Cockburn
/ St. Clair"s Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today"s
Stories
July
3 / 4, 2004
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam"s
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush"s Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain"t Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush"s Damaged Mind: the Madness
in His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush"s Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker"s Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America"s Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft"s
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
June
29, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
The Cloak-and-Dagger Handover
Robert
Fisk
Alice in an Iraqi Wonderland
Troy
Selvaratnam
New York Times Boosts Pet Developer
Harry
Browne
Bush in Ireland
Ray
McGovern
The CIA According to Anonymous
Elaine
Cassel
Hamdi, Padilla & Rasul: Who Really
Won?
June
28, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn / Leyla Linton
Grisly Rituals in Iraq
Amira
Hass
Confronting Myths and Deadly Power
June
26 / 27, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang"s All Here
Patrick
Cockburn
Iyad Allawi, the CIA"s New Stooge
in Iraq
Dennis
Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
the NYTs and the Myth of an Iraq Link to 9/11
Ben
Tripp
Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
Dave
Lindorff
That State Department Terrorism
Report: What They Knew, But Didn"t Tell You
Chris
Floyd
Cold Irons Bound: the Russian Gambit
Ali
Tonak
Contamination at Berkeley: Profit Motives,
Academic Freedom and the Case of Ignacio Chapela
Keith
Rosenthal
The Withering of the Anti-War Movement
Bryan
Sacks
The Failure of the 9/11 Commission
Wayne
Madsen
Another Case of Blowback
Thomas
St. John
L. Frank Baum, Racist: Indian-Hating
in the Wizard of Oz
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
American Swadeshi
June
25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul
Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege:
Bush Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack
McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
Did Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel"s Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diana Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin"s Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz"s Colleagues Refused
to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Putin"s Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June
19 / 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation
on Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother
Nature
Col.
Dan Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis
in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a
Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets"
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June
18, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave
Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player
& Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American
Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
18, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron
Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They
Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan"s Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock"s Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global
Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
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Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
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Hitchens
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Israel"s
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Dardagan,
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CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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WMD: Who Said What When
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The
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Impeach
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Weekend
Edition
July 3/4, 2004
From
One Strong Man to the Next
A
Joke Called "Justice"
By
LINDA S. HEARD
I was a ticket-less person on the train
to Alexandria yesterday. It was either stand for the two-hour
journey from Cairo, or accept an invitation from a kindly trolley-wielding
employee of the state railways, who offered me a metal packing
case in the 'galley' on which to park my derriere. Expecting
a boring journey in the windowless, hot and smoky carriage, packed
with nicotine-starved men sucking in their morning's quota, somebody
politely asked my opinion on the pre-trial hearing of Saddam
Hussein. The journey sped by as everyone joined in what turned
out to be an animated discussion. I finally got off at Ramle
Station decidedly grubbier on the outside but enlightened within.
Egyptian men--or at least the
30 or so I journeyed with--admire Saddam for his pan-Arab ideology,
his willingness to take on the Americans, his generous support
for the Palestinians, and after seeing him in the dock, for his
quick mind and sharp wit. It was also clear that almost to a
man, Bush, Blair and Sharon were considered their 'axis of evil'
and anyone who stood up to the trio was a hero.
A shopkeeper said Saddam should
be hanged for what he did to the Iraqis, but he was soon shouted-down
by the rest, who felt his trial was a public humiliation for
all Arabs, everywhere. "Would you like to see your Mr. Blair
in the hands of foreigners being poked and prodded?" demanded
one. "Would you like to see him taken in handcuffs and chains
to an Arab court charged with crimes against humanity?"
Now I really had to think about that one.
I weakly answered: "Iraq
is sovereign now. It was an Iraqi court" but when I noticed
the expression on some of their faces, I retracted. They weren't
about to be conned, and I wasn't about to attempt that in defense
of the West.
You see, contrary perhaps to
the thinking of some Western politicians and intellectuals, Arabs
are far from stupid when it comes to cutting the crap. And they
are not as easy to indoctrinate as we often are because from
an early age their societies demand 'street-wise' thinking. Most
Arabs do not trust their leaders and politicians and in the poorer
countries they have to struggle to survive using a variety of
tools, including soft soap, the tweaking of the truth and 'wasta'--based
on cultivating contacts and using them for all their worth. Arabs
might tell people in power what they think they want to hear,
but deep down they keep their own counsel and their feet firmly
on the ground.
These widespread character
traits are part of the reason Bush, and his agenda-led entourage,
have no idea how Arabs think and feel, how they will react to
an event or what they truly want.
There ignorance was partly
why they were so easily taken in by the likes of Ahmad Chalabi,
his relative the current interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
and the Iraqi nuclear scientist Hussein Sharistani, who all insisted
that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist
groups. This they did as a means to an end. Iraqis in exile gave
the impression that invading U.S. troops would be welcomed with
flowers and Iraqis would join the coalition to oust the dictator.
It didn't happen that way,
but are those once exiled Iraqis ashamed of their deliberate
distortion of the truth? Not at all! As far as they are concerned
'all's fair in war' and they got what they wanted.
Iyad Allawi doesn't mind admitting
for example, that he sold himself to some 50 foreign intelligence-gathering
outfits, including the CIA. This is a former Ba'athist honcho
with an axe to grind against his one-time boss and someone who
attempted an earlier coup using what we call today 'terrorist
tactics'. This is a man who displays not one iota of compassion,
but instead talks about he intends to use pre-emptive strikes
to quell the insurgency, without saying when he expects or hopes
coalition troops will quit Iraqi land.
It is Allawi's relative Salem
Chalabi--a man with close business links with Marc Zell, a partner
in Zell, Goldberg & Co., which claims to be one of "Israel's
fastest-growing business-oriented law firms"--who heads
up the tribunal set-up to try Saddam and 11 other high-value
detainees.
Zell, who is a marketing consultant
for Salem's Baghdad-based law outfit, was formerly a partner
in the same law firm as the Zionist U.S. Under-Secretary of Defense
Douglas Feith--a founder member of the Project for a New American
Century, and one of the invasion's main instigators.
And as we learn from the forthright
journalist Robert Fisk, the judge presiding over Saddam's pre-trial
hearing was the same young man who approved a warrant for the
arrest of Shiite Cleric Moqtada Sadr in connection with the killing
of a fellow religious leader. What a coincidence!
We surely can't blame Arabs
for scoffing at Iraq's so-called fledgling sovereignty and democracy
when not only are Iyad Allawi, the Defense Minister Ali Allawi,
the discredited former Pentagon darling Ahmad Chalabi and Salem
Chalabi related, the new prime minister's brother-in-law Nuri
Badran was the former interior minister. In other words, together
with their U.S. masters, it's one big happy family.
Furthermore, we can't blame
Arabs for questioning why Saddam Hussein is still in the physical
custody of the Americans, or why he was flown to his hearing
in an American helicopter with American guards, wearing an off-the-peg
American-bought ensemble.
Arabs are no doubt asking why
Saddam's legal team has been kept languishing in Amman, refused
entry to the country, when every Tom, Dick and Moshe has managed
to get in. The world's media is asking why in a sovereign Iraq
it was the American military, which censored tapes of Saddam's
arraignment and why only American reporters were allowed inside
the courtroom. Not one Iraqi journalist or cameraman was able
to view the proceedings first hand in this new independent country.
Like Saddam himself, many view
the haste to parade Saddam in court as a theatrical stunt designed
to show Bush in a favorable pre-election light. Many questioned
the bringing forward by two days of the so-called handover of
sovereignty, just as Bush and Blair were in Turkey begging NATO
for cooperation with training the new Iraqi military and police.
In the event, it was synchronized to perfection down to 'Condi's'
hand-written note on which Bush scrawled 'Let freedom reign'.
As an Iraqi friend recently
told me, 'those with the big guns reign'. He is so right. The
interim government--with few exceptions - has shown itself to
be made up of pro-American stooges fashioned from the same mould
as Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai. They know only too well where
there bread is buttered and it isn't defending the Iraqi people
or the translation into reality of their hopes and dreams.
The US/UK script goes like
this: Saddam Hussein should appear as a cringing, broken figure
just as he did when hauled from his hole, the Iraqis should believe
that Allawi and Co are in control of their country, and troops
from the Arab world should keep the highest profile, while the
Americans retreat to their barracks. Iraqis must know that the
imposition of emergency laws and, perhaps, even a delay in 'free
and fair' elections are necessary for security, and ignore the
fact that Iraqis are being grabbed by the new mukhabarat, locked
up in ministry buildings, and beaten "because they are bad
people".
Once the U.S. has got the Iraqis
and other Arabs to do its dirty work, it can set about consolidating
its biggest and most fortified embassy in the world, the province
of Ambassador John Negroponte of Iran-Contra disrepute, and its
(what it hopes will become) permanent bases. If reports of a
planned invasion of Iran before Christmas 2005 are true, then
they will certainly come in handy. If not, they will serve to
intimidate not only the Iraqi quasi leadership but also the neighboring
countries of Syria and Iran. In the meantime, companies with
links to the U.S. administration can continue raking in the big
bucks from inflated reconstruction and security contracts.
That's the script. The problem
is most Iraqis have other ideas. Their former tolerance of coalition
troops has now turned to hatred following the military onslaught
of Fallujah, which took the lives of hundreds of civilians, the
incineration of an entire wedding party and the horrors of Abu
Ghraib. They would perceive the presence of Jordanian, Egyptian
or Yemeni soldiers as humiliation. The UN and NATO have already
shown their reluctance to get involved on the ground.
The bottom line is this: The
invasion was illegal because it was based on the false premise
of ridding Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Britain is
running scared to the extent that it has asked its courts to
refrain from pronouncing on its illegality as this would damage
national security and endanger the country's troops abroad. A
report from the Butler commission, to be published in July, is
going to prove a further embarrassment for Blair as it once again
scrutinizes his exaggerated if not mendacious 45-minutes WMD
claim, and unlike the Hutton enquiry, will not be a whitewash.
It is this basic illegality,
which Saddam's lawyers will place at the core of his defense,
together with the fact that the court was set up by the CPA under
L. Paul Bremer and is now under the auspices of a non-elected,
selected government.
With more than 15,000 Iraqi
civilians killed, thousands of Iraq children minus parents and
limbs, hundreds kept without access to family or lawyers, goodness
only knows how many tortured, beaten and sexually abused in the
coalition's many jails around the country, a growing number of
Arabs believe that Bush and Blair should be in the dock alongside
Saddam.
Moreover, there are cases to
be made against the coalition for the use of cluster bombs in
heavily populated areas and cancer-inducing depleted uranium
tanks shells. There is also a pressing moral case, if not a legal
one, for the years of sanctions, estimated to have resulted in
the deaths of one million Iraqis, including 500,000 children,
those Madeleine Albright said "were worth it".
We in the U.S. and Britain
have been no friends to the Iraqis in the past, and we are still
their worse enemies albeit having clothed ourselves in a false
flag of democracy and freedom. Do Bush and Blair truly want a
democratic Iraq? Not on your life.
They want another strongman,
another Saddam, but the new version should be more pliable and
accommodating to their interests than the original. So far Iyad
Allawi and his National Security Advisor Muwafiq Al-Rubaie (who,
along with the Defense Minister, according to one of the 97 injunctions
imposed on the interim government by Bremer before his departure,
cannot be ousted from their jobs even after elections) look like
heavy-duty contenders for the role.
Linda S Heard is a specialist writer on Mid-East
affairs. She welcomes feedback at solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk
Weekend Edition
Features for June 12 / 13, 2004
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