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Today's
Stories
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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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Weekend
Edition
March 20 / 21, 2004
Eyes Wide Open
Is
Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
By LAWRENCE MAGNUSON
No, in the midst of losses more sorrowful than
speech can convey, Spain is not capitulating to terrorism. But
the horrible carnage of the train bombing in Spain will soon
have its intended effect on other nations. The "Death Smoke
Squads" of Al Qaeda are on the loose, while the cretinous
policy makers who deny justice to Palestine, who murder for oil,
and who make rampaging war where they please are only stoking
Al Qaeda's inhuman engines. Spain has a better idea: fight terrorism
vigorously, but steer clear of the counterproductive Iraq war
and occupation.
Spain has only declared what's tragically
apparent: the war on terror has emerged as a miserable, death-riddled
debacle--an unfinished failure in Afghanistan and a misdirected
reaving in Iraq. Grimly aware of Al Qaeda's brutal force and
their willingness to use it, other nations will most likely do
as Spain has done and announce their intentions to wash their
hands of the Iraq occupation. Will they be appeasing Islamic
terrorists in order to safeguard their countries? Not if the
courage and clear focus shown by the new Spain is the example.
"My most immediate priority,"
announced Spain's new Prime Minister Rodriguez Zapatero "will
be to fight terrorism." But he also said that without an
international interim administration for Iraq, Spanish troops
will withdraw in June. No one except those living in caves should
be surprised. Indiscriminate carnage-- death and injury to innocents--is
the dark modus of all terrorist acts large or limited. The overthrow
of Iraq (13,000 missiles fired into the heart of the country,
10,000 civilians dead) is national terrorism by indiscriminate
war. And from Kirkuk to Basra? No Al Qaeda. The only terrorists
were newly arrived.
Spain's reaction against terrorism and
against the Iraq occupation is not difficult to understand. A
year ago, millions came out onto the streets of the world's capitals
to voice their opposition to war and invasion. In Madrid, as
in many metropolises, the crowds were historic--no larger political
gatherings have ever been seen. In this way and accompanied by
a steady, well-founded discourse directed toward policy makers,
ample warnings were put before the Bush and Blair administrations
that invading the secular state of Iraq (where no Al Qaeda existed)
would only further inflame Islamic terrorists whose reason for
existence is to rid the Arab world of western influence and domination.
The vast majority of the people of Spain
and all those others who spoke against the Iraq war were right.
Invading Iraq on flimsy excuses has provoked a series of violent
and indiscriminate reactions, this time in Madrid, that many
then dreaded as inevitable. Now Islamic terrorism is darkly burgeoning
from Indonesia to Istanbul to Spain. Now the world is much less
safe than before the off-target invasion of Iraq. Now the future
is more ominous for everyone.
Clearly, Spain's new prime minister wants
to destroy terrorism, though he does not aim to provoke it. There
is a difference. The Bush administration invaded an Arab country
without basis, killed thousands of its civilians (with precision),
observed its ancient capital looted, and now markets its oil
when the pipelines are not in flames. What was Bush thinking?
Not about terrorism. The profiteering in post-war Iraq may offer
insights into Bush's objective in overtaking Iraq, but terrorism,
lost in the shuffle of Saddam playing cards, was still alive
and undefeated in Afghanistan. Bush left it to fester and recover
as he lost focus there and attacked terrorist-less Iraq. Bin
Laden had plenty of time to plot targets. Aznar's Spain undoubtedly
was among them.
Thus, the Madrid catastrophe, vile by
the devil's own standards, was predictable, if not by location
by its post hoc position in the Angry Simpleton's world of unfinished
and unfocused wars. This week Spain paid a cruel price for the
illicit and inconclusive wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. What
makes the great loss of innocent Spanish lives most heinous is
that last year while the world was waving red flags against misdirected,
bellicose adventuring and foretelling its consequences, two of
the world's leaders lied and pretended they had things well in
hand. A year later, welcome to the world as hell. This week it's
Madrid with thirteen Al Qaeda bombs exploded on commuter trains.
Next week? London? Chicago? Rome? If you are uncertain where
the world is now headed, realize that it looks like Bush is taking
us all back to square one, Afghanistan redux.
Remember the on again off again war in
Afghanistan? The first world-class Bush foreign affairs failure
(and CNN weapons show extravaganza)? Nine hundred days later,
Taliban elements still crisscross the country conducting military
operations, while rebel chiefs--not the puppet Karzi or the U.S.--control
nearly every square foot of ground. Heroin production and exportation
is again the highest in the world, and Osama Bin Laden remains
there or near, undefeated. Because of the Bush administration's
incredibly wrong turn into Iraq, Bin Laden has had a year or
two more to inspire and plan mayhem such as the world now witnesses
in Madrid. Worse than ironic, Al Qaeda is now indeed killing
U.S. soldiers, not just in Afghanistan, but inside Iraq. And
in both Spain and Iraq, hapless and unsuspecting civilians.
Spanish military losses in Iraq are,
of course, another regrettable part of this unresolved and funereal
equation still called the war on terrorism. This month Bush is
going back into Afghanistan to cipher it from there for a while.
Again. Is it because Bin Laden is a terrorist or a good draw
at the voting booth? Certainly, terrorist captures are now a
rare item. But Bush, unlike the new Spanish government, really
isn't interested in terrorism. Just look at where he spends his
military money--if, unlike Bush, you can still focus.
By far, most of the dollars for the so-called
terrorism war are being spent on the ground in IRAQ, while the
faulty $10 billion anti-missile defense system Bush insists on
funding has nothing to do with diminishing terrorism. (At this
point it should be mentioned that Bush does not have a hydrogen
car and Al Qaeda has no missiles). Instead of pursuing and finishing
the Afghan war, the Bush administration has been spending the
big dollars (not on hydrogen cars or terrorism) but on unterrorist
IRAQ. Instead, it has maintained in Afghanistan a small holding
force which has been incapable of defeating Bin Laden.
The heralded rebuilding effort inside
Afghanistan has been underfunded and floundering from the outset,
while the administration withholds from the American people next
year's massive policing and rebuilding budget for--IRAQ.
The proliferation of newly constructed
U.S. military bases along the latitude occupied by Serbia and
Turkmenistan follow oil and gas resources and pipeline routes,
not terrorists. While no one is expecting from Bush the policy
changes that would address the core issues of Islamic alienation,
the money now being spent on empire-building and resource grabbing
could actually provide the some of the safety that the world
so nakedly and so sorely needs.
Regardless of what war or oil enterprise
he spends our money on today, Bush would do well to follow old
Europe and new Spain's more enlightened policy: supply Iraq with
humanitarian aid from a respecting distance and make the fight
against known terrorism the issue. That's not caving in to terrorism,
that's confronting the immediate problem head on, keeping it
in focus. It's also good practice for keeping your thieving hands
off other people's oil. But that's not Bush's misdirected approach.
Expect more knuckle-dragging belligerence, more irresponsible
rhetoric, more urban tragedies like Madrid as the U.S. election
nears (Al Qaeda, vastly undefeated, is voting this year).
Bush intends to keep most of American
overseas military personnel in country in Iraq far past--years
past--the June 30th date when Spain intends to withdraw their
troops. They, at least, have clearly indicated their first priority
is fighting terrorism, not unemployed Iraqis. They are also indicating
generally their conviction that the illegal occupation and guerilla
war will continue to further deteriorate Arab-American relations
while encouraging more acts of terrorism, a proposition that
is hardly debatable, least of all with Al Qaeda.
In the aftermath of a sorrowfully devastating
and murderous attack against it, Spain has begun its newest era
with eyes wide open, with level purpose, and with an admirable
resolve. In seeking justice and civil restoration, the Spaniards
have first declared that transnational terrorists, not Iraq,
are their deadly enemies. Like their many compatriots around
the world who wish them success, they have independently concluded
there never was a credible association among Al Qaeda and Iraq.
But these days you'd have to live in a cave to believe that.
Worthy of accurate notice, in their first
moves to redress their injuries, they've pointedly and precisely
stated the primacy that will be given to the opposition to terrorism
by the new government. Worthy of emulation, they have shunned,
even in the pain of Madrid, the take-all-comers, bar-room "Bring
'em on!" rhetoric of blind confrontation. You'd have to
live in a cave to talk like that. That's not the new Spain, and
they are definitely not caving in to terrorism.
Larry Magnuson,
a professor of English, lives in Tennessee. He can be reached
at lawrence@pmicomputers.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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