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Special Issue for CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! The Battle Over the Israel Lobby As John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's long awaited "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" draws hysterical abuse, former CIA intelligence officers Kathy and Bill Christison define the Lobby's real nature, trace its history, and measure its actual power. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories September 29 / 30, 2007 Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders   September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition September 29 / 30, 2007 07 Crusader: 3 GPM Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog By RICHARD RHAMES "There's an old saw in the military that goes, 'Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.' And when it comes down to the essential elements of the Iraq war, the fight is about logistics." Robert Bryce Starting in the year 1096, the theocracies of Europe began invading and killing "Moslems." Their repeated and repeatedly repulsed efforts are called The Crusades. My old (1959) encyclopedia notes the term was taken from the Portuguese, "cruzado, marked with the cross." The entry continues, "[T]he military expeditions... were sent out by the Christian peoples of the West from the end of the eleventh till the latter half of the 13th century for the conquest of Palestine." The harvests were bad in Europe. The peasants were hungry and their prospects grim. Heavily armored and armed bands of warriors roamed the countryside and were always looking for blood-sport and booty. Shipping this lot off to Mesopotamia/Palestine for plunder, genocide and territorial acquisition became inevitable. As today, the invaded were characterized as "uncivilized" and subhuman. Thus were mud-hut dwelling illiterates sent against cultures practiced in the arts, literature, mathematics, and astronomy. Ultimately, the 1096 Crusade and successors went poorly for the would-be conquerers. If food was scarce back home in Mudville, it was often only a dream in this distant and hostile land. The invaders usually started out with armored and mounted "Knights"(40 pounds of chain-mail, unventilated helmets, plus heavy sword and shield) leading the way, followed by pack animals, livestock, and peasant expendables. But the "logistical tail" to resupply the Christian soldiers was wanting. As time went on, they became a sick and desperate legion. Historian Robert Finucane reports the reactions of a "First Crusader" as food ran out and the animals were sacrificed: "He could see horseless knights suddenly demoted to the foot-weary ranks, or even perched on the backs of lumbering oxen. In place of their defunct pack-animals, crusaders loaded their goods....onto goats, rams, dogs, even sows...." Soon, these beasts too were lost. Hunger set in, and by 1098, "Like Old Testament locusts, the Christians picked the surrounding countryside clean. They were soon reduced to meals of bean seeds, weeds, thistles which pricked the tongue, dead horses, asses, camels, dogs and rats." The poorest made "a kind of soup" from boiled animal skins to which they added bits of grain teased out of animal dung. Finucane continues, "Extreme weather, thirst and exhaustion naturally made crusaders susceptible to a variety of diseases, like dysentery." Yes, the first foreign legion had a bad and collective case of "the squirts." The endless retreats to "the privy" (as Finucare delicately describes the condition) led many knights to cut slits in their armor and cut away their lower clothing to hasten the process. This brown-stained crew made quite an impression on the locals. The Europeans were opposed in principle to bathing, thinking it most unhealthful. Factor in the heat and the diarrhea residue and the stench they carried with them is even today, the stuff of Arab legend. The present crusaders are much better supplied logistically. The privatized mess-halls are well stocked. There's always a Taco Bell or other saturated fat purveyor handy. There's AC in a country where (thanks to US bombs and the Clinton embargo) most Mesopotamians can't even power a fan. And, as in any good crusade, there's armor. But, there apparently isn't enough. The most famously armored vehicle deployed in Iraq is the M1A1 Abrams tank. This machine, featured so prominently in recruitment videos hurtling though desert terrain, has a gas turbine engine rated at a "combat average" of 3 gallons per mile (GPM)---not miles per gallon (MPG). But now comes word that other armored vehicles are in the works which threaten to challenge the M1 for fuel hoggery. Called MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected) vehicles, these new carbon emitters are a predictable response to the agile and tenacious Iraqi resistance. The US, you may remember, was very concerned about protecting the Ministry of Oil in 2003. it was somewhat less concerned about museums, schools, and ...well...ammo dumps. Thus, the US Defense Department (sic) estimates there are currently 7 million tons of large caliber ammunition at-large in Iraq. Some of that store has been fashioned into IEDs (improvised explosive devices) over the years. As Robert Bryce recently reported in the Washington Spectator, these devices are responsible for an increasing number of US casualties. "From January through early August of this year, just over 52 percent of all fatalities among US soldiers in Iraq were due to IED attacks." Since the occupation began the IED death toll is 1,460. Occupation forces have tried electronic jamming ($1.4 billion in 2006 alone) and "up-armoring" the 22,000 Humvees currently there. Basically, it hasn't worked. The locals simply adapt with bigger and now, EFPs (explosively formed projectiles) or "super IEDs." More armor is the response. Bryce notes that, "Over the next four years,... [the plan is] to spend about $20 billion on a fleet of 23,000..." heavier MRAPs. The cost for the first 1,520 ordered came to $5.3 billion, or $3.5 million each. To get them overseas quickly they are being flown there at a cost of $135,000 per vehicle. They will replace the Humvees (12,000 pounds/ 8 MPG). "The base model MRAP, known as the RG-31, or Cougar, weighs 38,000 pounds and may get 4 MPG, or less.... [T]he RG-33, weigh[s] 52,000 pounds. The largest MRAP,...[the] Buffalo, weighs 80,000 pounds, or 40 tons." Iraq's occupation is currently powered by 2.000 trucks each day freighting food, water, furniture, and fuel from Kuwait. This long "logistical tail" (including more than 5,500 fuel tankers) offer abundant targets for the resistance and their IEDs. The fuel requirements for the MRAPs alone fatten the logistical tail, create a "target-rich environment" and perhaps doom this recent crusade: Armored invaders a long way from home and likely to carry out a lot less than they carried in. Richard Rhames is a dirt-farmer in Biddeford, Maine whose place is just north of the Kennebunkport town line. When the swaggering cod-piece king is in town one dreams of Paris. He can be reached at: rrhames@xpressamerica.net Your Ad Here

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