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Today's
Stories
February 20 / 22, 2004
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
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
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
February 20 / 22, 2004
Assume for the Sake
of Argument...
Entry
from a White House Diary
By SAUL LANDAU
A young man claiming he worked in the White House
gave me this report shortly after President George W. Bush told
Tim Russert that "I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons
[in Iraq]" ("Meet the Press," 2/8/04).
At a White House staff meeting, the best
and brightest of our extreme right, fundamentalist Christian
gang discussed the logical flaw in the President's answer to
Russert.
"Let's assume Bush was telling the
truth," I told the others. "He actually thought Saddam
Hussein possessed the deadly WMDs described by the President
and so did his leading Cabinet members. So, wouldn't Saddam presumably
have employed these deadly arms against US troops when they invaded?
The White House staff stared stupidly
at me. A few nodded in agreement.
"Luckily, Russert didn't ask if
the president had thought about the consequences before he ordered
the invasion, namely sacrificing up to 130,000 US servicemen
and women." "But it  won't take long," I continued, "before
even the slow-witted Democrats see the crack in the logic. I
can hear John Kerry now.
'If Saddam truly had what Bush said he
had, he would have used nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
being the ruthless madman that Bush said he was against our troops.
The losses to American life and limb would have proven incalculable.
So, if you believe Bush, you must conclude that he was either
willing to sacrifice the lives of over a hundred thousand of
our men and women; or he was a liar; or he possesses no capacity
for logical thinking.'
"Had Russert pursued the President's
logic," I offered, "he might have asked him why he
didn't allow the UN inspectors to stay on indefinitely in Iraq.
We could have fed them our intelligence albeit it might not have
helped anyone. If our signal or aerial intelligence yielded likely
sites for WMDs, we could have informed the inspectors who would
then have demolished them without loss of life."
The staff glared at me.
"With sanctions against Saddam and
the world supporting the inspections team," I explained,
"the Iraqi dictator would have had no chance to use his
weapons against US servicemen or anyone else. If a presidential
debate occurs and the Democrat says, 'So, Mr. President, what
do you say to that logic?' what will Bush answer?"
"Yeah," replied one of my colleagues,
attempting to jump on my logical bandwagon. "Hans Blix and
Mohamed El Baradei (heads of the UN weapons inspection team that
found nothing in Iraq) both agreed that Saddam had bupkis (Washingtonese
for nothing) in his supposed WMD arsenals."
I had them eating out of my hand, so
I continued, keeping on eye on the imperious Karl Rove, our boss
and taskmaster, who had started taking notes.
"I hate to bring this up,"
I said. "But suppose a reporter asks the chief how he connects
the war in Iraq with the war on terrorism that he claims he is
fighting in Iraq if he himself has admitted that US intelligence
has not found any direct links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda?
The White House staff seemed dismayed
over my impeccable reasoning, which would eventually penetrate
members of the press. "If the media figures this out,"
one young man predicted, they'll transform themselves quickly
into piranhas that smell blood in the White House water. They
will attack. The sluggish Democrats will repeat the flaws in
the President's logic and use it in the campaign.
In addition, they would quote ad infinitum
some of the messages in Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty,
about that traitor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's
reflections. O'Neill told about an early 2001 National Security
Council meeting at which he understood "there was a conviction,
that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go."
O'Neill also claimed he was disturbed because no one asked "why
Saddam had to go?" and "why now." O'Neill characterized
that meeting on March 19, 2001 to deal with California's energy
crisis "like many of the meetings that I would go to over
the course of two years...The president is like a blind man in
a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."
I watched Rove, who obviously was trying
not to show the sense of urgency he felt. He postponed the first
item on his list, dealing with W's National Guard service, and
began to focus on the issue that would surely bare its ugly head.
He could spin the media on the Guard stuff by handing over files
that showed GWB had routinely received his National Guard pay
check. Rove knew the pay records did not prove that Bush had
actually showed up for any service, but it would postpone the
issue for a few days anyway.
In 2000, almost four years ago, I recalled
that some veterans had offered $3,500 to anyone who could confirm
Bush's Alabama Guard service. Of the approximately 700 Guardsmen
in Bush's unit, no one spoke up. Yet, the media had ignored it.
Rove had produced some torn piece of paper without even GWB's
name on it that the NY Times accepted as genuine. Up to now,
the press has assumed that the White House would not tell bold
faced lies? After all, did people think Bill Clinton was still
in the White House?
"At least Bush didn't lie about
sex," I thought to myself, envisioning such a slogan on
a bumper sticker before the November election.
I noticed a cynical grin crossing Rove's
face. Was he thinking of Clinton: "I did not have sexual
relations with that woman." Hey, for the US public, what's
a minor item like war compared to sex? I bet Rove wished he could
have gotten some of the publicity generated when Janet Jackson's
breast got bared during Super Bowl's half time spectacle. Rove
understands that he must keep up Bush's macho image -- how else
can anyone explain the number of ads for Viagra and penis enlargement?--and
encourage the advertising industry to continue inventing ever
more ingenious methods of distracting people from the issues.
Events seemed to be moving faster than
re-election plans. Rove had probably calculated that reporters
like the New York Times' Judith Miller would continue reporting
that Saddam had WMDs and that some -- even a minute quantity
-- would be found somewhere in Iraq, enough to shut down the
critics anyway. But in lieu of any of the good fortune he had
hoped for, he had been forced to concede to the creation of a
Commission to Investigate Intelligence Failures.
Well, no use thinking about what ifs.
Rove spoke. We, the staff, were given
the arduous task of presenting the President as a man who had
remained on the offensive in the war on terrorism and that anyone
who opposed him was a wuss or a traitor. Such a stance might
keep Bush on the offensive and put Kerry on the defensive.
"Suppose," I asked Rove, who
didn't seem happy with any more questions from me, "Bush
is asked to clarify what he meant when he said to Tim Russert
that 'The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me as I look
back was it was a political war. We had politicians making military
decisions.'"
"If people begin to analyze that
statement," I said, "they might ask the president if
he thinks of himself as a military official as commander in chief,
I mean."
Rove shook his head in disgust. I don't
know if he meant me or the boss.
I had one last thought, which I kept
to myself. Suppose Gary Trudeau runs a Doonesbury series on this
particular statement, and it runs for two or three week? I thought
of all the smart-ass college kids who will read it and laugh,
not only at the president but at me, who works eighteen hours
a day to make sure that Bush actually wins in November. Well,
if he doesn't, Rove remembers 2000. There are other ways.
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. His new film is Syria: Between Iraq and a Hard
Place. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
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