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Hezbollah's Rise, Israel's Fall |
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Today's Stories September 11, 2006 Jean Bricmont September 9/10,
2006 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Greg Grandin Peter
Stone Brown Ralph
Nader Brian
Cloughley Col.
Chet Richards David
Model Dave
Himmelstein Ron
Jacobs Fred
Gardner Mike
Whitney Josh
Gryniewicz Daniel
Gross / Joe
Bageant Nicole
Colson Alexander
Billet Poets'
Basement
September 8, 2006 Uri
Avnery Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Quigley Robert
Jensen Norman
Solomon Keith
Bolin
September 8, 2006 Uri
Avnery Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Quigley Robert
Jensen Norman
Solomon Keith
Bolin Kristin
S. Schafer Jeffrey
St. Clair Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Sharon
Smith René
Drucker Colín Michael
Donnelly John
Borowski Lucinda
Marshall Charles
Sullivan Jeffrey
St. Clair Jonathan
Cook Website
of the Day
September 6, 2006 Stephen
Soldz Dave
Zirin Ramzy
Baroud Noel
Ignatiev Dave
Lindorff Norman
Solomon Binoy
Kampmark Jeffrey
St. Clair John
Ross Website
of the Day
September 5, 2006 Jonathan Cook Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney
Roland Sheppard James Petras Alexander Cockburn
September 4, 2006 Clancy Sigal Jeffrey St.
Clair Anthony Alessandrini Dennis Perrin
Daniel Cassidy
Paul Craig
Roberts
September 2 / 3, 2006 Uri Avnery Jeffrey St.
Clair Ralph Nader Noam Chomsky Allan Lichtman Stanley Heller Rana el-Khatib Peter Montague Laura Carlsen Dr. Susan Block Joe Bageant Scott Stedjan / Matt Schaaf Gary Leupp Stephen Fleischman Paul Balles Ingmar Lee Jane Stillwater Ron Jacobs St. Clair /
Bossert Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
September 1, 2006 Uri Avnery Paul Craig
Roberts Bill Ayers Kevin Zeese Xochitl Bervera Norman Solomon Alexander Cockburn Richard Neville Website of the Day
August 31, 2006 David MacMichael John Ross Edward Said Amira Hass Missy Comley
Beattie Lee Sustar Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
August 30, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts George Salzman Dave Lindorff Leigh Davis Alan Maass Mike Whitney Eliza Ernshire Website of
the Day
Saul Landau Jeffrey Buchanan Dave Lindorff James Brooks John F. Burnett Walter A. Davis Rich Gibson Amira Hass Paul Craig
Roberts
August 28, 2006 John Walsh Sibel Edmonds
/ William Weaver Ramzy Kysia Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Missy Beattie Virginia Tilley
Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn Jordan Green Azmi Bishara Ray Close Gary Leupp Ralph Nader Joe Allen Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff David Krieger Stephen Fleischman Mary Turck Walter Brasch Jim Scharplaz Israel Shamir Alexander Cockburn Charles Henderson Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
August 25, 2006 Elena Everett Juan Cole Chris Moore James Marc Leas Salah Obeid Claudio Albertani Tom Barry Website of
the Day
CounterPunch
News Service Uri Avnery Nermeen al-Mufti Norman Solomon Megan Wiles Laura Santina Mike Whitney Seth Sandronsky Christopher
Brauchli
August 23, 2006 Dr. Trudy Bond Ramzy Baroud Ron Jacobs Heather Gray Amira Hass Mavis Anderson Ingmar Lee Francis Boyle John Ross
Gilad Atzmon Jack Heyman Eamon McCann Sharon Smith Edward S. Herman Ramzi Kysia Bill Quigley August 21, 2006 Jonathan Cook Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Mike Roselle Lenni Brenner Maher Osseiran
August 19 /
20, 2006 Uri Avnery Eliza Ernshire Virginia Tilley Kathy Kelly Marc Levy Stephen Bradberry / Barbara Rose
Johnston William Blum Stephen Fleischman Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Fred Gardner David Krieger Dan La Botz Poets' Basement
August 18, 2006 Brian M. Downing John Blair Alan Hart Craig Murray Chris Dols Emily Kirksey Joaquín Bustelo William S.
Lind Podcast of the Day Website of
the Day
August 17, 2006 CounterPunch
News Service Barucha Peller Ramzy Baroud Rothem Shtarkman Craig Murray Samar Assad Mike Ferner Arnold Kohen Kevin Zeese Missy Comley Beattie Uri Avnery Video of the Day Website of
the Day
August 16, 2006 Merav Yudilovitch Robert Fisk Mark Williams John Ross Christopher
Brauchli John Walsh Ron Jacobs Rachard Itani Felice Pace Niranjan Ramakrishnan Frank, Sharma
and Peterson Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 15, 2006 Andrew Ford
Lyons Binoy Kampmark Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Todd Chretien Chris Floyd Mark Engler George Galloway Laray Polk Trish Schuh Website of the Day
Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Kathy Kelly Robert Fisk Norman Solomon Sunsara Taylor Robert Jensen Mike Whitney P. Sainath Goretti Horgan Christopher
Reed
August 12 /
13, 2006 Jean Bricmont Norman Finkelstein Robert Fisk Adrian Grima Barucha Peller Omar Barghouti Adam Engel Conn Hallinan John Stauber Rev. William
Alberts Fred Gardner Lucinda Marshall Ron Jacobs CounterPunch
News Service Poets' Basement
Col. Dan Smith John Ross Michael Donnelly William S.
Lind Linda Milazzo Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Azmi Bishara Henri Picciotto CounterPunch News Wire Dave Lindorff Jonathan Cook
Uri Avnery Dave Marsh Gabriel Kolko Arthur Versluis Jennifer Loewenstein
Linda Schade Jackie Mason Jonathan Cook Gilad Atzmon
Charles Hirschkind
Tom Barry Cockburn &
St. Clair
August 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Paul Larudee Joan Roelofs Dimi Reider John A. Murphy Tim Llewellyn Website of the Day
August 7, 2006 Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Nadia Hijab Sharon Smith Magan Wiles George Beres Rachard Itani Norman Solomon Stan Cox Mickey Z. Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 5 / 6, 2006 Virginia Tilley Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Sgt. Martin Smith Gary Leupp Neve Gordon Ralph Nader Peter Bouckaert Peter Montague David Krieger Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Catherine Norris Imraan Siddiqi Missy Comley
Beattie Ira Kay Dave Lindorff Pratyush Chandra Ron Jacobs St. Clair / Donnelly Poets' Basement Website of the Day Video of the
Weekend
August 4, 2006 Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley Eliza Ernshire Roger Assaf George Bisharat Remi Kanazi Laura Carlsen Niranjan Ramakrishnan Derrick O'Keefe Mickey Z. Col. Dan Smith Website of the Day
Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Saree Makdisi Robert Fisk Farrah Hassen Nicola Nasser Ron Jacobs Mitchel Cohen Seth Sandronsky Bruce K. Gagnon Alexander Cockburn
John Ross Chip Mitchell Saul Landau Naseer Aruri Winslow T.
Wheeler Matthias Gebauer Joshua Frank Bill Quigley Manuel Yang Shamai Leibowitz David Himmelstein Lara Marlowe Website of
the Day
August 1, 2006 Michael Neumann Robert Fisk Omar Barghouti Marc Levy Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague Claud Cockburn Ross Eisenbrey Dave Lindorff John Chuckman Francis Boyle Phil Doe Stephen Soldz Website of the Day
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September 11, 2006 Five Years of High Crimes and MisdemeanorsBush After 9/11By DAVE LINDORFF The fifth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 are a good time to take stock of where we've come since that day, and it is not a pretty picture. Others are writing about what has been done to make the country safer from such attacks in the future (answer: not much), and about how the Iraq War, far from being a part of that project, was a duplicitous diversion that had nothing to do with combating terror, and everything to do with establishing the president as a "commander in chief." I want to write about the five-year crime spree against the Constitution and the American people that began almost immediately as the buildings fell, and that today has the American Republic teetering on the brink of a totalitarian future. Because it is clear that Bush and his advisors, far from acting to unite the country and protect it from attack, used that horrible tragedy half a decade ago as an excuse to terrorize Congress and the American public, and as an excuse to set the nation on a permanent war footing, so as to aggrandize unchecked power and to usurp the powers of the Congress and the Courts, thus converting the presidency into a dictatorship. We know the Bush team had their sights set on an invasion of Iraq from even before the president took his first oath of office. The ousted Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, a member from the outset of the White House National Security Council, has reported that at the first meeting of that body, several days into the first Bush term and long before the 9-11 attacks, the focus was on how to get the U.S. into a war against Iraq. "Find me a way to do this," O'Neill quotes our draft-dodging president as saying. Within days of the attacks, the White House had cobbled together a massive document composed of hundreds of police-state measures submitted to Congress by police and right-wing legislators, and summarily rejected, over the years and cynically called it the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act. Barbara Olshansky, my co-author on our new book The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin's Press, May 2006), and deputy director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says that many of the pages of the initial draft of that nightmarish legislation still had the old bill numbers of the rejected legislation that they had begun life as. Passed without discussion or debate, the new law effectively gutted the First, Fourth and Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments of the Constitution's Bill of Rights. But that was just the start. In attacking Afghanistan and the Al Qaeda organization operating there, the president appropriately sought, and was granted by Congress, an Authorization for the Use of Force. But he has subsequently interpreted that authorization to pursue terrorism in Afghanistan and other jurisdictions around the world to mean he had been given the permanent title of commander in chief in a "war on terror" that has no conceivable end, and no boundaries (it includes the domestic U.S. in his view), and that this title authorizes him to override acts of Congress, orders of the Courts, the rules of government laid out in the U.S. Constitution, and international treaties and laws adopted by the U.S. In short order, the president ignored Congress's passage of a funding bill for the war in Afghanistan, and called off the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, illegally shifting troops and personnel in that country away to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other areas around Iraq, in preparation for an invasion of that country. While Bin Laden was left free and continue his plotting, a secret conspiracy was then organized by the Bush Administration, which included creation of an alternative intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, in the Pentagon, and a propaganda arm, the White House Iraq Group, all with the goal of manufacturing and pushing into the media fake evidence designed to frighten Congress and the American public into supporting war against Iraq. The OSP used lies and bogus "defectors" provided by the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress to gin up horror stories of germ weapons and chemical weapons programs, and even of a nonexistent nuclear weapons program by Saddam Hussein. One of the most elaborate hoaxes involved the use of forged documents purporting to be signed agreements by the government of the African state of Niger to provide 400 tons of uranium ore to Iraq. These documents originated in Italy, where stationary and seals stolen from the Niger Embassy in Rome were used to give them a look of authenticity, but the forgers, apparently linked to the Italian intelligence service SISMI, were slipshod and signed the names of officials no longer in office in Niger. When the forgeries were easily spotted by U.S. intelligence experts, key members of the OSP, allegedly working together with Iran-Contra conspirator Michael Ledeen and notorious arms dealer and con-artist ManucherGorbanifar, as well as with the heads of Italian intelligence and defense, allegedly concocted a black-op scheme to recycle those forged documents through British intelligence, presenting them as "new" evidence of Hussein's nuclear ambitions. It was this scheme that Cheney and Condi Rice were mendaciously citing when they referred ominously to a mushroom cloud threat in the fall of 2002, and that Bush lyingly referred to in his 2003 State of the Union message, when he said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The administration lies that launched the country into a war in Iraq were just that. Lies and a conspiracy against the public and against peace which have cost the lives of over 2700 American troops and of over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Even the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has now admitted that the administration's claims, like one linking Hussein to Al Qaeda, were bogus-but the did the trick all the same, and the country continues to pay the price, in blood and money. Bush also used his "commander in chief" title to justify his decision to exempt hundreds of people captured in Afghanistan, and hundreds of others kidnapped from all over the world, and held in Guantanamo Bay's detention center, from the protections of the Geneva Convention. The Supreme Court recently ruled that this decision was a violation not only of the Geneva Convention, but of the U.S. Criminal Code, which adopted the Third Geneva Convention on Treatment of POWs as a part of U.S. law in 1996. The president, that is to say, has already been declared to be a criminal by the highest court in the land. (I should note that some of the "terrorists" held for five years at Guantanamo were kids, some as young as seven and eight, at the time of their "capture"-a violation of the Geneva Accords. One of these children, brought to Guantanamo at age 12 from Afghanistan, was one of the three captives who committed suicide last June in despair at ever being released. Compounding the horror, the government had determined several weeks earlier, that he had been wrongly accused and had scheduled for him for release just three days after the day of his suicide. But government officials didn't bother to tell him. Though his attorney was told of his pending release, the government barred the attorney from contacting him.) A lower federal court has also found the president to have criminally violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution for authorizing National Security Agency spying on the communications of tens of thousands of Americans without first seeking a warrant from the secret FISA Court. When the Supreme Court slapped down the president's claim to have special powers as commander in chief, it effectively pulled the plug on his argument justifying other criminal abuses of power, including his refusal to provide information demanded by congressional committees and the bi-partisan 9-11 Commission, and his use of "signing statements" to invalidate all or part of over 850 laws enacted by Congress. The same court ruling undermines the president's claim that as commander in chief he has the power to declare any American to be an enemy combatant, subject to arrest without charge and detention without the right of habeas corpus access to the courts, or the power to authorize the use of torture against such individuals, or against other captured in the bogus "war" on terror. The problem is that while the Supreme Court has made this determination regarding the president's criminal behavior, the president is constitutionally invulnerable from prosecution, even from war crimes. The only recourse is impeachment, which is the power to remove an elected president or any other federal official, and which belongs solely to the Congress. Because both houses of Congress,
and most importantly, the House of Representatives, are currently
controlled by the Republican Party, which is in league with the
president, there will be no impeachment of the president until
at least this November. It simply cannot be allowed for a president to commit the broad array of crimes against the Constitution and the People of the United States that President Bush has already committed, and for there to be no effort to impeach him. To allow that travesty to happen would not only be an insult to the memory of the Founding Fathers (and of those who died on 9-11, in whose names most of these crimes have so cynically been committed). It would also condemn us to a future in which subsequent presidents, of both parties, could commit the same crimes with impunity, citing the Bush presidency as a precedent. Take just one crime-the use of signing statements to invalidate acts of Congress. If a Democratic Congress were not to impeach on this issue, and were to allow the president to continue with this abuse of his power, not one significant piece of Democratic legislation could pass into law without the president doctoring it to fit his own political needs. Moreover, a future president-say Hillary Clinton or Russ Feingold-could use the same tactic to invalidate laws passed by some future Republican Congress. There are less than two months remaining before the November congressional election, at which all members of the House and a third of the members of the Senate must face the voters. The American people owe it to themselves, to the founders and to all the American soldiers who have died over the years fighting to defend America and the Constitution, to ensure that: 1) Democrats are given control of the House of Representatives, and 2) their own representative, whether Democrat or Republican, understands that this president is a serial Constitutional criminal who must be brought to justice. That will be the best commemoration of 9-11: That Americans finally stood up as citizens of a great republic and demanded that their country survive not just the threat of terror from without, but the even more serious threat of tyranny from within. Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new
book of CounterPunch columns titled "This
Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage
Press. Lindorff's new book is "The
Case for Impeachment", He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                     |
