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Today's
Stories
January 5 /
6, 2008
Richard Rhames
Saddam
Who?
January 4,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Good Night in Iowa
Jonathan Cook
War Crimes Airbrushed from History
Paul Craig Roberts
Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime
Stan Goff
Ron Paul's Monkeywrench
Dave Lindorff
Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
To Pindi Station
Allan Nairn
U.S. Elections Over Before They Began
Joshua Frank
The Failures of Sectarianism
Peter Morici
Economy on the Skids
Mary McInnis
Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease
Website of the Day
The Return of Obama Girl
January 3,
2008
Fatima Bhutto
Farewell
to Wadi Bua
Pam Martens
The
Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos
Joanne Mariner
The Presidential Candidates and Torture
Zoltan Grossman
Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the
Web
David Domke
The Echoing Press and Huckabee
Norman Solomon
Edwards Reconsidered
Nikolas Kozloff
Return of the Faux Liberal
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus
Martha Rosenberg
Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick
Russell Means
This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah
Lands
Website of the Day
WolfQuest
January 2,
2008
Jeff Taylor
The
Left and Ron Paul
M. Shahid Alam
The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy
Gary Leupp
Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan
Paul Craig Roberts
Criminals with Badges
Heather Gray
Georgia's Racist Death Penalty
Fred Gardner
and Shobhit Arora
Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis
David Macaray
Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley
Benjamin Dangl
Fear and Loathing in Bolivia
January 1,
2008
Iain A. Boal
City
of Disappearances
B. R. Gowani
Benazir's Death in Crisistan
Shahid Mahmood
Bhutto and the Press
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling
Harvey Wasserman
Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton
Era
John Ross
2008, Already a Year to Forget
Website of the Day
The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys
December 31,
2007
Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye
2007 and Good Riddance!
Tariq Ali
Pakistan, the Aftermath
Liaquat Ali Khan
The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers
Wajahat Ali
After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan?
Robert Fisk
Who Killed Bhutto?
Ajai Sahni
Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark
Future
Marwan Bishara
You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential
Election Campaigns
Uri Avnery
The Beilin Syndrome
Mark T. Harris
Does This Happen in Canada?
Brenda Norrell
Resistance and Censorship
Website of the Day
A People United Will Never Be Defeated
December 29
/ 30, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Options
in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby
Tariq Ali
Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto
Gary Leupp
The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance
China Hand
Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss
Jacob Hornberger
Stop Medddling in Pakistan
John Chuckman
Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics
Missy Beattie
Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard
Ralph Nader
Who Will Take the Next Step?
Fidel Castro
There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something
Robert Fantina
The Sham of Homeland Security
Greg Moses
Beauty from the Heart of Texas
Catherine Lutz
What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing
Kristin Van
Tassel
Seeing in the Dark
Kim Nicolini
Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More
Poets' Basement
Landau, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan
December 28,
2007
Farzana Versey
The
Complex Electra
Wajahat Ali
A
Pakistani Requiem
Binoy Kampmark
Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives
Anthony DiMaggio
Turkey's Bombing of Iraq
Ray McGovern
Creeping
Fascism
Jim Goodman
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
Ron Jacobs
Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted
Russell Hoffman
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba
John Murphy
Greens Gone Wild
Website of the Day
Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"
December 27,
2007
Dilip Hiro
A
Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?
Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?
Stephen Soldz
Fallujah,
the Information War and U.S. Propaganda
Bill Quigley
Locked
Outside the Gates
Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up
Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?
Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim
Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT
Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman
Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink
Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades
Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth
December 26, 2007
Charles Tripp
From
One Saddam to Fifty
Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government
Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men
Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb
Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within
Website of
the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas
December 25,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Conscience
and Empire
December 24,
2007
Andrea Peacock
A
Dark Ride on the Border
Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said
Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!
Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot
Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington
Mike Whitney
The Big Fix
Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans
John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders
Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas
Website of the Day
Back in the USSR
December 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Mike
Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Ralph Nader
Politics
and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way
Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons
in Afghanistan
Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan
Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids
Rev. William
E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?
Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq
Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol
Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques
Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law
William Loren
Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake
Okeechobee
Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita
Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford
Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa
December 21,
2007
John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico
Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
Dick J. Reavis
A
Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss
Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon
The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes
Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms
Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie
Kerik)
Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution
Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist
David Macaray
Union Aftermath
Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa
Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA
Website of
the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape
December 20,
2007
David Rosen
Mitt
Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer
Alan Farago
The
Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage
Crisis
Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA
Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot
Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates
Website of
the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter
December 19,
2007
Saul Landau
Is
the NIE Bush's Watergate?
Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk
Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice
Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes
Sen. Russell
Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation
Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags
Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions
Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?
Website of
the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV
December 18,
2007
R. F. Blader
The
Politics of Teen Pregnancy
George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho
Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?
Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar
David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem
Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays
Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home
Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters
Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print
Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit
Website of
the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America
December 17,
2007
Mike Whitney
Staring
Into the Abyss
Tom Barry
Planning
the War on Immigrants
Uri Avnery
A
Gaza Masada?
Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas
Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder
Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers
Stephen Lendman
Police State America
Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way
Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza
Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game
December 15
/ 16, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
People's Penny for the Magna Carta
Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb
Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco
Raymond J.
Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas
Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine
Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists
Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the
Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up
Ahmad Samih
Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op
Missy Comley
Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins
Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims
James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future
Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten
Website of
the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support
December 14,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him
John Ross
Iraqi
Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax
Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?
Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes
Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest
Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies
Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace
Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"
December 13,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Shrinking
the Dollar from the Inside-Out
Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding
Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy
Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze
Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch
Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia
Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?
Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It
Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land
Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol
Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!
December 12, 2007
Allan
Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian
Phones
Alan
Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young
Ray
McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts
Evan
Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell
Doom for the US Farm Belt
James
Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers
Joel
Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine
Joshua
Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention
Sherry
Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
Dan
Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard
Website
of the Day
Men Eating Bugs
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Weekend
Edition
January 5 / 6, 2008
The Mindless Iran
Strategy
Bush
Snatches Defeat from Victory
By SAUL LANDAU
Historians will view Bush as the President
who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. A National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE), made public on December 4, concluded Iran had
closed its nuclear weapons program four years earlier. Bush could
have attributed this "fact" to his aggressive rhetoric
(threats). Instead, he whined at his press conference that day:
"Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will
be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear
weapon. The NIE says that Iran had a hidden -- a covert nuclear
weapons program. That's what it said. What's to say they couldn't
start another covert nuclear weapons program?"
He seemed more compelled by
his own words than by intelligence findings. Recall that in his
January 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush -- or speech writers--had
placed Iran inside the elite Axis of Evil club.
OK. And now he could claim
his threats worked. He got Iraq, North Korea, and Iran to stop
nuclear weapons program (albeit Iraq didn't have one). Bush could
claim he even got Libya to quit the incipient nuclear club.
I can imagine him sporting
his ubiquitous shit-eating grin and taking credit for international
accomplishments. "Thanks to my inserting a perilous tone
to my public discourse -- one that has weighed on public consciousness
like a toxic cloud--we won."
Bush could have referred to
post 9/11 days when the nation trembled in shock, and he swore
"to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening
America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
He then characterized North Korea as "a regime arming with
missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its
citizens." Iran aggressively pursues "these weapons
and exports terror." The lead villain at that time, lest
we forget: "Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward
America and to support terror"
These states "and their
terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten
the peace of the world." Bush swore "the United States
of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes
to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
So, why didn't Bush return
to this theme and say "I didn't permit it?"
Perhaps facts did play a strange
role. Since thinking people understand that Iran did not threaten
the United States or Western Europe, they will also recall how
Bush's "accomplished" mission in Iraq showed a less
than accomplished President. Indeed, the hysteric in the White
House invaded Iraq over non existent WMD.
Did Bush fear that boasting
of another "mission accomplished would cause him more trouble?
The NIE information on Iran combined with North Korea agreeing
to dismantle its nuke program in exchange for fuel aid and normalization
talks with the U.S. and Japan had dispelled Bush's Harry Potter-like
world of evil axes.
Nevertheless, Bush bleated
about "dangerous" Iran. Keith Olberman of MSNBC called
him a" pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief."
Why didn't Karl Rove rescue him from such blasphemies? (Was he
too busy writing "how to beat Hillary columns for Newsweek?)
Bush knew since early August
that Iran had no operating nuclear weapons programs; so why,
asked Olberman, did he on October 17 taunt Iranian President
Ahmadinejad? "I've told people that if you're interested
in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested
in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear
weapon."
The answer: Bush apparently
feels comfortable with inflammatory discourse; not with achievement
oratory. Remember his July 24, 2004 fighting words: "Bring
'em on" he taunted the Iraqi insurgents on July 2, 2004,
who had begun to attack US occupying forces. Maybe he recalls
those words and the fiasco following his "Mission Accomplished"
speech in May 2003 as Iraqi insurgent began killing and wounding
US troops -- and his ratings plummeted. For Bush, fear has worked
well; especially scary are references to nuclear threats.
Compare President Franklin
Roosevelt calming discourse to Bush's alarmism. "The only
thing we have to fear is fear itself," said FDR in his 1933
Inaugural Address, when the Great Depression truly depressed
millions of people, economically and mentally. Bush, in contrast,
seems to feel comfortable as America's year-round Halloween monster.
"We have plenty to fear. Terrorism will never go away. The
terrorists are everywhere, always plotting against us. Trust
me to fight them as long as you people remain scared"
With that outlook, Bush probably
didn't consider sharing his knowledge with the public, that Iran
had no operating nuclear weapons program. He did, however, slightly
alter his tone, but never told the truth. The Washington Post's
chronology of Bush's Iranian fright lines shows the nuance in
his speech after the CIA informed him in August that Iran had
shut its nuke program.
Look at the differences. On
March 31 Bush stated definitively that "Iran is trying to
develop a nuclear weapon" On August 6 he invented an Iranian
provocation: "this is a government [Iran] that has proclaimed
its desire to build a nuclear weapon..." By August 9, however,
as Olberman notes, fine distinctions began to appear in his alerts.
Iranians "expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium,
which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program..."
On October 4, Bush became semi
biblical: "you should not have the know-how on how to make
a (nuclear) weapon..."
Two weeks later, on October
17, Bush issued yet another veiled threat, without accusing Iran
of actually trying to make a nuke. "Until they suspend and/or
make it clear that they, that their statements aren't real, yeah,
I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order
to make a nuclear weapon."
On December 4, after the NIE
report became public, Bush had to reluctantly acknowledge the
key fact he had absorbed in August. But he nevertheless kept
firing away. Indeed, with White House encouragement, his neo
con acolytes like Frank Gaffney (Center for Security Policy)
and Norman Podhoretz (Commentary editor and Rudy Giuliani adviser)
compare Iran and Nazi Germany--on talk shows. As if!
After seven years in office,
Bush has placed fear before victory. He saw how throwing panic
at the public--terrorists everywhere -- could serve his power.
By seizing on the 9/11 tragedy and manipulating it as a symbol
to keep the public terrified, he garnered unequaled presidential
power and provoked world wide animosity--while Congress and the
public were busy being scared. The rest of the nation
didn't do so well.
Under his and the malevolent
Cheney's guidance, the CIA used torture -- while denying it --
extraordinary rendition (kidnapping) and other invasions of the
Bill of Rights and Magna Carta (no right to privacy or habeas
corpus). Periodically, Homeland Security reveals how it foiled
yet another terrorist plot. The latest of these alleged plots
evaporated. Seven barely literate Miami men who know nothing
of explosives or weapons were charged in June 2006 with conspiring
to blow up the Chicago's Sears Tower. One defendant was acquitted;
the judge declared a mistrial for the six others.
Bush's detractors accuse him
of having the IQ of a moron and the morality of Henry Kissinger,
but Bush has accomplished several missions: he has destroyed
Iraq, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and put the people
of this country into deep stress. The so-called intelligence
community (oxymoron?), beyond angry that their intelligence was
distorted in order to give Bush a pretext to invade Iraq, no
doubt predicted Bush would recoil at receiving the no nukes in
Iran finding, that he would discount it and use the braggadocio
that has flavored his sour administration to diminish its impact.
Ironically, the intelligence
experts have yet to actually show evidence that Iran sought a
nuclear weapons program. The NIE claimed Iran once had a hidden
weapons program. Bush averred. "What's to say they couldn't
start another nuclear weapons program?"
The lap dog press has yet to
even pose the question about the "fact" of Iran's supposedly
hidden project. IAEA head Mohamed El Baradai has never claimed
he found evidence that the Teheran government actually had begun
such production. The powerful in government and media "deduced"
the logic that Iran was going beyond nuclear energy reactors
since Iraq was seeking a weapons program and Israel, the most
dangerous enemy in the region, had accumulated some 200 nukes.
Hey, Libya and North Korea
could also restart their programs--an old fashioned axis of evil
revival? Brazil, Argentina and South Africa could refurbish their
old nuclear dreams!
Evil billionaires like Rupert
Murdoch or T. Bone Pickens could start private nuclear weapons
operations--a real life James Bond movie! How frustrating for
Bush, wanting to fight--vicariously--and getting a diplomatic
victory that he refuses to acknowledge.
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies
fellow. His new Counterpunch book is A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD. His new film, WE DON'T PLAY GOLF HERE
is available on dvd from roundworldproductions@gmail.com
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