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Now Available! Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils Order Here! Today's Stories September 22, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair High Plains Grifter: The House Rules September 21, 2004 Gary Leupp "We Are Not Secure": Kerry's "Unwavering Commitment" to Securing a Middle East Realm Robert Jensen Large Dams in India: Temples or Burial Grounds? Elaine Cassel Fourth Circuit to Moussouai: Ask Your Questions; Prepare to Die Stanley Heller Reagan and the Killing Fields of Lebanon Adam Federman America Will Disappoint the World, Again David Whitehouse What's Behind the Horror in Darfur? M. Junaid Alam How to Avoid Becoming an Anti-American Paul Craig Roberts Attention Deficit America Website of the Day True American War Heroes: the Iraq Refuseniks   September 20, 2004 Cockburn / Buncombe Get Fallujah David Price Relying on Phonies: What If The Problem with Phone Polls is That They Are Phone Polls Dave Lindorff How Dems Fight: Tigers Against Nader, Pussycats Against Bush Harry Browne Pre-Nup at Leeds: Talked Out, But Does IRA Give Up? Mark Wesibrot Bush's Ownership Society: No Taxes for Owners, Only Workers Karyn Strickler The Keys to the White House v. the Shrum Curse? Uri Avnery The Temple Mount Bombers     September 18 / 19, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Forgeries, Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery Jeffrey St. Clair High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy Patrick Cockburn Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart Fred Gardner Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture) Joe Allen The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets Against the War George Corsetti Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication Scott Handleman The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus Richard Ward Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya Conn Hallinan Ashcroft and Indonesia Lori Smith Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick... Dave Zirin Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East John L. Hess Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates Brian J. Foley W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him? Mickey Z. Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions Poets' Basement Vest, Landau & Albert Website of the Weekend Eye on the NYTs Sex, Drugs & the Blues! Serpents in the Garden CounterPunch's Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available Click here to purchase     Septemeber 17, 2004 Ray McGovern Gossing Over the Record Patrick Cockburn The New Iraqi Economy: Baghdad's Thriving Kidnapping Industry Lee Sustar The State of Working America: an Autopsy of the American Dream Mike Whitney John Kerry: 195 Lbs. of Political Helium, Not an Ounce of Sincerity Victor Kattan Black September Ray Hanania Israel's Demographics Greg Bates Nader's Victories: a Mid-Campaign Assessment Website of the Day The Road to Hell   September 16, 2004 Landau / Hassen Meet the New Villain: Syria Joanne Mariner Inside Darfur: a Photo Essay Patrick Cockburn US Offers Conflicting Accounts of Baghdad Bloodbath Greg Moses Four Million Children Might Be News Joshua Frank Nader in the Battleground States Christopher Brauchli The Bush Drug Lottery Flops David Himmelstein Folke Bernadotte: a Rosh Hashonah Remembrance Website of the Day The Abu Ghraib Index     September 15, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Hell on Haifa Street Ron Jacobs Oppose War, Not Just Bush David Lindorff Blanking Out Dissent Joanne Mariner Talking About Darfur: Is Genocide Just a Word? Angela Godfrey-Goldstein An Open Letter to Madonna: Please Don't Support Israeli Apartheid Dave Zirin Is the NFL Ready for Us? Yigal Bronner "They Are Building Walls Around Us"     September 14, 2004 Gary Leupp The Problem of Chechnya Jennifer van Bergen What's Wrong with Torture? Stan Goff Wake Up and Smell the Jungle Rot Patrick Cockburn The Punishment of Fallujah: US Precision Strickes...on Ambulances Anis Memon Nader in Michigan Michael Donnelly The Nuance Comes Off: Former Naderites Beg for Kerry Votes Werther Zell Miller: the Peckerwood Pericles Website of the Day Osama Bin Forgotten?       September 13, 2004 Gabriel Kolko Elections, Alliances and the American Empire Phillip Cryan How Do You Say "Death Squad?": Language in Colombia's War Patrick Cockburn One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days: "I'm a Journalist! I'm Dying! I'm Dying" Noah Leavitt The War on Civil Liberties Robert Jensen Highjacking Catastrophe: Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11 Mike Whitney Alan Greenspan: Fed-Master to the Wealthy John Chuckman Stop Talking About the "Election" Mike Burke Kerry/Edwards Website Censors Discussion of Israel/Palestine Issues CounterPunch Wire The Quotations of David Cobb: "I Don't Care How Many Votes I Get" Website of the Day Keep It In Your Pants: the Bush Plan to Combat Teen Promiscuity   September 11 / 12, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Swatting at Flies Fred Gardner Yet Another Prozac Scandal Saul Landau When Our Assassins Go Free Jennifer Van Bergen How to Beat Bush: a Simple Strategy for the Average American Roger Burbach / Jim Tarbell The Real Dead Enders: Iraq and the Crisis of Empire Christopher Reed 9/11 in an Historical Context: a Minor Event When Compared to Worldwide War Casualties Francisc Catalin An ABC of American Interventions Carl Estabrook Big Science and Government Terror Bernard Chazelle Anti-Americanism: a Clinical Study Sharon Smith Third Party Blues Dave Lindorff Perhaps This Time We're the Silent Majority Mike Whitney Fallujah: an Iraqi Beslan? Frederick B. Hudson Their Sons Perished in the Flames, But Not Their Faith Mickey Z. Round Up the Usual Suspects: a Look Back at 9/11 Ron Jacobs Redneck Music for the New Century Greg Moses Soap Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial Benjamin Dangl / Andrew Kennis An Interview with Leslie Cagan Poets Basement Del Papa, Albert, Gelman     September 10, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Disappointment at Samarrah? Michael Donnelly Democrats v. Democracy Alan Farago Mosquitoes in a Hurricane Doug Giebel Karl Rove's Terror Playbook Mike Whitney Bob Graham's Political Tsunami David Domke God's Will, According to the Bush Administration     September 9, 2004 Joe Bageant Karaoke Night in Bush's America Ed Kinane Abducted in Baghdad Peter Bohmer The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future Todd May The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution Jeremy Scahill The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad Joshua Frank Green House Party Gasses Fran Shor The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist Act Patrick Cockburn Welcome to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad Website of the Day Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero   September 8, 2004 Patrick Cockburn This Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq Dave Lindorff Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead Bulent Gokay Russian and Chechnia After Beslan Lisa Viscidi Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala Niranjan Ramakrishnan Byrd's Eye View Mike Whitney Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony Stan Goff Body Count: 1001 Website of the Day Bush and the Love Doctors     September 7, 2004 Diane Christian Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker Joshua Frank Greens Unravel from Within Patrick Cockburn Fallujah Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000 Ron Jacobs Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men" Chris Floyd Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed Dr. Carol Wolman No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade John Ross The Politics of Darkness North / South     September 6, 2004 Alexander Cockburn An Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted For Taft-Hartley? Ralph Nader The Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for Working People Lee Sustar What's Driving the Attack on Pensions? Kathleen and Bill Christison Dual Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel     September 4-5, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Elephants and Gramsci Ted Honderich The Way Things Are Sasan Fayazmanesh The Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do Douglas Valentine What the World Should Know About Guantanamo Patrick Cockburn New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles Gary Leupp Neo Cons Under Fire Fred Gardner Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt William A. Cook The Day of the Lemming Dave Zirin Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom John Chuckman The Day the World Ended Karyn Strickler God Save the Endangered Species Act Vanessa Jones Bad Day with an Ikea Cup Mike Whitney Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate Mark Donham Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast Mickey Z. McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain Alan Farago Can the Everglades be Fixed? Poets' Basement Landau and Albert     September 3, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair High Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb Rahul Mahajan Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response Carl Estabrook The Book of Slaughter and Forgetting Joshua Frank The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again Gary Leupp Music to My Ears: Sunday's March James Hollander Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide? Mark Engler Republicans Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out Jesse Sharkey Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education Jane Stillwater Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid Stephen Green Serving Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel     September 2, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair High Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks Max Gimble Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves in Guatemala James Petras President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities Christopher Brauchli Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote Twice, Let Them" Todd Chretien & Jessie Muldoon Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller? Jack Random Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer Alan Maass The Real Vietnam Christa Allen Contre Bush Website of the Day [Redacted]     September 1, 2004 Alexander Cockburn The Stench of Doom Kathleen and Bill Christison Poor Larry Franklin Dave Lindorff Kerry's Litmus Test Josh Frank Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up John L. Hess Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops Mike Whitney Deconstructing Arnold Jack Random Kindergarten Night at the RNC Andrew Wilson War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us? Jeffrey St. Clair High Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words     August 31, 2004 Joseph Nevins Escapism and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs Matt Vidal Beyond Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy Neve Gordon Kerry and the Middle East Dave Lindorff Bush the Peace Candidate? Mike Whitney NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran Jack Random Opening Night: Playing the War Card Jeffrey St. Clair High Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One) CounterPunch Photo of the Day Pete Seeger in NYC     August 30, 2004 Justin Podhur The Disappeared Mayor Shaun Joseph The Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com Mike Whitney Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly Want? Ron Jacobs Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate David Lindorff Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy Dave Zirin USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate Sam Husseini Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History     August 28 / 29, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Zombies for Kerry Patrick Cockburn Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US Ray McGovern Blowing Smoke on Intelligence Dr. Juan Romagoza From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor Ray Hanania An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous! Fred Gardner Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot Diane Christian Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live William S. Lind The Desert Fox Paul D'Amato The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry Joshua Frank Greens at the Crossroads Mickey Z. Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests Winslow T. Wheeler Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange Justin E.H. Smith The New Age Racket and the Left Thomas St. John Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Ali Tonak Help the NYPD? Mark Engler New York Says "No" Justin Felux Haiti: the Attica of the Americas Poets' Basement Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod     August 27, 2004 Gary Leupp Neocon Musings Robin Cook The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib Diane Christian Disarming Michael Donnelly Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party? Jack Random 4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters Mike Ferner "To the Swift Boats!" Mazin Qumsiyeh 7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners Veronza Bowers, Jr. "You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"   August 26, 2004 M. Shahid Alam The Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology? Diane Christian War Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu Derek Seidman "They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get Organized David Lindorff Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally Christopher Brauchli Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble Stew Albert Reporting Suspicious Activity Mark Donham Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court Saul Landau Pinochet: the Al Capone of the Southern Cone Website of the Day The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See     August 25, 2004 Amelia Peltz Can I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time? Noah Leavitt Defining and Redefining Torture Ron Jacobs Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About Democracy James Brooks Coronado Crosses the Jordan Akiva Eldar How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan" Gemma Araneta Chavez's New Brand of Populism Philip Cryan Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia CounterPunch Wire Cheney Opens the Closet Door     August 24, 2004 Jeremy Scahill John Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate Gary Leupp "We Want Them to Go Away" David Domke God Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism William Loren Katz The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in Venezuela Jonah Gindin With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media Fran Schor Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah Joe Bageant Driving on the Bones of God Website of the Day The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC   August 23, 2004 Winslow Wheeler Don't Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror John Pilger Bush May Be the Lesser Evil Stan Goff Swift Boat Dogfight Bill and Kathleen Christison Notes from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild Mike Whitney The Unraveling of Afghanistan William Blum Brave New World of Iraqi Sovereignty Ralph Nader A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial     August 21 / 22, 2004 Cockburn / St. Clair "They Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on Drugs Landau / Hassen Failing the Mission? Form a Commission Brian Cloughley The Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts Josh Frank Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So Mike Whitney Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib Ron Jacobs Day Labor Blues Mickey Z. Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin Fred Gardner Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants Dave Zirin Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot Josh Saxe Witnessing Police Brutality in LA Yanar Mohammed Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings Helen Williams Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad Michael Donnelly Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery Elizabeth Schulte The Crisis in Affordable Housing Poets' Basement Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger                                   Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con! Subcomandante Marcos The Death Train of the WTO Norman Finkelstein Hitchens as Model Apostate Steve Niva Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings? Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams CounterPunch Exclusive: 20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians Steve J.B. Prison Bitch Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War Wendell Berry Small Destructions Add Up CounterPunch Wire WMD: Who Said What When Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.     Subscribe Online

September 22, 2004 High Plains Grifter The Life and Crimes of George W. Bush By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Coda: The House Rules Even Laura couldn't stop him. By most inside accounts, the first lady opposed the war on Iraq. She told Bob Woodward on the eve of the war that she found the prospect of the invasion horrifying. Later she whispered to others of being repulsed by the killing of Iraqi children and American soldiers. Generally, Bush cleaves to Laura like a security blanket. Since 1988, he hasn't spent more than two consecutive nights away from her. Still, he denied her on Iraq, just as he has done on abortion, which Laura demurely supports. His father also couldn't deter him. Poppy Bush opposed the invasion of Iraq, reportedly fretting that Junior was wrecking the global coalition that he'd built. The old man thought that the toppling of Saddam would destabilize the Middle East and the occupation would be a bloody quagmire that would end with many Americans dead and a fundamentalist regime in control of much of Iraq. He sent his warnings through emissaries, such as his old National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing the war. The text of the piece had been floated by Bush, Sr., who gave it the thumbs up. It went to press on August 15, 2002 under the title "Don't Attack Saddam." Plank by plank, Scowcroft ripped apart the Bush brief for war, as if it were a dilapidated barn. He said that the sanctions and UN inspections were working. Saddam was essentially contained and didn't pose a threat to the US, Israel or other protectorates in the Middle East. Scowcroft also blew up the notion that Saddam had cosseted Al Qaeda. "There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the September 11 attacks. Indeed, Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them...There is virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the US to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making military operations more difficult and more expensive." The occupation and reconstitution of Iraq, Scowcroft warned with vivid prescience, could be bloody, protracted and might ultimately result in a fundamentalist regime more hostile to US interests than Iraq was under Saddam. The article was warmly received by Colin Powell and Richard Armitage at the State Department, who wanted some breathing room from their rivals in the Pentagon. Armitage in particular seemed to be looking for a way to stick it to Cheney and Rumsfeld. He advised Powell to use the Scowcroft column to tell Rumsfeld to "Fuck off." Typically, Powell, always reflexively subservient, declined to press the advantage opened by his former colleague. Meanwhile Scowcroft's broadside enraged Cheney and Rumsfeld. Being experienced hands at this game, they didn't attack their old associate frontally. Instead, they sent Condoleezza Rice out to lambaste Scowcroft. She accused the apex insider of betraying the home team and demanded that he muzzle his objections to the war. Shamefully, Scowcroft backed down, sulking mutely in his holding pen at the Scowcroft Group, his international lobbying firm headquartered in DC, content to be Cassandra for a day. The prickly George W. was peeved at his father for trying to pull the rug out from under his planned conquest of Baghdad. He sniped that he wasn't about to recapitulate the mistakes of his father in regard to Saddam or the tax code. He privately ridiculed his father's lack of bravado in failing to take out Saddam in 1991, which the president characterized as a lack of nerve typical of those inclined toward diplomacy. Then in an interview with Bob Woodward, Bush, Jr. twisted the knife one last, fatal time. Bush confessed that he never consulted his father on the Iraq war. "You know, he is the wrong father to appeal to for strength," Bush said. "There is a higher father that I appeal to." Notice the implication here: his own father was weak. W.'s war on Saddam was in many ways not to redeem his father or avenge him, but a way to outdo him. Bush goes from choir boy to frat boy in a nanosecond. On the eve of the war, he gloated to Italian prime minister Sylvio Berlusconi, "Just, watch us, we're going to kick Saddam's ass." As Seymour Hersh discloses in Chain of Command, the decision to invade Iraq, high on the agenda of the neo-cons in Cheney's office and the Pentagon since the election, had been given the greenlight almost immediately after the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At 2.40 in the afternoon on September 11, Rumsfeld convened a meeting of his top staffers. According to notes taken by an aide, Rumsfeld declared that wanted to "hit" Iraq, even though he well knew that Iraq was not behind the attack. "Go massive," ordered Rumsfeld. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." For Rumsfeld and his gang, 9/11 was an opportunity more than a hardship. It augured a war without end, a war without rules, a war without fiscal constraints, a war where anything was permitted and few questions asked. Almost immediately the Secretary of Defense conjured up his own personal hit squad, Joint Task Force-121, which he endearingly refers to as his "manhunters." Though we wouldn't hear about it for months, this operation launched the kidnappings, wholesale round-ups, assassinations, and incidents of torture that are only now coming partially to light. Of course, it can't all be pinned on Rumsfeld and his band of bureaucratic thugs. It goes right to the top. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed an executive order exempting captured members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban from the protections of the Geneva Conventions. With that stroke of the pen, Bush affixed his imprimatur to the prosecution of his wars unbound by the constraints of international law. That secret imperial decree set into motion the downward spiral of sadism-as-government-policy which led directly to the torture chambers of Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and obliterated the last molecule of moral authority from Bush's global war. Of course, such concerns are mere trifles to these cruise missile crusaders. * * * From the beginning, the problem was concocting a rationale for the Iraq war, as the hunt for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan turned into a futile game of bomb and chase and anthrax letters and terror alerts kept the American public pinioned on tenterhooks. Rumsfeld ordered his number 3, the arch-neocon Douglas Feith, to establish the Office of Special Plans to develop the case for war against Iraq, a case built on raw information supplied mainly by Iraqi defectors under the control of Ahmed Chalabi. Another crucial source was Israeli intelligence, which was pushing hard for the ouster of Saddam. A similar war council was set up in Cheney's office, under the control of his chief of staff Scooter Libby. For its part, the CIA realized that its rivals in the Pentagon and the White House were attempting to wrest control of the brief for war. Cheney and Rumsfeld had long loathed Tenet for his timidity and distrusted many CIA analysts has being sympathetic to the Powell / Armitage axis of diplomacy at the State Department. Cheney in particular fumed that the CIA and the State Department were badmouthing his pal Chalabi and had conspired to freeze $92 million payments to the Iraqi National Congress. "Why are they denying Chalabi money, when he's providing unique intelligence on Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction?" The spigot was soon turned back on. And to stay in the game, the CIA began to play along. Over the course of the next year, the CIA briefings for Bush became more and more bellicose. But they contained all the empirical rigor of silly-putty. Agency analysts knew that Iraq's military was in a decrepit condition; its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs were primitive at best; and its links to al-Qaeda non-existent. Yet, as James Bamford reported, CIA analysts were to instructed to bend their reports to bolster Bush's martial ambitions. "If Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so," a top CIA manager told his staff. It wasn't long before George Tenet himself was calling the case for war "a slam dunk." This wasn't exactly a covert operation. In fact, Paul Wolfowitz let the cat out of the bag before the bombs started falling on Baghdad. "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction because it was one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz gloated. Why WMDs? For starters, they knew they could hook the Democrats into biting on that issue. After all, back in 1992 Al Gore himself had led the charge against Bush I for failing to topple Saddam in 1991, invoking the very same threat. "Saddam Hussein's nature has been clear to us for some time," Gore wrote in a New York Times essay. "He is seeking to acquire ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons; it is only a matter of time...Saddam is not an acceptable part of the landscape. His Baathist regime must be dismantled as well...We should have bent every policy-and we should do it now-to overthrow that regime and make sure that Saddam is removed from power." Wolfowitz understood the political lay of the land. The WMD threat paralyzed the Democrats into giving Bush carte blanche for war. Wolfowitz also knew he could count on the press playing along, fanning anxiety on the homefront about Saddam's murderous intentions. Shortly after 9/11, Rumsfeld and his gang set up a special propaganda office in the Pentagon,which admitted that it intended to plant false stories in the foreign press. Evidently, they didn't have to worry about a similar operation for the US press, which seemed eager to cultivate its own fantastical scenarios. The brahmins at the New York Times gave reporter Jayson Blair a merciless public flogging for his harmless flights-of-fancy. The destruction of Blair was overtly racist, suggesting that the scandal illustrated the perils of a zealous pursuit of affirmative action. Contrast this with the Time's agonizing comedown on its mound of stories on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction that daintily elided all mention of the name Judith Miller. Yet, Miller's cynical and malign front-page fictions, cribbed from her intimate contacts with the crook Ahmed Chalabi and his frontman Richard Perle, functioned as official fatwas for Bush's jihad against Saddam. Thousands perished due in part to Miller's fantasies, but she writes on, immune to the carnage her lies sanitized. The thinly sourced stories were patently bogus to the attuned eye, but that didn't stop the flock of other war-maddened reporters, such as the equally gullible Jeffrey Goldberg at The New Yorker, from peddling their alarmist fantasies. Take Dan Rather, lately stung by airing apparently forged documents regarding Bush's ghostly tenure in the Texas Air National Guard. These days the Rove machine targets Rather as the poster boy for liberal bias in the media . Yet not so long ago Rather, part owner along with Donald Rumsfeld of a sprawling high desert ranch in New Mexico, confessed that he was willing to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt when it came to war and measures like the Patriot Act. "I want to fulfill my role as a decent human member of the community and a decent and patriot American," Rather told Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post. "And, therefore, I am willing to give the government, the president and the military the benefit of any doubt here at the beginning. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, whenever possible, in this kind of crisis, emergency situation." Hold on, Mr. Rather. that's not a slippery slope; it's the sheer face of Half Dome. So, with no resistance from the press or the so-called opposition party, Bush got his war. Despite the fear mongering and threat inflation, Saddam's slave army of conscripts didn't fight back. Battered by a decade of sanctions and two week's worth of saturation bombing (including illegal cluster bombs), they didn't have the means, the will or the desire. Not until later, when the occupation, where the military essentially served as armed guards for what the neo-cons hoped would be the corporate plunder of Iraq, turned vile and bloody. Anxious for a victory celebration, Bush, the cross-dressing in chief, put on his flight suit and was ferried onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, where, braying like Caligula on the shores of Britain, he pronounced the war over and hailed himself as victor. Up to that day, when Bush told the world that major combat operations had concluded, 141 American soldiers had been died in Iraq. Then the real killing begin. Two or three a day. One day after another. Week after week. Month by month. Bring 'em on, he said, hiding out in his ranch. And so they did. A current blood swirled through the summer and autumn, Americans, Brits, and Italians. And Iraqis. By the thousands. There wasn't a good photo-op to be found. Normally, war presidents find time to console the wounded and grieve with the families of the slain. But Bush didn't want any bloodstains on his flight suit, fearing political forensics teams would use the evidence against him in the 2004 election. The longer the occupation went on, the worse it got. In July, Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, the sadists of the Tigris, were killed in a villa in Mosul. Their corpses were displayed before the world press in a wind-buffeted tent like slabs of meat in a butcher shop. No one in Iraq cared about their fate. Until that barbarous moment. Then came the uprisings in Fallujah and Najaf, the rise of al-Sadr, and the exposure of the Sadean circus going on after dark at Abu Ghraib. By June of 2004, it was obvious to nearly everyone who was paying attention the US had lost Iraq. Bush acted oblivious to the carnage. He sequestered himself from the press, refused to read the papers, got his news ladled to him in palatable bite-sized bits by Condi Rice. When he made the occasional public appearance, he delivered fidgety non-sequiturs, as divorced from reality as the vapid mutterings of Liza Minelli. So what was it all about? It was about oil, of course. Oil and fealty to Israel. And blood vengeance. And politics. And multi-billion dollar no bid contracts for political cronies. And empire building. And even cowboy chutzpah. Most of all, it was about collusion. That's how republics are undermined and replaced by empires. Go read Tacitus or Twain. Bush's path to war was cleared by the Democrats, who were passive at best and deeply complicit at worst. Take House Leader Dick Gephardt and Senator Joe Lieberman, who rushed to the White House to stand side-by-side with Bush in a Rose Garden war rally, where they pledged their support for the invasion of Iraq. John Kerry, a man who gives gravitas a bad name, went along with the war and refused to retract his support even after it became obvious that the grounds for the invasion were bogus at best and fabricated. (Kerry has been wrongly diagnosed as a chronic flip-flopper. He's simply a flipper. The senator and war criminal does a lot of gymnastical contortions of his position, but he keeps landing in the same place time after time.) So did his faithful sidekick John Edwards. And the rest of the Democratic leadership. Look across the political taiga of the Democratic Party; it is a landscape denuded of any fresh sprigs of resistance. Even the august Russ Feingold's regular objections seem like perfunctory exercises, mere footnotes for the record. Feingold is the bland moral accountant of the senate. Dry and austere. He is also ignored, by the press and the bosses of his own party, partly because he is so bland. But mostly because he is usually right. But most don't even express regrets. Take Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Nearly a year after the war was launched, after every pretext had dissolved away and the US military found itself mired in a bloody and hopeless occupation, Daschle pronounced himself satisfied with the progress of the war. On February 19, 2004, Daschle told the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce: "I give the effort overall real credit. It is a good thing Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. It is a good thing we are democratizing the country." He also assured the business leaders of the Great Plains that he was not the least upset the over the bogus pre-war intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. As the summer of 2004 turned to autumn, Daschle, locked in a tight reelection race with Jim Thune, launched TV ads touting his support of the war, highlighted by a photograph of the senator being hugged by Bush. There you have it. Harmony in government. It boils down to a shared faith in the imperial project, a raw certitude in the righteousness of their collective crusade. The cardinal rule of a grifter's game is to control both sides of the action. Under those rules of engagement, the house (read: empire) always wins. Part One: The Ties That Blind Part Two: Mark His Words Part Three: More Pricks Than Kicks Part Four: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb Part Five: Bush's Mask of Anarchy Coda: The House Rules Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and, with Alexander Cockburn, Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils.     Weekend Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004 James Petras The Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of Abu Ghraib Fred Gardner Run Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain Justin Delacour Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela Brian Cloughley Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd? Joshua Frank The Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader Iain A. 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