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Today's
Stories
January
30, 2004
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
January
29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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
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for More Stories.
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January
30, 2004
Imperialists? Who
Us?
Cuba
High on Neo-Con Hit List
By SAUL LANDAU
"We must continue to stand with
the brave people of Cuba, who for nearly half a century have
endured tyrannies and repression."
President G.W. Bush,
Summit of the Americas,
Monterrey, January 12, 2004
Thanks to the Bush bravado, a new office pool
game in Washington national security circles emerged. Organizers
take bets on which country the United States will next invade.
The inventors of this new boredom-cutting exercise still seek
a name for their amusement: "Jeopardy" and "Survivor"
are taken. How about: "Who's Next?"
In December 2003, Libyan President Muammar
Gaddafi narrowed the possibilities by removing his nation from
competition when he eschewed nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons ambitions and invited UN inspectors to Tripoli. Office
bets now range from Syria and Iran in the Middle East to North
Korea in the Far East, to Cuba, ninety miles south of Key West.
These "rogue nations" share
the characteristic of having refused to fall into line behind
Washington's dictates. Using "rogue" to describe disobedience
plays well at home. It allows the Administration to convert lies
into axioms. For example, Washington labels Havana "terrorist,"
despite the fact that the United States has launched thousands
of terrorist missions against Cuba and has no evidence of Cuba
initiating any retaliatory terrorist acts.
Between Spring 1961 and Fall 1962, the
CIA dispatched hundreds of agents to Cuba to assassinate, blow
up and burn property and cause mayhem. Terrorism against Cuba
continued sporadically for decades -- well into the 1990s --
 under the guise that somehow this would
help the United States restore democracy to the island.
In 1952, the US supported General Fulgencio
Batista after he staged his electoral coup and removed democracy
from the island's political structure. But serious national security
mavens rarely ruffle their aggressive feathers with facts. By
repeating cliches about US motives being noble and democratic
while Presidents authorize illegal wars and overthrows of foreign
governments, the Administration induces the mass media to follow
the line whatever it is; at least temporarily.
Indeed, as Harold Innis once phrased
it, American imperialism itself "has been made plausible
and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic."
Iranians and North Korean have learned
the hard way about US behaviour. In 1953 the CIA knocked over
a democratic in Iran and installed a pro-US ruler. Iranians revolted
in 1979, tossing out The Shah, but not the hot memories of how
his secret police had treated them. They took US CIA and State
Department officials as hostages for more than a year.
North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950,
after US-backed South Korea had made aggressive incursions into
North Korea. US intervention in that war cost the North Koreans
more than 2 million lives.
In 2002, President Bush placed Iran and
North Korea with Iraq on his "axis of evil" list. He
threatened both countries with pre-emptive nuclear strikes should
US security demand it. Logically, both countries developed a
nuclear weapons program as the only deterrent possible against
the world's mightiest nuclear power.
The pro Israel lobby, which has pushed
for US action against Iran and Syria, rejoiced when Bush signed
the Syria Accountability Act in December. Iranian reformists
complicated the political situation in that country by diluting
the power of the fundamentalist mullahs, who also took a very
strong anti-US line. And the December 26 earthquake in Bam that
devastated that area certainly closed the window on military
action. Given the weekly body count Bush encounters in Iraq,
experts tend to disparage reports of invasions of any Middle
East countries for the time being.
Cuba aalso appears on the "rogue"
list. The Bush family owes the anti-Castro mafia in south Florida
for its help in electing brother Jeb Governor. W himself got
both vital money and strong arm support in Florida in 2000.
Past presidents have accepted Pentagon
estimates and discounted an invasion of Cuba as too costly. Indeed,
whenever friends would play Chicken Little over Cuba, I would
remind them that the consequences of a US military attack on
Cuba would far over shadow any successes that an aggressor could
hope to achieve.
But in the age of "full spectral
dominance," the catch phrase from the 2002 White House National
Security Plan, certain Administration heavies have made a case
that the time has come to remove the 45 year old Cuban thorn
in the side of the American empire. On January 6, the oratorical
point man for this offensive, Assistant Secretary of State for
Inter American Affairs Roger Noriega, warned Cuba to stop destabilizing
democratic Latin America and cautioned the governments of Argentina,
Venezuela and even Brazil not to get close to Cuba or else. Noriega
said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made his neighbors
"very nervous when it comes to defending their institutional
democracies." Never mind that the United States has invaded
or intervened covertly in almost every Latin American country
and overthrown dozens of elected governments, the voice of the
ever servile Secretary of State Colin Powell validated Noriega's
remarks.
"I've been in senior national security
positions on and off over the last 17 years. And through that
whole period of time, Cuba has been trying to do everything it
could to destabilize parts of the region," hesaid on January
8. This remarkable statement comes from a man who remembers how
in 1965 US troops destabilized democracy in the Dominican Republic,
destabilized Nicaragua in the 1980s through a decade long covert
war and upset the entire Caribbean when in 1983 US troops invaded
the tiny island republic of Grenada because they could.
Powell has apologized for the US destabilization
of Chile (1970-73), but through the decades of the 1970s and
1980s, Washington supported the most brutal military dictatorships
in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala and El Salvador.
In 1990 US troops invaded Panama to arrest one man, General Noriega,
an agent of the CIA and DEA.
Armed with empty and righteous rhetoric,
Washington's neo-con chicken hawks now sculpt a new axis of evil
in Latin America (Cuba-Venezuela-Argentina). Some career national
security staffers worry that the Bushies might actually try to
provoke a conflict with Cuba or Venezuela in this hemisphere
after the 2004 elections, of course.
"Before Bush," a former National
Security staffer confided, "we understood that the post
Vietnam War rule was in place: we don't fight anyone who can
fight back. Then the neo-cons and their soldier of God partners
seemed to infest the policy community. These characters, few
if any have military experience appear unconcerned with the consequences
of starting a conflagration process with Cuba."
In their new book, Richard Perle and
David Frum, leading chicken hawk neo-cons, discuss leaders like
Fidel Castro and state that "when it is in our power and
in our interest, we should toss dictators aside with no more
compunction than a police sharpshooter feels when he takes down
a hostage taker"
Another of the mouth warriors, Under
Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton,
has repeatedly accused Cuba of providing "dual-use biotechnology
to other rogue states." In early January Bolton called Cuba
a "rogue state" and voiced his concern that Cuba would
share "such technology with other despised nations."
Bolton's neo con credentials include
Senator Jesse Helms' March 2001 endorsement at his confirmation
hearing as "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand
at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final battle
between good and evil" Just as Bush cited the potential
of the Iraqi regime to unleash its weapons of mass destruction
as the principal reason for going to war last March, Bolton now
repeats similar charges against Cuba, which the Bush administration
labels as a terrorist state.
In October, House International Relations
Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL), warned Bush that Cuba was
forging an "axis of evil" with Venezuela. National
security officials leaked to a U.S. News & World Report journalist
(Oct 6, 2003) material to "prove" that Castro's friend,
President Chavez, was using Cuba as his model and had invited
Islamic terrorists to train in camps in Venezuela. Chavez dismissed
the report as absurd. Another national security-induced media
story?
In what the White House called "Entering
the Final Phase of Cuba's Inevitable Transition to Democracy"
-- don't laugh -- Bolton's ugly charges morphed into dangerous
deeds. In January the US canceled the regularly scheduled migration
talks with Cuba, months after the President established a new
Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba to hasten a "peaceful
transition to a representative democracy and a free market economy
-- ending decades of an oppressive dictatorship."
In addition, the White House used its
power to overturn the will of Congress, which had voted to lift
the travel ban to Cuba. Bush ordered the Homeland Security Department
to harass travelers to the island and fine those traveling without
licenses.
Such degrees of bellicosity go beyond
the White House's pandering to the anti-Castro lobby. Words and
deeds combined tend to accumulate and then roll down the metaphorical
hill in the avalanche effect.
As the national security staffer said,
in resignation, "these people [the Bushies] are capable
of anything." Perhaps Cubans, as potential victims, could
at least contribute to the national security betting game by
providing it with a name -- something like "Don't Come Without
an Invitation" or "We Can Make a Deal."
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, has just been published
by Pluto Press. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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