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How Bill (and Monica) Saved Hillary from a Federal Indictment

Here's the second in Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's series as they describe Hillary Clinton's years in Little Rock and her narrow escape from federal charges that would have destroyed her political career for ever. PLUS KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY on how Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are failing Black America even as they hunt for votes in So uth Carolina's "Black Primary." 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

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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories

August 29, 2007

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Costs of the Afghanistan War

August 28, 2007

Uri Avnery
The Language of Force

Bill Quigley
Katrina, Two Years Later

Joshua Frank
The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains

China Hand
"I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy

Firmin DeBrabander
Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore

Charles Peña
Nuclear Fear Factor

Andy Worthington
Good Riddance, Gonzales

Ramzy Baroud
Abbas and the Abyss

Anthony Papa
Roger Stone's New Patsy

Ashley Smith
Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport

Website of the Day
B is for Bomb


August 27, 2007

Jorge Mariscal
The General Reports

Bill Christison
Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole

Anthony DiMaggio
Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press

Bruce A. Roth
India and the New Nuclear Era

John Walsh
Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2

Dave Lindorff
Gonzo's Gone

Ron Jacobs
Taking It to the Streets

Binoy Kampmark
Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty

Russell D. Hoffman
My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry

Website of the Day
George W. Told the Nation

 

August 25 / 26, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Don't Carpool with Nouri al-Maliki

James Petras
The Great Financial Crisis

Jeffrey Buchanan /
Chris Kromm
Where Did the Katrina Money Go?

Marjorie Cohn
Turning Iraq into Vietnam

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, the Theological Prisoner of Christianity

Robert Fantina
Ari Fleischer, Freedom Watch and the Pro-War Lobbyists

Brian Concannon
Whitewashing the History of Abolition

Ralph Nader
What Do They Have to Hide?

Laura Carlsen
Extending NAFTA's Reach

Fred Gardner
Notes from Hempfest

David Michael Green
History, the Last Refuge of Scoundrels

Stephen Soldz
Why Mary Pipher Returned Her APA Award

Mike Ferner
Combatants for Peace: Former Enemies Find New Way Forward

Paul Krassner
Mort Sahl's Punchline

Ben Tripp
Resistance is Impossible--But Not Futile

Missy Beattie
President Druzilla

Website of the Weekend
Blue Print for Gulf Renewal

 

August 24, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
A Hegemonic Hubris

Greg Moses
A Cruel and Unusual Excuse

William Schroder
Bush, Vietnam and Iraq

Alan Farago
The Pain of Paper Millionaires

Jackie Corr
Uncle Ben Bernacke and the Nanny State

Jeff Ballinger
Naomi Klein and the Path Not Taken

Bill Quigley
Pere Jean-Juste Comes Home

Dave Zirin
Inching Toward Insanity

Richard Rhames
Deaver and the Making of Reagan

Ryan Haygood
How Newark Can Mend

Website of the Day
Lindorff's Iraq Rag

 

August 23, 2007

Kathy Kelly
We Shouldn't be Causing This

P. Sainath
Meeting the Mahatma

Ron Jacobs
Bush, Vietnam and 14 More GIs Dead

Christopher Brauchli
Beyond Kafka: Mistakes, Soreheads and Eavesdropping

D.K. Wilson
When Sports Journalists Talk Race

Joshua Frank
The Weeds of Willapa Bay

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's True Lies About Dams and Canals

Brenda Norrell
Bush's House of Snakes: Indians, Border Biometrics and Migrating Corporations

John Wright
The Ongoing Tragedy of Afghanistan

David Vest
Elvis and Racism, Round 2

Website of the Day
Urgent Plea: the Black Agenda Report Needs Your Help!

 

August 22, 2007

Norman Finkelstein
Remembering Raul Hilberg

Marc Levy
Sleepless in Iraq

Lawrence R. Velvel
When Courts Bow Down to Secrecy

Ray McGovern
Bush's Iran War Drums Beating Louder

Norman Solomon
How to Survive at the Pentagon on $2 Billion a Day

John Walsh
Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Road Show

Michael Dickinson
Little Brother is Watching You

William S. Lind
Operation Kabuki?: the Credibility of David Petraeus

Bill Hatch
A Short Walk into the Valley of Death

Kenneth E. Foster and John Joe Amador
How We Will Protest Our Executions

David Vest
Predictable Parallels: CNN and PBS

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Steve Perry


August 21, 2007

Saul Landau
The FBI's New Power

Alan Farago
Sand Houses and Missing Beaches

John Stauber
Iraq: the Gift that Keeps on Bleeding

Phillip Rizk
Gaza and the Jordanian Option

Debbie Nathan
Giuliani's Garden District

Binoy Kampmark
The Art of Sinning

Martha Rosenberg
The Fastow Economy

Sunsara Taylor
Back to School During Wartime

Website of the Day
Coffee with the Troops

 

August 20, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Padilla Jury Opens Pandora's Box

Uri Avnery
Stumbling Toward Another War

Rannie Amiri
Nasrallah's Surprise: a Warning from Beirut's No Bluff Zone

John Ross
The Fine Art of Bad Elections

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Radioactive Rip-Off

Robert Billyard
Canada's Disgrace: the Cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr

Dave Lindorff
Excuse Us, Nancy Pelosi

James Rothenberg
Why Your Vote Will Never Matter

David "DC" Larson
To Smear a King

Website of the Day
Bird Cinema

August 18 / 19, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Exit Karl Rove, Everyone's Useful Demon

Saul Landau
The FBI in War and Peace

Ralph Nader
Greed and Folly on Wall Street

Patrick Cockburn
A Bloody Week in Iraq

Robert Fantina
Cannon Fodder: Beau Biden and other "Deployable Assets"

Robert S. Eshelman
Azar's Story: an Iraqi Refugee Living in Syria

P. Sainath
The Last Battle of Laxmi Panda

Dave Lindorff
Tossing Fuel on a Fire: US Military Aid to Israel

Anthony DiMaggio
Iraq, Iran & the Vanishing Context in American News

Fred Gardner
The Politics of Schizophrenia

Ron Jacobs
The Virtues of Resistance

Tom Turnipseed
War Profiteering and Corruption: From Lexington, S.C. to the White House

Paul Krassner
Assholes of the Week: Special Preachers, Priests and Clerics Edition!

Ben Tripp
I'm So Screwed

Andrew Wimmer
Living With Grief

Nancy Oden
Where Inmates Can Grow for Free

N.D. Jayaprakash
India Backtracks on Disarmament

Rick Smith
Reflections on Cuba: an Interview with Doug Morris

Missy Beattie
The Suicide Bomber

Poets' Basement
Engel, Ford, Orloski and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Imperial Storm Troopers in Action


August 17, 2007

Joanne Mariner
Terrorizing Social Protest

Paul Craig Roberts
China is not the Problem

Shepherd Bliss
Returning to the Scene of the Crime: Chile, 30 Years Later

Dave Lindorff
Convicting Padilla: Bad News for All Americans

John Muthyala
The Water and the Road: Katrina, Poverty and the American Dream

Patrick Cockburn
Deepening Divsions in Iraq

Sherwood Ross
Military Interrogators are Posing as Lawyers at Gitmo

Phil Doe
The Old West Moves East: the Political Science of Colorado River Water

David Michael Green
Karl Rove and the Damage Done

Website of the Day
Gorilla Slaughter: a Personal Account


August 16, 2007

Jonathan Cook
The Second Lebanon War, a Year Later

Christopher Brauchli
Babes in Toxic Toyland

Norman Solomon
Backspin for War

Lee Sustar /
Orlando Sepuldeva

Victory on the Picket Line: How Immigrant Workers Won Their Strike Against Cygnus

George Bisharat
Boycott Movement Targets Israel

Binoy Kampmark
Tasteless: Gordon Ramsey and the Death of Gastronomy

Evelyn Pringle
Protection Racket?: the FDA and Avandia

Hugo Blanco
The Epic Struggle of Indigenous Andean / Amazonian

Website of the Day
Burning Man: the Field Recordings

 

August 15, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
"No American President Can Stand Up to Israel"

Michael Neumann
In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg

Jordan Flaherty
The Struggle to Free the Jena Six

Sonja Karkar
Can You Hear the Cries from Gaza?

Felice Pace
NPR Watch: Will Linda Gradstein Go to Gaza?

Joshua Frank
On Censoring Pearl Jam

Dave Lindorff
Terrorist Nation?

Carla Blank
Elvis Presley: King or Apprentice?

David Vest
Guralnick, Elvis and Racism

Harvey Wasserman
Why the Neocons Won't Miss Karl Rove

Peter Rost, M.D.
FDA Approved Drug Makes You Hypersexual and a Compulsive Gambler

Russell Mokhiber
An Arab American's Pocket Political Dictionary

Website of the Day
Stoners Busted

 

August 14, 2007

Paul de Rooij
Humanitarian Wars and Associated Delusions

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress's Busted September: Disingenuous Gestures Amid Catastrophe

David Rosen
The Case of Genarlow Wilson: Racism, Justice and Age-of-Consent Laws in America

Gary Leupp
Bush Warns Puppets Not to Praise Iran

Clifton Ross
Latin America at the Crossroads

Muhammad Idress Ahmad
The Politics of Democracy Promotion

Jacquelyn Godin
A Circle of Poison: Pesticides in the Plantations

Uri Avnery
Oslo Revisited

Ramzy Baroud
A Palestinian Miracle at the UN?

James McEnteer
Philistines as Cultural Critics

Website of the Day
When Cheney Called Iraq a Quagmire

 

August 13, 2007

Jeremy Scahill
The Mercenary Revolution

F. William Engdahl
The Hidden Agenda Behind Bush's Biofuel Plan

Alexander Cockburn
The Veldt Will Never Be the Same

Kathy Kelly
Iraq's Refugees: "et to Work"

Chris Floyd
No Light, Light Tunnel: the Bipartisan Guarantee of More War in Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
Hegemony of the Cockroach

William Blum
First Pullout, Then Bloodbath?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Language of Dominion

Rannie Amiri
Tancredo's Screedo: a Lethal Mix of Ignorance and Insanity

Brenda Norrell
Priests Expose Secret Cycle of US Torture

Fran Shor
All Fall Down

Ron Jacobs
Dr. Strangelove Meets Dubya's Double Buzz Twofer

Website of the Day
The Beauty of Defiance

 

August 11 / 12, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
How the Democrats Blew It in Only 8 Months

Stan Goff
The Cover-Up of Pat Tillman's Death

Ralph Nader
GM Radio: Payola to Rightwing Talk Shows?

Vijay Prashad
Destination Darfur: a New Cold War for Oil

Greg Moses
SubPrime People: Behind the Banking Crisis

Alan Farago
The Cratering Mortgage Market, WCI Communities and Amb. Al Hoffman

Patrick Cockburn
The Cracks in Saddam's Dam

Ben Tripp
On Fleeing the Country

Robert Fantina
Romney's Dance: The Rightwing Flip-Flop

John Ross
The Guelaguetza Strategy in Oaxaca

Seth Sandronsky
Organizing Nurses

Paul Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Mitt Romney to Bill Richardson

Website of the Weekend
Pearl Jam: Censored by ATT

 

August 10, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
China's Threat to the Dollar is Real

Stan Goff
How Pat Tillman Died

Marjorie Cohn
A Blank Check for Domestic Spying

Saul Landau
In the Age of Immigrant Panic

Chris Floyd
Goading Xerxes: the Coming Strike on Iran

Daniel Ellsberg
A Vision for Cindy Sheehan's Campaign

Anthony Papa
The Upside Down Flag: a Country in Distress

Farzana Versey
On the Heels of Sir Salman

Sgt. Kevin Benderman
Freedom or Totalitarianism?

Nuri Nuri
Memories of T99 Nelson

Website of the Day
Lessons in Obfuscation from Sen. Larry Craig: How to Talk About Looting the Public Domain

 

August 9, 2007

Stan Goff
The Fog of Fame: Pat Tillman as Everyone's Political Football

Paul Craig Roberts
In the Hole to China

Alan Farago
The Terror of the Mortgage Pools

William S. Lind
The Surge's New Math: One Step Forward, Two Back

Doug Giebel
Letter from Montana: What the Bushvolk Have Done to America

Harvey Wasserman
Radioactive Bailout in Advance

Jacob Hill
The Tail End of Free Trade: NAFTA's Impact on the Manufacturing Sector

Raul Zibechi
The Dark Side of Agrofuels

Dave Zirin
The Making of Barry bin Laden

Website of the Day
"Babies Just Come with the Scenery"

 

August 8, 2007

Andy Worthington
Backing Up Lt. Col. Abraham on Gitmo Abuse

Jeff Halper
The Catch in Israel's "Generous Offers" at Jericho

Greg Moses
No Light in August for Texas Refugees: Judge Orders Baby Sent to Palestine

Nurit Peled-Elhanan
The Murder of Abir Aramin, 9 Years Old

Sukant Chandan
British Prisons as Islamic Universities

Robert Fisk
A Lebanese Surprise

George H. Strauss
The Military Society

D.K. Wilson
Bonds, the Haters and 756: Why Bob Costas Can't be Trusted

Bill Day
Leonardo DiCaprio's Baggage: the Perils of Celebrity Environmentalism

Tim Campbell
Monkey See, Monkey Do Politics

Website of the Day
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

 

August 7, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Why the Surge Has Failed

Andy Worthington
Why Do We Need the Democrats?: They Have Failed to Restrain Bush on Gitmo, Iraq and Domestic Spying

Kathy Kelly
The Little Girl of Hiroshima

Stan Cox
The Antiwar Majority: Look Quickly, You Might Miss It

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Settlement Project

Sen. Russ Feingold
A License to Wiretap--Anyone

Alan Farago
Dancing in the Light of Florida

Norman Solomon
Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman

Binoy Kampmark
Giving Good Face: What Jeremy Bentham and Facebook Have in Common

Dave Lindorff
The Gelding Congress

John Stauber
Coffee with the Troops at Yearly Kos

Website of the Day
George Carlin on Education

 

 

 

Subscribe Online

August 29, 2007

Will Bush Take Everything Down With Him?

More Shame, More Sorrow

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

In the administration of George W. Bush, the Republican Party has achieved the greatest combination of idiocy and evil in human history.

The Republicans have bogged America down in a gratuitous and illegal war. The war has destroyed Iraq, killed between 650,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians, displaced 4,000,000 Iraqis, and littered the country with depleted uranium. Bush's war remains unwon despite its five year duration and $1 trillion in out-of-pocket and incurred future costs.

Bush's invasion of Iraq is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard, a direct counterpart to Hitler's invasion of Poland. Both were based on lies and deception, and the declared reasons for both were masks for secret agendas.

Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, his planned attack on Iran, and his support for Israel's attack on Lebanon and genocidal policies toward the Palestinians have radicalized the Middle East and Muslims worldwide. American and Israeli aggression have vindicated Osama bin Laden's propaganda, produced massive recruits for Al Qaeda, and unleashed destabilizing forces throughout the Middle East

Bush's wars are strengthening Islam. Abdullah Gul has just been elected president of Turkey. Gul is described by the American media as "former Islamist." Gul is supported by the ruling political party of prime minister Erdogan, another "former Islamist."

Gul's election to the presidency by 76% of the Turkish parliament has upset Turkey's secularized military, long in the pay of the US government. On August 27 Turkey's military chief, General Yasar Buyukanit, declared that "centers of evil systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic." The Turkish military, many believe at the request and pay of the US, has overthrown four Turkish governments since 1960, the last only 10 years ago.

With President Bush's rant about "bringing democracy to the Middle East," the Turkish military is less able to impose Western values on an Islamic people. Similarly, the American puppet in Egypt cannot as easily suppress the Islamic values and aspirations of Egyptians.

US puppet rulers in Jordan and Pakistan, and even the Saudis and oil emirates, report the ground shaking under their feet. America's puppet in Pakistan is in trouble, and his difficulties are compounded by US military incursions into Pakistan. The Bush administration is considering contingency plans to seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the event the American puppet is overthrown, delusional contingency plans considering the over-stretched US military.

In the postwar years, the US managed with its money and influence to secularize an elite class in Middle Eastern countries, an elite that identifies with the West and not with their own cultures. This artificial elite has produced a wide political gap between the masses of the people and the rulers. Increasingly, Muslim masses perceive their rulers as allied with foreign powers against them.

In Iraq the American puppet government of Nuri al-Maliki seems to be on its last legs. The Sunnis have pulled their support, as has the most important Shi'ite leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, who realizes that the Maliki government is too complicit in US crimes to be a legitimate government of Iraq. With both the Bush administration and Congress blaming Maliki for America's failure in Iraq, Maliki's fate looks increasingly to be that of Ngo Dinh Diem, America's Vietnam puppet who was blamed for the failure of US intervention in Vietnam.

Just as Hitler long denied German defeats on the Russian front and even in his last days was ordering non-existent German divisions to relieve Berlin, the Bush regime finds a new straw to grasp in Iraq each time the previous straw proves to be a delusion. The latest straw is "the surge." While Americans surge, the British have been defeated in southern Iraq and have withdrawn to two bases in eerie similarity to the French at Dien Bien Phu. The British bases are subjected to between 30 and 60 mortar and rocket attacks each day. British generals want their troops out of Iraq. The longer UK prime minister Brown keeps them in Iraq in order to appease the Bush administration, the harder it will be to rescue the survivors.

With American retreat south to Kuwait now potentially cut off, how will the US extract its troops and equipment when American defeat can no longer be denied?

The Bush administration and its politicized military are already blaming the failure of "the surge" on Iran. Iran is alleged to be training and arming Iraqis who resist the US occupation. Bush has said he will hold Iran responsible. There is abundant evidence that the Bush administration is preparing yet another illegal attack on a Muslim country without assessing the consequences.

The Bush administration seems destined to produce such disasters that it will be driven to the use of nuclear weapons in order to avoid defeat. The Bush administration possesses the combination of evil and stupidity required to escalate a failed "cakewalk war" into a nuclear one.

Many of the administration's most evil members--Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Rumsfeld, Rove, and Gonzales--have been discarded as the tragedy deepens, but Cheney remains ensconced as does the moron in the White House. Before they fall, Bush and Cheney will bring more sorrow to the world and more shame to Americans.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com







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