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Inside Iraq's Resistance
HOT HOT HOT New CounterPunch Print Edition!

Meet actual Iraqis and not just Western caricatures. Laith al-Saud interviews top man in Iraq's national resistance. It's not just Abu Ghraib and bids to kill Fidel Castro. Torture and assassination are integral parts of America's imperial machine. Don't miss Andrew Wimmer's searing journey into the soul of a nation that tortures as a way of life. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the killing of General Kassem. PLUS Sam Sillen's rollicking exhumation of Edmund Wilson as Malthusian Trostskyite. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

CounterPunch Writer Daniel Wolff in Portland on Race, Music and Ashbury Park

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Today's Stories

October 6, 2005

Robert Pollin
Is the Dollar Still Falling?

October 5, 2005

Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines

Robert Jensen
Is Bush a Racist?

Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire

Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad"

Dave Zirin
Barry Bonds Laughs Last

Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over

Alan Maass
Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work

 

October 4, 2005

Nikolas Kozloff
Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt.

Mike Roselle
Houston, You've Got a Problem

Joshua Frank
The Scoop on Harriet Miers

John Chuckman
War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say

Alan Farago
Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys

Mickey Z.
An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski

Christine & Ethan Rose
Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims

Gary Leupp
An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History

Website of the Day
Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan

 

October 3, 2005

Vijay Prashad
Desperation at Holyoke

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi Rice: Gunslinger

Joshua Frank
An Interview with Cindy Sheehan

Seth Sandronsky
The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Great Green Scare

 

October 1 / 2, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze

Dave Marsh
A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan

Ralph Nader
Gutless, Spineless and Clueless

Flavia Alaya
Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza

Uri Avnery
The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory

Chris Kutalik
The Battle at Northwest Airlines

Greg Moses
Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues

Brian J. Foley
I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet

Nicole Colson
Hunger Strike at Gitmo

Ray McGovern
Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility

Fred Gardner
Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit

Justin Felux
Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby!

Will Youmans
"Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine

Mike Ferner
What Else Shall We Do?

David Krieger
The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant

Agustin Velloso
Samson Returns to Gaza

Saul Landau
The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema

Ben Tripp
Right Down the Middle

Poets Basement
Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Holler If Ya Hear Me

 

September 30, 2005

Mary Geddry
Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars

Dave Lindorff
Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time

Gregory Wilpert
"The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America"

Benjamin Dangl
"Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo

James McMurtry
We Can't Make It Here Anymore

T.R. Johnson
Return to the Ninth Ward

 

September 29, 2005

Sen. Russ Feingold
Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America

Carl G. Estabrook
Obama the Enabler

Ramzy Baroud
Rhetoric and Reality of War

Dave Lindorff
What Opposition Party?

Mike Whitney
Brownie's Comic Opera

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
What Noble Cause?

Gary Handschumacher
Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan

Winslow T. Wheeler
No Leaders in Congress Against This War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans

 

September 28, 2005

Dr. Eyad Serraj
Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement Sounds Like

William A. Cook
Bush's Security Barrier

Liaquat Ali Khan
The Invention of Porno Torture

Mike Whitney
Apartheid Justice in America

Joshua Frank
Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home?

CounterPunch Wire
New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters

Chris Genovali
Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest

Linn Washington, Jr.
White Affirmative Action: How John Roberts Got to the Top

 

September 27, 2005

Forrest Hylton
Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a Matter for Our Movement

Jason Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist

Jennifer K. Harbury
Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration

Ray McGovern
Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent?

Mike Ferner
Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon

Antony Loewenstein
When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel in Australia

Harry Browne
Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms

 

September 26, 2005

Rafael Rodriguez Cruz
Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI Murders a Legend

Joshua Frank
Democrats Flee Peace Protests

Lamis Andoni
The Railroading of Taysir Alony

Mike Marqusee
Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals": Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
They Can't Fool Us Anymore

Ron Jacobs
A Small March for Me, a Giant March for the Antiwar Movement

Norman Solomon
The Media and the Antiwar Movement

John Chuckman
Bush in a Bottle

Paul Craig Roberts
America is Running Out of Time

 

September 24 / 25, 2005

Kathy and Bill Christison
Polluting Palestine: Settlements & Sewage

Ralph Nader
Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina

Saul Landau
The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada

Greg Moses
A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau

Roger Burbach
Hugo Chavez's Mission

Vijay Prashad
America's Shame

Laura Carlsen
After NAFTA

Robert Fisk
When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful

Dave Lindorff
A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They?

Kirkpatrick Sale / Thomas Naylor
Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration

Maj. Anthony Milavic
The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti: the Time for Action is Now

 

September 23, 2005

CounterPunch News Service
In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes Bill O'Reilly

Diane Farsetta
Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks

Robert Sandels
Militarizing the Market

Christopher Brauchli
Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations

Alan Farago
Bird Flu Takes Flight

Dave Zirin
When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968

Maxine Conant
A Simple Test for Bush

David Price
Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and Davis-Bacon Profiteering

 

September 22, 2005

Smith, Wood, Leas, and Greenfield
Which Way Forward for the Green Party? a Report from Tulsa

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqis: This Government has No Authority

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Thinking is Religious Freedom

Lucia Dailey
Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One

Mokhiber / Weissman
Are You a Speed Freak?

Russell D. Hoffman
The Nukes in Rita's Path

Kona Lowell
God's Hurricane?

Jason Leopold
GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina

Website of the Day
Robert Pollin on the Global Economy

 

September 21, 2005

Jorge Mariscal
Military Recruiters: Counselers or Salesmen?

Linda S. Heard
Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak

Joshua Frank
NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan

Eric Ruder
"The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with Camilo Mejia

Pierre Tristam
The Struts and Bull Presidency

Dave Lindorff
The Real Story of the German Elections

Mike Ferner
Sit Down in DC

Missy Comley Beattie
Bush's Katrina Bling Bling

Jeffrey St. Clair
W Marks the Spot

Website of the Day
New Orleans: Survivor Stories

 

September 20, 2005

Steve Breyman
Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental Justice

George Galloway
Et Tu, Greg Palast?

Patrick Cockburn
What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion?

M. Shahid Alam
Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out?

Mike Whitney
The Gitmo Hunger Strikers

Winslow T. Wheeler
It's Not Rocket Science

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit

Paul Craig Roberts
Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?

 

 

 

 

Subscribe Online

October 6, 2005

Blundering Into Syria?

The Triumph of Ideology Over Reality

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Not content with the terrorist-breeding instability he caused by invading Iraq, President Bush is plotting with Israel to repeat the disaster in Syria.

The diplomatic editor of the London Telegraph reports (Oct. 5) that the US is aiming at Syrian "regime change." The British newspaper quotes Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz as saying that a report blaming Syria for the assassination of a former Lebanese government official will be the catalyst that starts the ball rolling. Mofaz says the report will be the pretext for Bush to impose sanctions on Syria, "beginning with economic sanctions and moving on to others."

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reports (Oct. 3) that the Bush administration has asked Israel's government to recommend a successor for Syrian president Bashar al Assad. No doubt, the Bush administration will describe Israel's selection of Syria's new president as the workings of democracy.

The Stratfor Intelligence Brief reports (Oct. 5) that Bush's National Security Council is deciding whether to bomb Syrian villages along what are thought to be "the infiltration routes used by jihadists" and to have US special forces conduct operations inside Syrian territory.

Obviously, far from heeding demands from US generals and congressional members of his own political party for a plan to withdraw from Iraq, Bush intends to widen the war.

How can Bush, his National Security Council, and Israel be so blind to the consequences of destabilizing Syria? A CIA report concluded that the US invasion of Iraq created a training ground for al Qaeda. Doesn't Bush understand that creating chaos in Syria will have the same result?

The National Security Council needs to quickly consult some real Middle East experts before Bush's reckless policies in the face of seething anti-American sentiment cause the overthrow of US puppet rulers in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, and dethrone the princes ruling the American oil protectorates in the Middle East.

If the Bush administration cannot defeat insurgency in Iraq, how can it defeat insurgency in Iraq and Syria? In Iraq, Syria, and Iran? The Bush administration is fanatical, divorced from reality.

Last week Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, said that Bush's invasion of Iraq was "the greatest strategic disaster in US history." This is quite a distinction for Bush and his government. Are the morons now going to double the distinction by attacking Syria and quadruple it by attacking Iran?

Why don't Congress and the American public understand that the US cannot afford to worsen the disaster in which it finds itself?

Nothing better illustrates the reality-denying capability of the Bush administration than its secretary of state Condi Rice's speech at Princeton University on September 30. It is a fantasy speech, devoid of awareness that "regime change" in Iraq substituted Shi'ite clergy for a secular ruler. The US secretary of state has no inkling of the conflict generated between Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurd by the US imposed attempt to produce and to adopt a constitution?

The Bush administration's Middle East policy is the triumph of ideology over reality. Something must be done to stop Bush before he mimics in the MIddle East Hitler's invasion of Russia. The American people cannot afford the blood and treasure that the fanatical Bush administration is willing to squander in the Middle East.

What can be done about a president who is immune to reason? A bill of impeachment is a good start.

The Bush administration has already done more damage to Americans than the September 11 attacks. The American people and their congressional representatives must hold Bush accountable before it is too late. The Bush administration has no intention of stopping with Iraq. At Princeton, Condi Rice again declared the administration's intention to use US military force to transform the societies in the Middle East. "Now is not the time to falter or fade," declared the US secretary of state.

Such total oblivion to the "greatest strategic disaster in US history" is far more scary than Muslim terrorists.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com










 


 

 

 











 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 






 

 

 

 



CLARIFICATION

ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH

We published an article entitled "A Saudiless Arabia" by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the "Article"), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the "Website").

Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism.

As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi's lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website.

We are pleased to clarify the position.

August 17, 2005



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coming in the Fall
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case Against Israel
By Michael Neumann

Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz

Coming This Fall
Grand Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror

by Jeffrey St. Clair