb Bush Jenna Orkin Ground Zero's Toxic Dust Dave Lindorff Googling for Fun Joshua Frank Yale Fires an Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar: an Interview with David Graeber Website of the Day Botero: Pinta El Horror de Abu Ghraib   May 12, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts America is Losing: More Phony Jobs Hype Uri Avnery Death of a Myth Greg Moses Neo-Con Logic at the Border Carolyn Baker The Politics of Dominionism: the New Religious Right in America Pat Williams Amateurish High Jinks on Roadless Areas William S. Lind Reality Gap: the Myth of US Invincibilty Jack Random The Dubious Wisdom of George W. Bush Gary Leupp Douglas Feith Bares His Soul to Jeffrey Goldberg     May 11, 2005 Patrick Cockburn The Rise, Fall and Rise of Ahmed Chalabi: King of Jordan to Pardon His $300 Million Bank Swindle Kevin Zeese The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day Christopher Brauchli Coffee, Tea or Torture?: A One Way Ticket to Uzbekistan Zalman Amit The Collapse of Academic Freedom in Israel: Tantura, Teddy Katz and Haifa University Robert Shull Carte Blanche for the Terror Cops: Senate Gives DHS Power to Waive All Laws Mike Whitney God, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Anti-Arabic Week at a Southern High School Norman Solomon Political Bluster and the Filibuster   May 10, 2005 Richard Drayton The Imperial Mythology of WW II: an Ethical Blank Check Dave Zirin Steve Nash's Brilliant Year: Anti-War Hoopster Wins NBA's MVP Jackie Corr The Medicare Catch: Mrs. O'Hara's Windfall Dave Lindorff Silence of the Scams: Economists on China Michael Donnelly From Roadless to Clueless: the Great Stillborn Eco Victory Reza Fiyouzat Nomadic Abstracts Scott Parkin Taking Direct Action Against Halliburton Stephen Babcock The Burden of Knowing Better Alan Farago Florida, Water and Lobbyists Michael Neumann Naomi's Courage Website of the Day One Nation Under Plagiarism   May 9, 2005 Louis Proyect Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond, Greenwasher Robert Fisk "Mission Accomplished": the Occupation, Year Two Kevin Zeese Concientious Objection on Trial: the Court Martial of Keith Benderman Joshua Frank Kerry Bashes Gay Marriage Sasha Kramer A Mother's Day Call for Justice in Haiti's Prisons Andrew Wimmer Create and Resist Jeffrey Webber Back to the Streets in Bolivia? Jeffrey St. Clair Straight to Bechtel   May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Who Beat Hitler? Gary Leupp Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism Saul Landau Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups Joe DeRaymond Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega Daniela Ponce Seeing Chile in Nepal Heather Williams Hollywood Does Enron Gregory Elich Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice Anis Memon To Cuba and Back John Chuckman The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism" Mike Whitney Hard Right Rage Against the Truth Ron Jacobs Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq War Grinds On Colin Kalmbacher Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont. Lance Selfa Uprising in Mexico City Fred Gardner "Getting High is a Little Like Cuba" Ben Tripp Letters on Wittgenstein Mickey Z. The Mother of All Days Richard Joseph Those Patriotic Magnets Dr. Susan Block Come As You Are: Masturbation 101 Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert     May 6, 2005 Patrick Cockburn Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and Blood Erin Yoshioka Another "3 Strikes" Travesty: Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison? Sam Husseini Talking with Syrians Dave Lindorff Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters Kevin Zeese Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty Joshua Frank An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War Dan Bacher Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water Raid P. Sainath India's Bloody Water Wars     May 5, 2005 Carles Mutaner Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?" Carl G. Estabrook Is There Any Hope for the Pope? Farrah Hassen The US's Syrian Obsession Kevin Zeese "Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta Michael Leonardi May Day with an American Soldier in Rome Bennett Ramberg The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You Ray McGovern The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit Norman Solomon Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran Nicole Colson The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights Brian Concannon, Jr. Clearing the Fences in Haiti     May 4, 2005 Colin Kalmbacher Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested John Walsh Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War Greg Moses Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation" Ali Khan Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart Chris Floyd Ring Them Bells Linda S. Heard D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics Dave Zirin The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle William S. Lind Fool's Paradise Gary Leupp Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution Website of the Day Kent State, May 4, 1970   May 3, 2005 Dave Lindorff Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice Brian Cloughley Halliburton's War Loot Ira Kurzban Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers Seth Sandronsky Towards Debtors' Prisons? Gilad Atzmon The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More Michael Donnelly Branding Eco Collapse Alex Sanchez Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush? Peter Linebaugh Magna Carta and May Day   May 2, 2005 Ron Jacobs Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement Stan Goff The Case of Hasan Akbar Karyn Strickler Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics Joshua Frank Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly Kevin Zeese Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam Vicente Navarro Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician       April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility" Gabriel Kolko Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later Jennifer Loewenstein The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood Lee Sustar City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago Saul Landau The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power T.W. Croft The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy Nikolas Kozloff Fox News v. Hugo Chavez William Blum Never-Ending Double Standards Dave Lindorff Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly Joshua Frank The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls Doug Giebel Saving Jane Fonda Steven Erlanger A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief Fred Gardner Washington State Doctor Harassed Mike Whitney Another Mad Bush Press Conference Kurt Nimmo Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine Joe DeRaymond A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania Michael Dickinson Flags Mickey Z. May Day at Yankee Stadium Justin Taylor The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy Poets Basement Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Save Barbados's Cowpastor                                             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

Weekend Edition May 21 / 22, 2005 A Nation Willingly Deceived The Grand Illusion By DOUG GIEBEL That incriminating "smoking gun" memo proving the Bush and Blair Administrations pre-determined an invasion and occupation of Iraq long before the invasion occurred has apparently come and gone, barely noted in the American press, AWOL from editorial pages. Eighty-eight brave members of Congress signed and sent a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) asking President Bush to answer questions about thesecret U.S.-UK agreement to attack Iraq first reported in The Sunday Times of London on May 1, 2005. Will the Democrats' letter receive a response? Will our Sleeping Beauty White House Press Corpse press for answers to the letter's questions from President Bush and his parade of smoke-blowing B.S. jugglers? (And -- sidebar -- Is there a more wasteful administration game of spin-the-bottle than the Scott McClellan press briefing? Media advertisers should be ashamed that reporters are paid handsome salaries for dalliance time in this wink-and-nod charade.) As extremist "religious" political zealots continue to mount hellfire publicity campaigns over abortion, gay rights and pack-the-courts strategies, where are the voices of outraged patriotic Americans who should be calling en masse for a Watergate-style investigation of the Bush Administration's lies, deceptions, cover-ups and apparently-illegal actions that have sucked and suckered the nation into a never-ending undeclared "war" in the Middle East? Given their recent winning-is-everything aura, it is too much to ask any know-better Republicans to pursue this matter, even as some Democrats insisted on facts and truth from Bill Clinton, whose "smoking gun" evidence was a dress that sent no Americans to die for kin and country. The American Street has effectively tuned out the din of torture, wounding, death and destruction flowing daily from Iraq. Assassinations of thirty, fifty, four-hundred Iraqis barely cause a ripple in the nation's collective conscience. Unless thirty, fifty, four-hundred American soldiers are obliterated at a time, the public will sleep-walk thorough each day, unperturbed by a national media that ignored or buried the damning British memo in an effort to protect Americans from having to think about anything but "nuclear options," privatization and far-more crucial and attention-getting headlines such as "Small Plane Scare Evacuates White House." Even mass American casualties may not be enough to jar this Wal-Mart Generation from its appointed buying spree. On her recent headline-grabbing visit to Baghdad, Secretary of State Rice urged critical voices to back off. "If I could say one thing to all of us in the United States of America . . . it is that we need to be both more patient with people who are making these early steps, less critical of every twist and turn, less certain that every up and down is going to collapse the process, and more humble on about long it has taken us to get to a multiethnic democracy that works," said Rice as reported by the Associated Press. By all means, Dr. Rice, let your arrogant administration be "humble." 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But as for the public to be "less critical," how much less critical can the nation (including most Democrats) be than they have been so far? True, the Internet is filled with articles such as this one that repeatedly point to the facts and evidence spelling out the truth of an ill-fated adventure to demonstrate America's power to "shock and awe" the world into conformity. Preaching to the Choir won't bring justice, won't ring the alarm bell of accountability. The Baghdad stop-over gave Secretary Rice an opportunity to once again intone those magic words that US troops "will remain active in Iraq until Iraq is able to defend itself." What does this mean, exactly? Will Iraq ever be able to "defend itself"? If the almost-sufficiently-equipped Pentagon force and its dwindling Coalition of the Willing are unable to dim the "insurgency" with their tanks, helicopters, planes and other state-of-the-art weaponry, how can a reasonable person conclude even well-trained Iraqs could do so with far-less equipment and supplies? Will the Bush Administration (or any future administration) furnish a new Iraqi military with the latest in armored vehicles, tanks, helicopter gunships, jet fighter planes, rocket artillery sufficient to defend that country against attacks both domestic and foreign? Do camels have wings? The Department of Defense web site contains an Iraq Year In Review (Current to January 21, 2005). Here are some listed facts: Iraq's Air Force has three operational squadrons equipped with nine reconnaissance aircraft that operate both day and night, and three US C-130 transport aircraft. One more squadron, comprised of two UH-1 helicopters (to be followed by 14 more and by 4 Bell Jet Rangers from the UAE), will stand up later this month. Iraq's Mechanized Police Brigade recently completed training and will begin operations in mid-January, using fifty BTR-94 wheeled, armored vehicles. Enormous amounts of equipment have been delivered to Iraqi Security Forces since 1 July: * More than 69 million rounds of ammunition, with another 148 million recently received and put into twelve ammo storage areas around the country * 70,000 pistols * 49,000 AK-47s * 84,000 sets of body armor * 5,700 vehicles * 54,000 helmets * 1,700 PKM heavy machine guns * 20,000 radios The Department website also contains a long list of "Atrocities Committed by the Insurgency" that should be required reading for every American who believes an independent Iraqi military unsupported in the future by a massive amount of United States military and the blood-sacrifice of American men and women will ever be able to preserve peace and stability in a nation festering with internal conflict and surrounded by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Soon the Bush Administration will depart from office, leaving in its wake the unholy mess it unleashed when it chose to appropriate Iraq and flex American muscle in the midst of the roiling Middle East. Iraq will then be "somebody else's problem." George W. Bush can amble off into the Texas sunset confident that he did his best before he had to turn his tin star over to a successor: unimpeachably unrepentant for fooling an America that,"fooled twice," could not muster the national honor to cry, "Shame on you!" For America, once parent of a "Greatest Generation" who truly knew what "sacrifice" meant on a grand scale, has sired an indolent generation whose dreams dare not be disturbed by uncomfortable thoughts and "reality" nightmares. Those who are about to die for duty-honor-country are barely given a salute beyond ubiquitous magnetic "Support the Troops" banners affixed to vehicles of America's motorists. That our troops are still not fully-supplied with sufficient armor and other equipment stirs no mass outrage, so why would a memo exposing for once and all the lies of Bush and Blair make a ripple of difference? As in the classic Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin song from a different wartime era, Iraq is "Long Ago and Far Away." If support for the continuing conflict is tepid, opposition to the conflict seems muted as if this is indeed a nation on Prozac: dissatisfied somnolence. The leading dinosaurs of our national press have also been tranquilized. The morning after Bill Moyers unleashed his trenchant critique of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in St. Louis, neither The New York Times nor the Washington Post reported this most significant event. "Moderation" is preferable to probative reporting. What the citizens don't know won't harm the Bush Administration as it cruises on its own free way. The London Sunday Times memo convincingly demonstrates that the pre-approved decision to invade Iraq was truly based on lies, deception and illusion. The Bush-mandated invasion has led to consequences beyond imagining. Consequences will have consequences, as "blood will have blood." Here is one routine example, sent to me by a veteran of a different "war," whose relative now serves in Iraq because too-few Americans asked questions, demanded answers and said "no" when it would have counted. "A civilian is re-arranging a load of fruit boxes on his pickup. He is ordered by an American unit commander to get out of the vehicle. The Iraqi does not speak English. He responds with something in Arabic. The unit commander turns away and tells his soldiers 'shoot him' . . . and they do." Sleep well tonight, America. The rest is silence. Doug Giebel writes from Big Sandy, Montana. He welcomes comment at dougcatz@ttc-cmc.net