Today's Stories

October 24 / 26, 2008

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

Weekend Edition
October 24 / 26, 2008

How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?

Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

By RON JACOBS

I should be used to it by now, but I'm not.  When I read statements from US policymakers telling the world that Iraq is still not capable of defending itself without US help, I am still angered and amazed at the bold-faced arrogance.  Most recently, several US political leaders and generals have told the Iraqi and American people that only they know when it is time for US troops to leave Iraq.  Furthermore, while Iraqis from virtually every segment of that nation's political sphere demand changes in the US-imposed agreement to keep US forces there, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice vocalizes Washington's response: we decide what we want to do in Iraq and we decide how long we will stay, so take it or leave it.  If you leave it, then we will find another way to stay, and if we do, we will make your lives more miserable than we already have.

What's different about this communication from Washington is that it is not only directed at the everyday people of Iraq.  It is also directed at the client government Washington has installed there.    Of course, the demands being made by the Green Zone parliament are only being made because the Iraqi people are pressuring this group of Iraqi politicians to make those demands.  Naturally, there are those in Washington and in the US media who see the Green Zone government's demands as ungrateful and bordering on insubordination.  One can almost hear them asking:  How could those ungrateful people have the brashness to demand the right to prosecute those who would kill Iraqi civilians without recourse?  How dare these Iraqi officials who rule only because we gave them the wherewithal to do so tell us that all US troops must leave their country by a certain date?  Even more to the point, how dare the government in Baghdad that Washington created and maintains tell us what Iraqi sovereignty is?  After all, it is the occupier who determines what the natives will rule and what the occupier will rule.  Haven't they read their Kipling?

As Michael Schwartz makes very clear in his recently released book War Without End: The Iraq War in Context, Washington went into Iraq with the intention of controlling the resources and destiny of that country and using it as a base for controlling the Middle East and South Asia.  As Schwartz also makes very clear, Washington will not leave until it is certain of that control.  Of course, there is a part of this equation that is the unpredictable variable.  What if the Iraqis refuse to go along with this plan of Washington's?  Or, even more important to those of us whose tax dollars are funding this war, what if we refuse to go along with this plan? 

Schwartz's book, which is, if not the best book written on the US war and occupation of Iraq,  certainly one of the best, is more than a litany of the death and destruction undertaken by occupying troops.  It is also a sharp analysis of the twists and turns of the war and occupation that is based on the underlying assumption that this war and occupation has always been about dominance of the Middle East and control of its resources and destiny.  After reading this book, it becomes clear that this motivation is the only one that makes consistent sense.

As the debate continues to unfold around the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between Washington and the Iraqis in the Green Zone, one can expect threats of a US withdrawal to be made.  In fact, certain news reports in some US newspapers reported as much on October 22, 2008.  According to these reports, Washington has told members of the Green Zone government that Washington will pull its troops if the SOFA is not signed.  Apparently, Washington considers this to be a threat and hopes that the green Zone politicians will fall in line out of fear that they will not survive without US troops to protect them.  At this juncture in Iraq's history, one wonders if this threat from Washington might be a miscalculation.   As noted above, Ms. Rice is on record saying that she doesn't believe the Green Zone government can defend itself as it is currently constituted.  However, is it possible that Iraqis (even those in the Green Zone government) are not interested in that government as it is currently constituted?  If so, then Washington's threat of withdrawal is not only an empty threat, it is potentially a shrewd move on the part of the Iraqis and a potential victory for the Iraqi people, who have made it clear with IEDs, votes, public opinion polls and a myriad other means that they want the US military and its support mechanisms (including contractors, intelligence services and others) out of their country the sooner, the better.

Unfortunately, a US departure is not likely to come so easily, no matter how much the Iraqis and Americans may want it.  The more likely scenario is that the debate over the SOFA will continue and if an agreement is not reached by the deadline of December 31, 2008, some kind of temporary mandate will be established by Washington to keep its troops in place throughout Iraq.  If Washington is unable to keep its troops in Iraq legally after that date, then don't look for a withdrawal.  After all, if I recall, the fact that the invasion that brought US troops into Iraq in 2003 was of questionable legality.  That certainly  didn't seem to matter very much then. Continuing the occupation of Iraq illegally is unlikely to make much difference in 2009, either.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net  

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