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Special Investigation: Why Did the World Trade Towers Fall? A scientific explanation at last, from a physicist and mechanical engineer. P. Sainath recalls Gandhi's 9/11, one hundred years ago; Chris Sands reports from Afghanistan on the rise of the Taliban. What you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. 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 towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories September 27, 2006 Patrick Cockburn September 26, 2006 Hani Shukrallah William Blum Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barbara Becnel Paul Rockwell Dave Lindorff Rich Gibson Anthony Papa Nate Mezmer Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jonathan Cook Joshua Frank Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Jensen Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Dr. Charles
Jonkel Michael Dickinson Alexander Cockburn Website of
the Day
September 23
/ 24, 2006 Jonathan Cook Jeffrey St.
Clair Dr. Anon Tom Barry Carl G. Estabrook Laura Carlsen Todd Chretien Dr. Charles
Jonkel Debbie Nathan Fred Gardner Fred Wilhelms Seth Sandronsky Ralph Nader Rev. William
Alberts Jon Van Camp Heather Gray David Vest Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend Video of the Weekend
September 22, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Michael Donnelly Ramzy Baroud Evo Morales Stanley Howard Sarah Leah
Whitson JoAnn Wypijewski Website of the Day
Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad Justin E. H.
Smith Mike Roselle Amira Hass Deborah Rich Mickey Z. Saul Landau Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith Christopher
Reed John Ross Joshua Frank Arthur Neslen Norman Solomon Michael Carmichael Evelyn Pringle Hugo Chavez Website of the Day
Patrick Cockburn Jeff Leys Brian M. Downing Col. Dan Smith Liaquat Ali
Khan Ron Jacobs Nik Barry-Shaw
/ Yves Engler Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Photo of the Day Website of
the Day
Carl Boggs Uri Avnery Mike Stark / Jim Bullington Joshua Frank John Murphy Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Bill Quigley Website of the Day
Tariq Ali Eliza Ernshire Jeffrey St.
Clair Mairead Corrigan Maguire Brian Cloughley Ben Tripp Laura Carlsen Ralph Nader Ron Jacobs John Chuckman Robert Fisk Gary Leupp Lawrence R.
Velvel Missy Comley Beattie Adrienne Johnstone Mickey Z. Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
Diana Johnstone Diane Christian William S. Lind Lee Sustar Dave Lindorff Ramzy Baroud Mokhiber / Weissman Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
Franklin Lamb Tim Wilkinson Dick J. Reavis Sam Husseini Doug Giebel Bill Berkowitz Diane Farsetta Mary Turck Patrick Cockburn J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. Website of
the Day
Jack Bratich John Ross Christopher
Brauchli Dave Lindorff Antony Loewenstein Al Krebs Leonard Peltier Jim Bensman Website of the Day
Norman Finkelstein Seth Sandronsky John Walsh Alan Maass David Krieger Nate Mezmer Kathleen Christison
Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Col Dan Smith Dr. Susan Block Anthony Alessandrini Dave Lindorff Niranjan Ramakrishnan Joshua Frank Jean Bricmont Sprague / Emesberger Website of
the Day
September 9/10,
2006 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Greg Grandin Peter
Stone Brown Ralph
Nader Brian
Cloughley Col.
Chet Richards David
Model Dave
Himmelstein Ron
Jacobs Fred
Gardner Mike
Whitney Josh
Gryniewicz Daniel
Gross / Joe
Bageant Nicole
Colson Alexander
Billet Poets'
Basement
September 8, 2006 Uri
Avnery Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Quigley Robert
Jensen Norman
Solomon Keith
Bolin
September 8, 2006 Uri
Avnery Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Quigley Robert
Jensen Norman
Solomon Keith
Bolin Kristin
S. Schafer Jeffrey
St. Clair Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Sharon
Smith René
Drucker Colín Michael
Donnelly John
Borowski Lucinda
Marshall Charles
Sullivan Jeffrey
St. Clair Jonathan
Cook Website
of the Day
September 6, 2006 Stephen
Soldz Dave
Zirin Ramzy
Baroud Noel
Ignatiev Dave
Lindorff Norman
Solomon Binoy
Kampmark Jeffrey
St. Clair John
Ross Website
of the Day
September 5, 2006 Jonathan Cook Patrick Cockburn Mike Whitney
Roland Sheppard James Petras Alexander Cockburn
September 4, 2006 Clancy Sigal Jeffrey St.
Clair Anthony Alessandrini Dennis Perrin
Daniel Cassidy
Paul Craig
Roberts
September 2 / 3, 2006 Uri Avnery Jeffrey St.
Clair Ralph Nader Noam Chomsky Allan Lichtman Stanley Heller Rana el-Khatib Peter Montague Laura Carlsen Dr. Susan Block Joe Bageant Scott Stedjan / Matt Schaaf Gary Leupp Stephen Fleischman Paul Balles Ingmar Lee Jane Stillwater Ron Jacobs St. Clair /
Bossert Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
September 1, 2006 Uri Avnery Paul Craig
Roberts Bill Ayers Kevin Zeese Xochitl Bervera Norman Solomon Alexander Cockburn Richard Neville Website of the Day
August 31, 2006 David MacMichael John Ross Edward Said Amira Hass Missy Comley
Beattie Lee Sustar Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
August 30, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts George Salzman Dave Lindorff Leigh Davis Alan Maass Mike Whitney Eliza Ernshire Website of
the Day
Saul Landau Jeffrey Buchanan Dave Lindorff James Brooks John F. Burnett Walter A. Davis Rich Gibson Amira Hass Paul Craig
Roberts
August 28, 2006 John Walsh Sibel Edmonds
/ William Weaver Ramzy Kysia Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Missy Beattie Virginia Tilley
Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn Jordan Green Azmi Bishara Ray Close Gary Leupp Ralph Nader Joe Allen Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff David Krieger Stephen Fleischman Mary Turck Walter Brasch Jim Scharplaz Israel Shamir Alexander Cockburn Charles Henderson Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
August 25, 2006 Elena Everett Juan Cole Chris Moore James Marc Leas Salah Obeid Claudio Albertani Tom Barry Website of
the Day
CounterPunch
News Service Uri Avnery Nermeen al-Mufti Norman Solomon Megan Wiles Laura Santina Mike Whitney Seth Sandronsky Christopher
Brauchli
August 23, 2006 Dr. Trudy Bond Ramzy Baroud Ron Jacobs Heather Gray Amira Hass Mavis Anderson Ingmar Lee Francis Boyle John Ross
Gilad Atzmon Jack Heyman Eamon McCann Sharon Smith Edward S. Herman Ramzi Kysia Bill Quigley August 21, 2006 Jonathan Cook Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Mike Roselle Lenni Brenner Maher Osseiran
August 19 /
20, 2006 Uri Avnery Eliza Ernshire Virginia Tilley Kathy Kelly Marc Levy Stephen Bradberry / Barbara Rose
Johnston William Blum Stephen Fleischman Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Fred Gardner David Krieger Dan La Botz Poets' Basement
August 18, 2006 Brian M. Downing John Blair Alan Hart Craig Murray Chris Dols Emily Kirksey Joaquín Bustelo William S.
Lind Podcast of the Day Website of
the Day
August 17, 2006 CounterPunch
News Service Barucha Peller Ramzy Baroud Rothem Shtarkman Craig Murray Samar Assad Mike Ferner Arnold Kohen Kevin Zeese Missy Comley Beattie Uri Avnery Video of the Day Website of
the Day
August 16, 2006 Merav Yudilovitch Robert Fisk Mark Williams John Ross Christopher
Brauchli John Walsh Ron Jacobs Rachard Itani Felice Pace Niranjan Ramakrishnan Frank, Sharma
and Peterson Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 15, 2006 Andrew Ford
Lyons Binoy Kampmark Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Todd Chretien Chris Floyd Mark Engler George Galloway Laray Polk Trish Schuh Website of the Day
Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Kathy Kelly Robert Fisk Norman Solomon Sunsara Taylor Robert Jensen Mike Whitney P. Sainath Goretti Horgan Christopher
Reed
August 12 /
13, 2006 Jean Bricmont Norman Finkelstein Robert Fisk Adrian Grima Barucha Peller Omar Barghouti Adam Engel Conn Hallinan John Stauber Rev. William
Alberts Fred Gardner Lucinda Marshall Ron Jacobs CounterPunch
News Service Poets' Basement
Col. Dan Smith John Ross Michael Donnelly William S.
Lind Linda Milazzo Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Azmi Bishara Henri Picciotto CounterPunch News Wire Dave Lindorff Jonathan Cook
Uri Avnery Dave Marsh Gabriel Kolko Arthur Versluis Jennifer Loewenstein
Linda Schade Jackie Mason Jonathan Cook Gilad Atzmon
Charles Hirschkind
Tom Barry Cockburn &
St. Clair
August 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Paul Larudee Joan Roelofs Dimi Reider John A. Murphy Tim Llewellyn Website of the Day
August 7, 2006 Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Nadia Hijab Sharon Smith Magan Wiles George Beres Rachard Itani Norman Solomon Stan Cox Mickey Z. Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 5 / 6, 2006 Virginia Tilley Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Sgt. Martin Smith Gary Leupp Neve Gordon Ralph Nader Peter Bouckaert Peter Montague David Krieger Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Catherine Norris Imraan Siddiqi Missy Comley
Beattie Ira Kay Dave Lindorff Pratyush Chandra Ron Jacobs St. Clair / Donnelly Poets' Basement Website of the Day Video of the
Weekend
August 4, 2006 Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley Eliza Ernshire Roger Assaf George Bisharat Remi Kanazi Laura Carlsen Niranjan Ramakrishnan Derrick O'Keefe Mickey Z. Col. Dan Smith Website of the Day
Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Saree Makdisi Robert Fisk Farrah Hassen Nicola Nasser Ron Jacobs Mitchel Cohen Seth Sandronsky Bruce K. Gagnon Alexander Cockburn
John Ross Chip Mitchell Saul Landau Naseer Aruri Winslow T.
Wheeler Matthias Gebauer Joshua Frank Bill Quigley Manuel Yang Shamai Leibowitz David Himmelstein Lara Marlowe Website of
the Day
August 1, 2006 Michael Neumann Robert Fisk Omar Barghouti Marc Levy Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague Claud Cockburn Ross Eisenbrey Dave Lindorff John Chuckman Francis Boyle Phil Doe Stephen Soldz Website of the Day
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September 27, 2006 Skullduggery in the Pentagon's BudgetRumsfeld's AutoCarterizationBy FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY A recent report in "Aviation Week" (Sept 25, 2006) leads by saying,
This is one of the recent spate of reports documenting shortfalls in the Department of Defense's $500+ billion budget. Predictably, the courtiers of Versailles on the Potomac are preparing for the silly season as they form their battle lines with Congress. Assuming the Aviation Week report is correct (as it usually is on matters relating to future cash flows to the defense industry), Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael Moseley is either stupid or incredibly ignorant ... or, more likely, supremely cynical, because he is making exactly the same dysfunctional decision his predecessors made in the early to mid 1970s, which inevitably created the readiness horrors of the "hollow military" that hosed President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.
The milcrats in the Pentagon are busily preparing to Carterize Bush and Rumsfeld by blaming them for the Pentagon's budgetary mess (partly justified of course). At the same time, Moseley's priorities show how they are moving resolutely to insure the current budget crunch worsens over time. This will set the stage for a crisis, the resolution of which, will require an increase in future budgets. In the simplest terms, they will do this by robbing the readiness accounts to protect the high cost cold-war turkeys in the modernization pipeline. The fact that the Pentagon's accounting system can not pass the simple annual audits required by law (Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 as amended) will make it easier to hide the details of the flim flam operation. What is truly amazing is that this kind of budgetary skullduggery is happening once again:
One thing is certain, however, Moseley's gambit illustrates the post-cold-war staying power of the Military--Industrial--Congressional Complex (MICC) in the hall of mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac. Carterization of an incumbent Administration is a recurring theme in the political-economy of Versailles. One could argue that Kennedy pioneered it when he accused Eisenhower underfunding defense and thereby permitting the emergence the (phoney) missile gap as well as the evisceration of our conventional forces. But the post-Vietnam era to the present is by far the easiest to document. Many readers will recall the political furor over the emergence of the "hollow military" in the late 1970s. At that time I had just taken a job in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where my boss, Thomas Christie, hired me to figure out the underlying causes of the readiness problems that were creating a budgetary crisis in the Pentagon. With the help of others, including two especially talented patriots, Frank McDonald (of my office) and Charlie Murphy (who worked on Capital Hill for Congressman Jack Edwards R-Ala) we worked on this problem for three years and determined the fundamental cause of the problem was the self inflicted wound of robbing the readiness accounts to "modernize" with ever more expensive and complex weapons. This decision making bias toward overly complex, often unworkable technology resulted in a phenomenon that I called the "rising costs of low readiness." These costs included:
As we learned later, all this was lubricated by a corrupt accounting/information system that made understanding the pattern of decision making almost impossible. The self-inflicted nature of the causes and evolution of these decision making pathologies were first described in my report Defense Facts of Life, a secret report written in the late 1970s, which was declassified by the Pentagon and released to the public in 1980 after Senator Sam Nunn, the former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made an issue of it at Casper Weinberger's confirmation hearing to be Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense. It was eventually published together with its follow-on report, The Plans Reality Mismatch, by Westview Press in 1986. Both reports were subjects of many congressional hearings. The Pentagon never rebutted either report in a formal written rebuttal. Milcrats in today's Pentagon, like General Moseley, can not claim ignorance because, as junior officers they did not have access to this information. The Pentagon's leadership was warned repeatedly over the next two decades about the problem of uncontrolled cost growth creating a programmatic meltdown: Now the chickens are coming home to roost again. What we are seeing today is the rising cost of low readiness writ large, even worse than I predicted repeatedly in a host of reports and op-eds throughout the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the Defense Budget Time Bomb and my last testimony to Congress in 2002. Most of these writings are still readily available to anyone who wants to read to them at the Defense and the National Interest website. Finally, these decison-making pathologies were widely covered by the press over the years, including being the subject of a Time cover story (Mar 7, 1983) and an hour long special edition of Bill Moyers Now (August 2003, which won an Emmy for being the best news magazine TV show in 2003). Some apologists for the collective behavior of Versailles on the Potomac might be tempted to argue that the current meltdown of the Pentagon's budget is the inevitable consequence of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This would be tantamount to calling the President a liar. Mr. Bush has been paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with supplemental budget appropriations (money added to the core Pentagon budget each year). He has said repeatedly that he will give the military whatever it needs to accomplish its mission. Therefore, milcrats like Moseley in the Pentagon can not say now that these wars are the primary cause of the current budget crunch, unless they are willing to say they went along with a Bush strategy to deliberately underfund the supplemental budgets paying for the war. This is especially true in the case of the Air Force, which always goes to war in relative comfort when compared to the Army and Marines. Moreover, when considering the nature of the current meltdown, one must also remember the scale of the Pentagon's operations is tiny when compared to earlier wars, like Vietnam or Korea. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, taken together, are very small operations in terms of numbers troops and equipment deployed and activity tempos. A comparison with Vietnam is very telling: if one removes the effects of inflation, the current Defense budget level exceeds that of Vietnam at its peak in 1969, when we had 550,000 troops deployed in the combat theater. And remember, the United States was also engaged in a Cold War, which included preparations for a major conventional war against the Warsaw Pact in Western Europe, as well as all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Those preparations required about a million additional troops forward deployed in West Europe and non-Vietnam East Asia, several million in the states to provide the supporting training and rotation base, and tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in a high-cost hair-trigger alert status, and a very large navy to combat the Soviet Navy while protecting our long sea-based lines of communication. Nothing today compares with that effort. Today, the US is spending more money on defense, yet milcrats like Moseley tell us they must rob the readiness accounts of a much smaller force in time of war to preserve a high-cost modernization program which is a legacy of the last war. Moreover, these decisions to rob the readiness accounts are occurring at a time when some soldiers and Marines are on their third or fourth tours in Iraq/Afghanistan (which was almost unheard of in Vietnam) and the Pentagon is mobilizing reserves, extending combat rotations, and issuing stop loss orders to prevent soldiers from punching out of the not-so-all-volunteer military. Nor can Mr. Rumsfeld claim to be surprised by the current budget meltdown. He is ... or should be ... the best prepared SecDef in history to deal with the Pentagon's shenanigans. This is, after all, the second time he held the job. Moreover, he was present at the creation of the original "hollow military," so to speak. The Nixon and Ford Administrations, of which he was a member, made most of the programmatic decisions that planted the seed money for the R&D and procurement programs that led to the inevitable emergence of the cost growth which caused the military to rob the readiness accounts to fund the modernization budgets in the mid to late 1970s. In DoD parlance, Rumsfeld et al presided over a deliberate "front loading" and "political engineering" of the future budgets which created the meltdown Jimmy Carter inherited. (see <http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/def_power_games_98.htm>Defense Power Games for an explanation of how front loading and political engineering work to paralyze the decision making process, using a case study of the Reagan spend up). In short, the "hollow military" of the late 1970s was the result of self-inflicted wounds made earlier when Rummy was in power. Then, Ronald Reagon and the Republican right wingers used the "hollow military" (with help of politically motivated leakers from the Pentagon) to Carterize Carter in 1980 and set the stage for another round of the Defense Power Games, albeit at even higher budgets. Still think it is old news? Why don't we fast forward to George the First in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When the end of the Cold War forced George the First to reduce the projections of future defense budgets, the Pentagon responded by front loading and politically engineering a new generation of high cost cold-war inspired programs (e.g., the F-22, the F-18E/F, a new missile destroyer, a new attack submarine, etc.) into the current budget while reducing it (via force and readiness reductions). Bill Clinton happily continued and accelerated this process under the guidance of his democratic secretaries of defense, Les Aspin and William Perry. And in so doing, George the First and Bill Clinton let the Pentagon create a future budgetary crisis ( the creation of these problems is described in my 1997 report on What Went Wrong With the Quadrennial Defense Review). Naturally,the problems they created leaked to the press during the build up to the 2000 election. This set up Gore -- who, it must be said, was a most willing victim -- for a Carterization by George the Second. What makes this operation particularly interesting is that Rumsfeld was again present at the creation, as part of the team that Carterized Gore. So, one thing should now be clear: Rummy ought to know about Carterizing his opponents. But once again we see is the familiar spate of leaks about budget shortfalls and and smell the stench of a looming crisis. But this time it is occurring on Rummy's watch. In other words, it is beginning to look like Rummy has Carterized both himself as well as his boss, the hapless George the Second. This is something new and old at the same time. One this is clear, however, the Pentagon needs a new term of art to explain what is happening. I submit that "Autocarterization" fits the ticket as a prescription for this new variant of the old inwardly focused process which creates the crises to fuel the political lust for ever increasing defense budgets. Now some of Alex Cockburn's critics will think that Autocarterization is a conspiracy being run by Rumsfeld, an evil genius, but these readers might want to consider the fact that the man is simply an incompetent tool of the Military--Industrial--Congressional Complex or MICC. His "Autocarterization" may simply be reflection of his own arrogance and ignorance catching up with him at last. What we are seeing is not really a new phenomenon -- it is the conditioned behavior of a living social system that has evolved methods of survival by a process of trial and error over time. In any case, the Pentagon's milcrats, like General Moseley, are primed to to take advantage of it automatically. With the cooperation of triangulating democratic apparachiks, who will throw money at the Pentagon to prove they are not do not "weak" on defense, the courtiers of Versailles will duck the blame again for their self inflicted wounds as they ratchet up the power games to set the stage for yet another round of increases in the volume of the dollar flow out the defense money spigot. Of course their front loading and political engineering operations will make future problems worse; of course the soldiers at the pointy end of the spear and taxpayer will get hosed again, but one must remember that these games serve a larger purpose, for they are necessary insure the survival and growth of the Military--Industrial--Congressional Complex over the long term. Or as one officer once told me: "Welcome to the Pentagon's Gelateria, where we never run out of self-licking ice cream cones." The seamlessness of this well-structured way of life is not only a good for the courtiers in Versailles on the Potomac, the contractors, the supporting cast of thinktank "intellectuals," and an enervated mainstream media which recycles old news as new news, its orderliness will keep Alex Cockburn's anti-conspiracy crusade in business for years. Franklin C. Spinney is a former Pentagon analyst and whistleblower. His writing on defense issues can be found on the invaluable Defense in the National Interest website.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                     |
