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Today's
Stories
September 4-6,
2004
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who Are and What We Do
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
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.
|
Labor Day Weekend Edition
September 4-6, 2004
Disorder Under
the Heavens; Situation Excellent
Neo
Cons Under Fire
By
GARY LEUPP
They're what Marxists call "contradictions
within the ruling class:" sharp differences within the power
elite which weaken it collectively and can sometimes be exploited
by those seeking radical change. It is a very good thing that
the "intelligence community" is beginning to level
an assault on the neocons. Their falling out has deep roots,
dating to the 1980s when the CIA accurately assessed the Soviet
military "threat," while the neocons (Paul Wolfowitz,
Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney) wanted to grossly
inflate it, to justify the massive Reagan military buildup
and perhaps launch a successful World War III. (The "noble
lie" worked: the other side, with half the U.S.'s GDP, was
obliged to match U.S. military expenditures, and essentially
went bankrupt, petering out without a shot.)
The present enmity dates to
the days immediately after 9-11 when the CIA was called upon
to prove links between Iraq, the attacks, and al-Qaeda. When
the CIA was unable to find any, to the disgust of leading war
advocates Donald Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (who feel that reluctance
to lie on behalf of imperial glory makes you a wuss)
they created the spooky (and unforgivably under-reported)
Office
of Special Plans to stovepipe cherry-picked "intelligence"
to the White House and thence the world.
Events and limited media exposure
have shown to all sentient beings the official rationale(s) for
war on Iraq do not correspond to reality. Washington can either
tell the truth: "We distorted the facts to justify attacking
Iraq," or dissemble: "Some of our intelligence turns
out to be incorrect" But by ridiculously blaming the CIA,
they insult it. And while the Company's "we will of course
disavow any knowledge of your actions" culture disinclines
it to rail openly against the administration it must serve, some
within it are in fact rebelling. Michael
Scheuer, for example. (Here's a still-serving CIA employee
spilling the beans, big-time. Such strange times we live in.)
It is quite natural for intelligence
specialists, whose professional dignity has been besmirched and
whose competence called into question, would undertake some response
to the abuse they've suffered. That response may well produce
the following assessment:
(1) After 9-11, Rumsfeld and
Dick Cheney, sidelining Colin Powell, successfully urged an impressionable
president to implement a plan for general Middle East change
earlier articulated by Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, "Scooter"
Libby, and Perle;
(2) that the neocons, ardently
supportive of Israel and desiring to eliminate regimes unfriendly
to the Jewish state, went beyond the normally intimate interaction
between the two governments to engage in abnormally illicit consultations
and information exchange;
(3) that the neocons used known
charlatans such as (centrally important, now publicly discredited)
Ahmad Chalabi, and the Iranian businessman Manucher Ghorbanifar
(Iran-Contra principal figure identified long ago as a "fabricator"
by the CIA) to pursue their "regime change" ambitions;
and
(4) the neocons having sidelined
and offended the intelligence community, now falsely seek to
impute blame to it for their own mendacity.
I'm hoping (not quite betting)
that the Franklin Affair, the Plame Affair, and multiple unfolding
scandals produce by late October a major challenge to the Bush
administration's credibility and such moral standing as it retains
even among the willfully oblivious. Here's one possible scenario.
We might be informed that the CIA has concluded that the infamous
Niger uranium documents were forged by Israeli
intelligence. (I have no idea, but this is surely plausible.)
Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald
might charge that Libby, (as Joseph Wilson has suggested) is
responsible for the vindictive outing of Wilson's CIA wife.
The FBI may conclude that Feith okayed illegal contacts between
his subordinates and various foreign operatives designed to facilitate
U.S. aggression against Syria and Iran.
The timid media might start
getting very bold and actually do some investigation of the Bush
administration's Middle East plans, and plans to deceitfully
sell them.
Meanwhile Israel, which today
makes no secret of its willingness to attack Syria (as a response
to Hamas attacks in Israel) and Iran (to destroy its nuclear
arms potential) may take actions with or without Washington's
approval (or, more specifically, with or without Bush's personal
approval, since Washington speaks---to Israel at least---with
more than one voice) that impact U.S. forces in Iraq and pose
more dilemmas to the above-mentioned, fortunately contradiction-ridden
power elite. In such circumstances thinking people may start
putting two and two together, and realize that these regime change
projects have nothing to do with 9-11, but lots to do with a
scandal-ridden cabal's aggressive world-changing agenda. They
may appropriately rebel at that agenda.
"There is great disorder
under heaven," the Chinese communists, when they were communists,
used to say, always adding: "The situation is excellent."
Surely there are opportunities here for people who oppose imperialism
categorically, whichever warmonger wins in November, and (whatever
terrors are staged by whomever before the election) to rationally
take advantage of this situation.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University,
and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author
of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan;
Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle
of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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