Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
September 2, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Recent
Stories
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
2, 2003
We're Supposed to
Trust Them?
Iraqi
Liberation, Bush Style
By ROBERT JENSEN and
RAHUL MAHAJAN
Now that American-British lies and distortions
about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida
links have been thoroughly exposed, Bush administration officials
have had to create new rationalizations for the Iraq war.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late July that
"military and rehabilitation efforts now under way in Iraq
are an essential part of the war on terror. In fact, the battle
to secure the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the
war on terror."
Last Tuesday, George W. Bush told the
American Legion, "a democratic Iraq in the heart of the
Middle East would be a further defeat for [the terrorist networks']
ideology of terror."
And in early August, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice compared the U.S. mission in Iraq with
the civil rights movement: "[W]e must never, ever indulge
in the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa
or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom ...
or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities. ...
[That] view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong
in 2003 in Baghdad." Rice implied that those opposing the
U.S.  occupation are the moral equivalent
of white supremacists who thought black Americans incapable of
citizenship. To critique the Iraq occupation is to stand in the
schoolhouse door.
The Bush strategy is clear: If WMD and
terrorist links fail as rationalizations for war, don't worry;
let us now praise the liberation of Iraq. It turns out that all
along the invasion was about creating democracy in Iraq so that
Americans will be more secure.
The brutality of Hussein's regime had
long been known, not least to U.S. planners during the decade
the United States supported him through the worst of his atrocities.
But liberation rhetoric is designed to
divert people from questioning U.S. intentions. For the sake
of discussion, however, let's take Bush's claim at face value
and ask, How serious is the United States about establishing
a meaningful democracy in Iraq? How liberated are Iraqis?
Rebuilding a country devastated by three
wars (the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, the 1991 Gulf War, and this
year's invasion) and 13 years of punishing economic sanctions
is no small task. But, as Wolfowitz has admitted, U.S. planners
gave little thought to those problems. The United States is spending
$3.9 billion a month on military operations but has allocated
only $2.5 billion over two years for reconstruction.
Liberation, most would assume, also means
allowing people to decide their own fate. Yet the crucial decision
to privatize as much of the Iraqi economy as possible has been
effectively made by American officials to be ratified by a handpicked
Iraqi council.
U.S. officials also have eliminated most
import tariffs, which has resulted in a flood of goods into the
country - and hundreds of factory closings and increased unemployment.
Iraqi companies dealing with 13 years of economic crisis and
progressive decay under sanctions can't compete with foreign
goods.
One also might assume basic freedoms
are part of liberation. Yet the Coalition Provisional Authority
chief, Paul Bremer, gave himself the power to squelch Iraqi media
engaged in "incitement," which in practice means clamping
down on those who oppose the occupation. Under the headline "Bremer
is a Baathist," one paper editorialized, "We've waited
a long time to be free. Now you want us to be slaves."
Meanwhile, the U.S. military has fired
on crowds of peaceful demonstrators. The worst instance, which
was condemned by Human Rights Watch, was in Falluja in April
when 17 were killed. In a botched raid on a Baghdad house in
July, troops fired on Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and
killed up to 11, including two children. In one night in August,
six Iraqi civilians were killed at unannounced U.S. checkpoints.
All of this seems to suggest that, in the minds of occupation
authorities, Iraqi life is cheap.
Most Iraqis are happy to be free of the
regime of Saddam Hussein. But it's increasingly clear that the
well-being of Iraqis was not the reason for regime change.
Officials are quick to deny it had anything
to do with increasing U.S. military control over that strategically
crucial energy-rich region, or with control of the flow of oil
and oil profits -- even while they acknowledge plans to create
permanent military bases, use their new leverage against other
countries in the region, and privatize Iraq's oil.
We're supposed to trust them, though
all the signs point in the opposite direction. After all, they
haven't led us wrong on Iraq before, have they?
Robert Jensen,
a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin,
is the author of the forthcoming "Citizens of the Empire:
The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity" (City Lights Books).
He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
Rahul Mahajan
is a member of the Nowar
Collective. His newest book, "Full
Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond"
is just out from Seven Stories Press. His articles are collected
at http://www.rahulmahajan.com
He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca
Weekend
Edition Features for August 30 / Sept. 1, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
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