Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 27,
2005
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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
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Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
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WMD: Who Said What When
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The
Erosion of the American Dream
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Impeach
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January 27, 2005
There He Goes Again...
Reining
In Cheney
By
RAY McGOVERN
Quick! Anyone! Who can put the brakes
on Vice President Dick Cheney before we have another war on our
hands? Current and former intelligence analysts are reacting
with wonderment and apprehension to his remarks last week on
the nuclear program of Iran and his resuscitated spinning on
why attacking Iraq was the prudent thing to do.
There he goes again, they say-trifling
with the truth on Iraq and now taking off after Iran. Does he
really have the temerity to reach into the same bag of tricks
used to convince most Americans that Iraq was an immediate nuclear
threat? Will his distinctive mix of truculence and contempt
for the truth succeed in rationalizing attacks on Iran on grounds
that US intelligence may have underestimated the progress in
Iraq's nuclear weapons program 15 years ago?
At this point the focus is
no longer on the bogus weapons of mass destruction (WMD) rationale
used to promote the attack on Iraq, intelligence analysts say.
It's the claims the vice president is now making regarding Iran's
nuclear capability...and, given the deliberate distortions on
Iraq, whether anyone should believe him.
Appearing Thursday on MSNBC's
Imus in the Morning, Cheney warned that Iran has "a
fairly robust new nuclear program." And besides, it sponsors
terrorism. Sound familiar?
In a not-so-subtle attempt
to raise the alarm on Iran, the vice president adduced his favorite
analogy-the one he used in 2002 to beat intelligence analysts
into submission in conjuring up phantom weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq. Cheney continues to underscore his claim that before
the Gulf War in 1991, US intelligence had erred in assessing
how close Iraq was to having a nuclear weapon:
"We found out after
we got into Iraq [in 1991], in fact, that he [Saddam Hussein]
probably was less than a year away from having a nuclear weapon...the
intelligence community had underestimated how robust his nuclear
program was."
That "Robust"
Word Again
Forget the fact that few nuclear
engineers agree on that time frame. The question is what relevance
Cheney's claim has for today? In view of the evolving debate
on how "robust" Iran's nuclear program is, we are sure
to be hearing more from the vice president on this subject in
the months ahead. How much credence are we to put in what he
says?
With the final report on the
search for Iraqi WMD now delivered, Cheney is still trying to
exculpate himself from his false claims regarding Iraq's nuclear
capability, by equating Iraq's nuclear posture before 1991 with
its much weaker capability in the months preceding the US/UK
attack in March 2003.
Needed:
Enriched Uranium
For Iraq to possess the nuclear
weapons program Cheney claimed it had in March 2003, it needed-first
and foremost-highly enriched uranium. But events in the 1990s
had eviscerated its capacity to obtain it. After the 1991 Gulf
War, all highly enriched uranium was removed from Iraq. UN inspectors
destroyed Iraq's centrifuge and isotope separation programs.
And from 1991 on, Iraq was subjected to an intrusive arms embargo
and sanctions regime, which made it much more difficult than
during the pre-Gulf War years to import material for a nuclear
weapons program.
Thus, for Cheney to invoke
what Iraq may have been capable of doing in 1991 and apply that
to the very different situation in Iraq in 2002 is, at best,
disingenuous. There are huge differences between the situations
in 1991 and 2002. In 2002, the Iraqis lacked highly enriched
uranium and the necessary infrastructure. American inspectors
working for the UN team knew that-and reported it-from their
hands-on experience in early 2003.
Chutzpah,
Confidence, Naiveté-a Noxious Mix
Cheney's chutzpah on this key
issue has been particularly striking. On March 16, 2003, just
three days before the war, he zoomed far beyond the evidence
in telling NBC's Meet the Press, "We believe he [Saddam
Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Asked about ElBaradei's report just nine days before that Iraq
had no nuclear weapons program, Cheney said, "I disagree...I
think Mr. ElBaradei is frankly wrong."
"How did they ever think
they could get away with it-I mean using forgery, hyperbole,
half-truth, malleable house-engineers, and carefully rehearsed
émigrés?" asked a government scientist. Well,
remember his March 16, 2003 remarks on NBC's Meet the Press
just before the war?
"We will be greeted
as liberators...the people of Iraq will welcome us as liberators."
The administration's reasoning,
it seems clear, went like this: We'll use the forged documents
on Iraq seeking uranium in Niger and the strained argument that
those famous aluminum tubes were destined for centrifuge application,
and that will be enough to get Congress to go along. The war
will be a cakewalk. We'll depose a hated dictator and be hailed
as liberators. We'll become the dominant world power in that
part of the world and, with an infrastructure of permanent military
bases in Iraq, we'll be able to make our influence felt on the
disposition of oil in the whole region. Not incidentally, we
will be in position to prevent any possible threat to Israel.
At that point, then, tell me: who is going to make a ruckus
over the fact that we used a little forgery, hyperbole, and half-truth
along the way!
And so, our Congress was successfully
conned into precipitous action to meet a non-existent threat.
We deposed Saddam and occupied the country. Everything fell
into place. But the Iraqis missed their cue and failed to welcome
our troops as liberators. All this brings to mind the old saying,
"There is no such thing as a perfect crime."
Concern,
Pressure From Abroad
At this point, British officials,
who have had a front-row seat for all this, are worried that
Cheney is now driving administration policy on Iran, according
to a recent article in The Times of London. Adding to
London's concern is the fact that the Pentagon seems to be relying
heavily on "alarmingly inconclusive" satellite imagery
of Iranian installations.
(For those of you who missed
it, please know that since 1996 analysis of satellite imagery
has been performed in the Department of Defense, not by CIA analysts,
as had been the case before. As you can imagine, this has made
it much easier for the Pentagon to come up with the desired "supporting
evidence" than was the case in the days when CIA had that
portfolio and imagery analysts were encouraged to "tell
it like it is.")
Complicating the Iranian nuclear
issue still more is the hard-nosed attitude of Israel. Its defense
minister has warned, "Under no circumstances would Israel
be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession."
The British are well advised
to worry, given the appeal that preemption holds for our vice
president and president. In his August 26, 2002 speech, Cheney
also became the first senior US official publicly to refer approvingly
to Israel's bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in
1981. (In a rare instance of US willingness to criticize Israel
at the UN, Washington had joined other Security Council members
in unanimously condemning Israel's preemptive attack. And, as
far as I know, that remains the official US position.)
Cheney and
Israel
Cheney, nonetheless, has done
little to disguise his admiration for Israel's policy of preemption.
Ten years after the attack on Osirak, then-Defense Secretary
Cheney reportedly gave Israeli Maj. Gen. David Ivri, then the
commander of the Israeli Air Force, a satellite photo of the
Iraqi nuclear reactor destroyed by US-built Israeli aircraft.
On the photo Cheney penned, "Thanks for the outstanding
job on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981."
Looking again at the Cheney-Imus
dialogue last week, Cheney, after expressing deep concern over
Iran's "fairly robust new nuclear program," repeated
basically what Condoleezza Rice had said earlier in the week-"Iran
has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of
Israel." Imus then brought up the subject of preempting
Iran, asking, "Why don't we make Israel do it?"
Cheney's response should give
all of us pause:
"Well, one of the concerns
people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that
if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant
capability, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and
let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic
mess afterwards."
The vice president's nonchalance
betrays the apparent equanimity with which he regards such a
possibility. His words are bound to endear him further with
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but the tone, as well as
the words, are poison to 1.3 billion Muslims.
Someone needs to tell Cheney
that "diplomatic mess" trivializes the lasting damage
to the US that such an attack would inevitably bring. Not only
can his attitude be read as a green light for Israeli preemption,
but it would undoubtedly be read as proof of US complicity, should
the Israelis attack Iran's nuclear facilities. And the queues
at al-Qaeda recruiting stations, already lengthened by Abu Graib
and Falluja, would now stretch out longer than the lines at the
polls in the minority precincts of Ohio.
Restraining
Cheney?
And so we are back to the key
question: Can anyone put the brakes on the vice president?
It would normally be the job of CIA analysts to point out to
the president and his senior advisors the manifold problems that
would accrue from an Israeli attack (or, worse still) a US, or
joint US-Israeli, attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. But
Seymour Hersh's recent report that the White House is weeding
out the apostates from the true believers among CIA analysts,
together with the current dearth of courage in senior Agency
ranks, suggest that those remaining analysts who still subscribe
to the old Agency ethos of speaking truth to power will continue
to choose to resign and look for honest work.
This will leave the field to
the kind of "slam-dunk" sycophants who conjured up
"weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq and then passed
their reporting off as intelligence analysis. What can we expect
of them this time on Iran?
Ray McGovern began his 27-year career with the
CIA as the analyst for Soviet relations with China and Southeast
Asia. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity and is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's Imperial
Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. He can be reached
at: rrmcgovern@aol.com
This article first appeared
on TomPaine.com
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