Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's Stories
June 26 / 27, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
June 25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush
Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did
Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diane Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June 19
/ 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation on
Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
Col. Dan
Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June 18,
2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player &
Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
| Weekend
Edition
June 26 / 27, 2004
"We
Will Crush Fallujah's Insurgents"
Iyad Allawi,
the CIA's New Stooge in Iraq
By
PATRICK COCKBURN
The
US military angrily lashed out yesterday with an air strike on an alleged
"safehouse" of insurgents in Fallujah believed to be behind
co-ordinated attacks across Iraq.
As
the insurgents attacked in cities across central Iraq this week, killing
more than 100 people, Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, vowed
that "we are going to defeat them. We are going to crush them."
It
will not be easy to do. By making co-ordinated assaults on police stations
and government buildings, the guerrillas have shown that they are far
better organised and more numerous than they were six months ago.
The
attacks also had the obvious intention of spoiling the so-called handover
of power by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi
interim government led by Mr Allawi on 30 June.
In
fact the transfer of power will be limited. Mr Allawi has grandiose
plans for a beefed-up Iraqi security force, but at the moment he has
little armed strength. He must depend on the 138,000 US troops in the
country for the foreseeable future. The elaborate security measures
protecting Mr Allawi as he speaks defiantly to his enemies make clear
his reliance on the US. Anybody attending his press conferences must
enter the Green Zone, the American civil headquarters in Iraq, and pass
through four checkpoints manned by US soldiers. No Iraqi officials are
visible.
But
there is no doubt about the American desire to give an Iraqi face to
the occupation and to see Iraqi security forces do much of the fighting.
The
US military and civil leaders were profoundly shaken when half of the
Iraqi army, paramilitary units and police deserted or went home during
the uprisings in April.
Mr
Allawi will now play a vital role in US plans. He is a surprising choice.
"We really chose him because he had the least enemies," said
a member of the notoriously divided Iraqi Governing Council, which selected
him last month. He was a notably unsuccessful opposition leader against
Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, played little role in the war last year,
and his movement, the Iraqi National Accord, had made little impact
since entering Baghdad.
But
Mr Allawi, 59, has certain advantages. He was born into a well-known
Shia family in a country where the Shias make up 60 per cent of the
population. He was also a member of the Baath party in Iraq and in the
UK until he broke with Saddam in the 1970s. This is reassuring for former
members of the Baath, numbering some 750,000 members last year, which
Paul Bremer, the US viceroy last year, disastrously persecuted. Mr Allawi
has publicly said that disbanding the Iraqi army was a mistake.
Again
his appointment will be welcomed by hundreds of thousands of former
Iraqi soldiers and security men.
But
other aspects of Mr Allawi's past are less than reassuring for Iraqis,
who expect him to end the occupation and bring peace (and there is an
overwhelming desire for peace among Iraqis). Trained as a neurologist
in Baghdad, he was awarded a scholarship to Britain, where he worked
for Iraqi intelligence as head of the Iraqi Student Union of Europe.
He made money in business. Soon he was dealing with British as well
as Iraqi intelligence officers.
It
is in this shadowy world that Mr Allawi is happiest. He defended himself
this month against charges that he was being financed by the CIA by
saying that over the years he had taken money from 15 different intelligence
organisations but had always been true to his aim of getting rid of
Saddam Hussein. In 1978, Saddam, angered by Mr Allawi's change in loyalties,
sent assassins to his home in London. They burst into his bedroom armed
with knives and axes but he survived, though seriously wounded.
Mr
Allawi founded the Iraqi National Accord (al-Wifaq), which sought to
attract defecting Baathists and army officers. In 1996 it opened an
office in Jordan and tried to launch a coup against Saddam in Baghdad.
It failed bloodily. Iraqi security men had penetrated its organisation.
But the CIA appeared never to lose faith in him as their chosen agent.
Curiously
Mr Allawi's subterranean existence since the fall of Saddam has stood
him in good stead. Much of the time he was out of the country. His rival
Ahmed Chalabi, close to the Pentagon and the neo-conservatives but hated
by the CIA and the US State Department, has fallen from grace as a result
of bureaucratic wars in Washington.
The
problem for Mr Allawi is that he must now try to ride two very different
horses at the same time. Iraqis want him to restore order and get rid
of the US occupation. But he has no real base and must therefore do
what the US wants at the end of the day. He is thus in danger of having
responsibility but little power and being seen by Iraqis as an American
stooge.
Weekend Edition June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede
Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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