Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
forr Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Scott Richard Lyons
Ward Churchill and the Identity
Police
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
January 31,
2005
Dave Zirin
Mr.
Frank's Fatwah: New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture
of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff
Robert Fisk
Amid
Tragedy, Defiance
Chyng Sun
Gonzales: Chief Prosecutor of Porn?
Greg Moses
The Real Scandals of the Texas Election
Mike Whitney
Cheney at Auschwitz
Ali Tonak
Turkey and the EU: Fantasies and Ultimatums
Patrick Cockburn
A
Victory for the Shia
Website of
the Day
Voting by the Script: Where Did the 8 Million Voter Turnout Figure
Come From?
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Manuel Yang
/ Peter Linebaugh
A
Dialogue About Murder in Toledo
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad: City of Empty Streets
Robert Fisk
This Election Will Change the World, But Not as the US Wanted
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
Bernard Chazelle
Why the Children of Iraq Make No Sound When They Fall
Gary Leupp
"This Kind of Subject Matter": Bush's New Ed Secretary
vs. Vermont's Lesbians
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Passion of Paul Shanley
Alexander Cockburn
The Case of Father Jerry
Ron Jacobs
Ballot of the Puppets in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Smart Bombs; Wrong House: Iraq's Civilian Dead
Fred Gardner
Peron May Split
Sister Dianna
Ortiz
Memo to Bush from a Survivor of the Guatemalan Torturers: Stop
the Torture!
Tom Reeves
How Bush Brings Freedom to the World: the Case of Haiti
Fran Quigley
Report: Haiti Now "More Violent and More Inhuman"
Suzan Mazur
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa": an Old Hand Weighs In on
the Murder of Lumumba
Kurt Nimmo
Condi Rice and the Neocon Plan for the Palestinians
Lenni Brenner
Holocaust History: Beyond the UN's Rhetoric
Gilad Atzmon
The
Politics of Auschwitz
Luis Gomez
Power and Autonomy in Bolivia
Mark Gaffney
NASA Searches for a Snowball in Hell: Why Velikovsky Matters
Ben Tripp
Lament of the Mnemonopath
Richard Oxman
Meet the Fuqers
Poets' Basement
Louise, Collins, Shanahan and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
Chemical Industry: Deceit and Denial
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
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
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
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Weekend Edition
February 19 / 20, 2005
John Negroponte, Dirty Warrior
The
Return of the Contra Gangsters
By
JENNIFER ROESCH
Over the course of a long career,
John Negroponte has served his nation in eight countries spanning
three continents. He's held important leadership posts at both
the State Department and the White House. As my representative
to the United Nations, John defended our interests vigorously.
He spoke eloquently about America's intention to spread freedom
and peace throughout the world. And his service in Iraq during
these past few historic months has given him something that will
prove an incalculable advantage for an intelligence chief: an
unvarnished and up-close look at a deadly enemy.
-George Bush on the nomination
of John Negroponte for the newly created position of Director
of National Intelligence
Clearly, Bush has no shame. First it
was his friend Alberto Gonzales the man who created the
legal justification that led to the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib.
He was rewarded with an appointment to the post of Attorney
General. Then Condoleeza Rice was promoted to Secretary of State.
Now he has tapped John Negroponte, currently service as the
US "ambassador" to Iraq, for the newly created position
of Director of National Intelligence. In an administration that
rewards lies and promotes those who diplomatically turn a blind
eye to torture and human rights abuses, Negroponte will fit right
in.
In the next few weeks we are likely to hear a chorus of praise
for Negroponte from the mainstream media and politicians. In
recent years his reputation has been rehabilitated and today
he is hailed as a seasoned diplomat and skilled negotiator. A
quick review of his history tells a different story. Negroponte's
career was made as the U.S. ambassador in Honduras. Some highlights
of his tenure there include:
Supervising the creation of
a death squad unit (Battalion 316) that has been linked to the
deaths and disappearances of hundreds of Hondurans;
Crafting human rights reports
that carefully exclude a pattern of torture and human rights
violations covered by the entire Honduran media and later documented
by the CIA;
Brokering a steady stream of
U.S. aid to Honduras in exchange for the right to use the country
as a launching pad for the U.S.-backed Contra attack on Nicaragua.
This is a man who should have
seen his career go down in flames when the Iran-Contra scandal
broke out in the mid-1980s. Not only have human rights groups
extensively documented his role in the "dirty wars"
of Central America; the CIA has even compiled reports that could
serve as the basis for a war crimes indictment. But Negroponte
has never lacked for work and has been appointed to diplomatic
posts under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Most recently, when he was
nominated for the position of ambassador to Iraq, both Republicans
and Democrats in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee carried
out Bush's request to expedite hearings and rushed Negroponte's
approval through. At his Senate hearing on May 6, senators fell
over themselves praising Negroponte as the best man for the job
and confirmed him in a 95-3 vote. Joseph Biden, the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee's senior Democrat, told him: "It takes
moral, political and physical courage for you to undertake this.
We owe you a debt of gratitude."
Though Negroponte is most notorious
for his role in the dirty wars of Central America when serving
as ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, his political career
serves as something of a road map of U.S. imperialist strategy
over the last thirty-five years.
Negroponte's reputation as
a hard-line cold warrior goes back to his early days serving
in Vietnam. He got his start as a junior political officer at
the U.S. embassy in Saigon in the early 1960s-just as the U.S.
was intensifying its involvement in Vietnam. He was present at
the Paris peace talks where he argued that his mentor Henry Kissinger
was making too many concessions.
He eventually left Kissinger's
National Security Council over these differences.
After the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, the government found itself
reluctant to commit a large number of troops abroad and to aggressively
pursue its aims. This "Vietnam syndrome" tied the hands
of the United States and gave confidence to national liberation
movements around the world. But hawks within the U.S. military
establishment refused to accept such limitations on U.S. power.
John Negroponte was one such figure. At his Senate confirmation
hearing in 1981, he spoke for many military and political figures
when he said: "I believe we must do our best not to allow
the tragic outcome of Indochina to be repeated in Central America."
When the Sandanistas overthrew
a U.S.-backed dictator in Nicaragua in 1979 and inspired revolutionary
movements in Guatemala and El Salvador, Central America became
the flashpoint for a new cold war. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration
launched a covert war to overthrow the government in Nicaragua
and to turn back the insurgency throughout Latin America. The
tiny country of Honduras, lying at the crossroads of Guatemala,
El Salvador, and Nicaragua, became the main staging ground for
this operation. In the process, a country that had known relative
social peace became a land of the disappeared and death squads.
No one was more central to
the success of U.S. operations in Honduras than John Negroponte.
Negroponte, who served as Reagan's ambassador from 1981 to 1985,
wielded so much power in the country that he was known as the
proconsul. During his reign, the U.S. embassy staff in Honduras
increased ten-fold and came to house one of the largest CIA deployments
in all of Latin America.
Negroponte was responsible
for ensuring that arms could flow smoothly through Honduras,
that the U.S. could conduct training exercises there, and that
the Honduran army was sufficiently equipped and supported to
wipe out any rebels within its borders. U.S. military aid to
Honduras increase from $4 million in 1980 to $77 million in 1984.
By 1985, its economic aid had surpassed $200 million-becoming
the world's eighth largest recipient of U.S. aid.
Negroponte played a key role
in organizing pro-Contra projects such as a U.S. counter-insurgency
center at Puerto Castilla. Between 1981 and 1986, more than 60,000
U.S. soldiers and National Guard members traversed Honduras in
military exercises that delivered arms to the Contras. He supervised
the creation of the El Aguacate air base, which the U.S. used
as a training facility for the Contras. The base was also used
as a secret detention and torture center-the Abu Ghraib of its
day. In August 2001, excavations performed at the base uncovered
185 corpses, evidence of those thought to have been killed and
buried there.
Negroponte was the central
agent overseeing a plan for the CIA to train a special intelligence
unit under the direction of the chief of the Honduran armed forces
General Gustavo Alvarez. Multiple investigations by the Honduran
government, the CIA inspector general, and major newspapers have
since revealed that this unit, Battalion 316, operated as a death
squad in Honduras. Throughout its existence, Battalion 316 kidnapped
suspects, used extensive means of torture in its interrogations,
and then killed and dumped the bodies of those that were no longer
useful. The exact number of people killed by Battalion 316 remains
unknown. As of late 1993, the Honduran government listed 184
people as missing and presumed dead.
The cold warrior Negroponte
and the ardent anti-communist General Alvarez made natural collaborators.
In a 1983 interview, Negroponte told New York Times correspondent
James LeMoyne that "Marxist guerrillas are organizing here."
He went on to say that Alvarez was a hard man but an effective
officer.
Alvarez believed that the only way to deal with "subversives"
was with terror and violence. In a cable to Washington, former
ambassador Jack Binns reported with alarm a conversation he had
had with the general. "Alvarez stressed to me that democracies
and the West are soft, perhaps too soft to resist Communist subversion.
The Argentines, he said, had met the threat effectively, identifying-and
taking care of-the subversives. Their method, he opined, is the
only effective way of meeting the challenge." (In the mid-1970s,
more than 12,000 Argentines were disappeared in a state-directed
campaign of repression.)
With U.S. cooperation, Argentine
military leaders were invited to Honduras to train Contra fighters
and Honduran military officers in Battalion 316. Later, these
leaders were trained by U.S. CIA agents both in Honduras and
in the United States. Former members of the battalion have testified
extensively about the training they received. Oscar Alvarez,
a former Honduran special forces officer and diplomat, told the
Baltimore Sun:
The Argentines came in first,
and they taught us how to disappear people. The United States
made them more efficient. They said, "You need someone to
tap phones, you need someone to transcribe the tapes, you need
surveillance groups." They taught us interrogation techniques.
The CIA training has been confirmed
by Richard Stolz-who was deputy director of operations at the
time-in secret testimony before the Senate in 1988. Stolz told
the Select Committee on Intelligence, "The course consisted
of three weeks of classroom instruction followed by two weeks
of practical exercises, which included the questioning of actual
prisoners by the students."
Although Negroponte would step
in when a case threatened to get out of hand, he did not interfere
with the activities of Battalion 316. In fact, Negroponte continued
to deliver glowing reports of General Alvarez and the Honduran
military throughout his tenure as ambassador. When General Alvarez
came under attack, the ambassador was quick to deny any claims
against him. On Negroponte's recommendation, Reagan awarded Alvarez
the Legion of Merit for "encouraging democracy" in
1983.
In order to keep a stream of
U.S. funds flowing, Negroponte consistently turned his back on
and covered up pervasive human rights abuses in Honduras. Reading
the reports filed by Negroponte's office between 1981 and 1985,
one would imagine Honduras to be a constitutional democracy with
full democratic rights. But his predecessor, Jack Binns, painted
a very different picture in his cables to Washington. In a 1981
cable, Binns reported: "I am deeply concerned at increasing
evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations of
political and criminal targets, which clearly indicate [Honduran
government] repression has built up a head of steam much faster
than we had anticipated."
In response, Binns was brought
to Washington and told by assistant secretary of state for inter-American
affairs Thomas Enders, "to stop human rights reporting except
in back channel. The fear was that if it came into the State
Department, it will leak. They wanted to keep assistance flowing.
Increased violations by the Honduran military would prejudice
that." Enders confirmed Binn's account of the 1981 meeting:
"I told him that whereas human rights violations had been
the single most important focus of the previous administration's
policy in Latin America, the Reagan administration had broader
interests." Shortly thereafter, Binns was removed from his
post and replaced by Negroponte.
Despite the rising tide of
violence and the increasing disappearances of Honduran citizens,
Negroponte continued to send glowing reports to Washington. The
1983 State Department human rights report on Honduras claimed,
"There are no political prisoners in Honduras." However,
it would have been impossible for Negroponte not to have known
about political prisoners and rights abuses. Honduran papers
carried daily reports of the violence, including full-page pictures
of the missing. In 1982 alone, there were at least 318 published
stories of military violence. Members of Congress drafted resolutions
calling for an investigation into the disappearances. And there
were numerous demonstrations, numbering in the hundreds, of the
families and friends of the disappeared.
Negroponte could not have missed
the growing pile of evidence that human rights abuses were being
committed. In fact, subsequent reports and investigations reveal
an attempt to systematically cover up such abuses. Rick Chidester,
a junior political officer in the embassy, compiled substantial
evidence of abuses in 1982 but claims he was ordered to delete
most of it from the human rights report prepared for the State
Department. This dovetails with a report that the CIA inspector
general made in the early 1990s. Though the published version
of the report is heavily edited, it does show that diplomats
serving under Negroponte were discouraged from reporting abuses.
A diplomat whose name is blacked
out in the report is quoted saying, "the embassy country
team in Honduras wanted reports on subjects such as this to be
benign." The inspector general goes on to conclude that
Negroponte
was particularly sensitive
regarding the issue and was concerned that earlier CIA reporting
on the same topic might create human rights problems for Honduras.
Based on the ambassador's reported concerns, ______ actively
discouraged _______ from following up the information reported
by the ______ source.
The following two pages of
the report are entirely blacked out.
Negroponte displayed the defining
characteristics necessary for imposing the will of a foreign
government on an unwilling population: a casual disdain for the
truth, a willingness to work with despots and dictators, and
the ability to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses.
After the Iran-Contra scandal
(during which it was revealed that the Reagan administration
secretly traded arms to Iran, and U.S. agencies engaged in cocaine
trafficking, to fund the Contras), Negroponte did have some difficulty
finding another diplomatic post. Eventually, though, he became
U.S. ambassador to Mexico where he helped to push through neoliberal
economic measures. In 1993, President Clinton appointed him ambassador
to the Philippines.
But his true comeback came
in 2001 when George W. Bush picked him for the role of U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations. Negroponte was one of a series of former
Contra era officials to be nominated by the Bush administration,
including Elliot Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state
under Reagan, who had been convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra
affair. Negroponte's appointment, in particular, signaled a new
posture for the U.S. vis-à-vis the United Nations. A State
Department official explained it this way:
In this new administration,
we have a lot of people who are a decade or two older than the
people who had the same jobs in the last administration. They
remember the cold war. They want to reward and elevate people
who fought on our side, including people who supported the contras.
Negroponte is known as a guy who is devoted to realpolitik, which
is in many ways the opposite of what the UN stands for. Giving
him this job is a way of telling the UN: "We hate you."
Although Negroponte's nomination
was initially held up in the Senate, after the September 11 attacks
he was quickly confirmed. As U.S. ambassador to the UN, Negroponte
once again showed his ability to push through U.S. foreign policy
objectives at any cost. Early on in his tenure, he delivered
a threat to shut down military bases in any country that signed
on to the International Criminal Court.
More important, he negotiated
a unanimous vote on UN Resolution 1441, the resolution that allowed
weapons inspectors back into Iraq and provided the pretext for
the U.S. war in Iraq. In order to achieve this unanimity, he
strong-armed Mexico and Chile into recalling their ambassadors.
In October 2003, after the U.S. had gone to war in defiance of
the United Nations, Negroponte spent seven weeks winning support
for a UN resolution that effectively endorsed the U.S. occupation.
In the post-9/11 era, Negroponte
has managed to re-package and sell himself as an effective diplomat
and power broker. He is just one of the many hawks who have
seen their careers revived in this period. In this process,
the neo-cons have been aided and abetted by a Democratic Party
that has rolled over on every nomination and provided cover during
every major political crisis that the Bush administration has
faced. It is clear that Bush feels he faces no repercussions
by nominating the likes of Negroponte. It is up to our side
to organize a movement strong enough to make him pay a price
for his arrogance. We must fight so that the voices of the disappeared
in Honduras and the tortured in Iraq--and all the others who
have been silenced--come back to haunt these men who would rule
the world.
Jennifer Roesch can be reached at: jroesch@rocketmail.com
This article is adapted
from one originally written for the International Socialist Review
www.isreview.org
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