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Recent
Stories
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
Patrick
Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal
Robert
Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
Will Grow
William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
Peace Frees
Jeremy
Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
Steve
Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization
Sam
Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle
James
Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera
Lucretia
Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
January 18, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
July
17, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Sometimes Even the President of the
United States Has to Stand Naked
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance
Martin
Schwarz
Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation
Watchdogs
Heidi
Lypps
Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced
Drugging and the Supreme Court
Norman
Madarasz
Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance
Conference
Pankaj
Mehta
Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the
Boy Who Cried Wolf
Hammond
Guthrie
(Dis) Intelligence Revisited
Website
of the Day
No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism
July
16, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype
Dubious Uranium Claims
William
Cook
Defining Terrorism from the Top Down
Elaine
Cassel
Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom
Must Not Be Obeyed
Jason
Leopold
How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found?
Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?
Raymond
Barrett
From Detroit to Basra
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt
July
15, 2003
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack
Chris
Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries
Jason
Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries
Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
of the Day
Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued
Website
of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties
July 12 / 13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
July
11, 2003
Conn
Hallinan
The Coin of Empire
Tim
Wise
God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
Edward
S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
Website
of the Day
Dead Malls
July
10, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
Profits of General Dynamics
Sean
Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia
Yemi
Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview
with Wes Jackson
Ali
Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
Website
of the Day
Electronic Iraq
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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July
24, 2003
Call It What It Really
Is: Sick
A Nation of
Assassins
By DOUGLAS VALENTINE
What do you call it when George W. Bush, without
provocation and based on false pretenses, sends an army to invade
a foreign nation; and then, without any attempt to negotiate
a surrender, effect an arrest, or put this nation's leaders on
trial and present evidence of their crimes, instead puts multimillion
dollar bounties on their heads, relies on collaborators and spies
to track them down, and then corners them and blows them away
in their homes, in their own country?
Do you call it what the Israelis, who
lately have done it hundreds of times, call it? A targeted kill?
What would you call it if Saddam Hussein
hunted down and killed George Bush's daughters in Texas? Cold-blooded
murder?
How about calling this sort of behavior
assassination?
Why call it anything? A rose by any other
name, right? 
And don't even ask if targeted kills,
cold blooded murders, and assassinations are legal or moral.
Who the hell cares?
They're popular. It's so much fun, you
can even find death cards on the Internet, naming the people
that Bush plans to kill in Iraq. It's like a videogame, or that
old Steve McQueen show, Wanted Dead or Alive.
Bush really gets into it too; "Bring
'em on," he said, playing the role of Paladin in Have Gun
Will Travel; and since then a couple of GIs have gotten killed
every day. But what the hell, it's a volunteer army, and it isn't
you or me. So they die for Bush's vainglory. Who cares? It's
the vicarious thrill that counts.
Back when the CIA was assassinating foreign
leaders all over the world, in the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, they
secretly liked to call it Executive Action. Those were the bad
old days, when the CIA had to secretly go about its dirty business
of mass murder. Back then they had to resort to euphemisms to
get the job done.
In the Republic of Vietnam, first the
CIA called the mass murder of its enemies, in their own country,
elimination. But that sounded too harsh, so it changed the term
to neutralize.
In 1967 the CIA created the infamous
Phoenix Program to neutralize -- which meant to hunt down through
informants and then kill, capture, torture and detain indefinitely
-- a revolving annual door of some 70,000 members of Communist
and Nationalist insurgents, and anyone supporting them politically
or administratively, in their own country.
The United States government admits that
the CIA killed some 25,000 people through the Phoenix Program.
It did successfully and gleefully neutralize some hundreds of
thousands altogether. They know how to do it and they're ready
to cast the Phoenix spell worldwide.
Now we have it from Richard Perle --
one of the corrupt cabal that rules the White House, and makes
Israeli policy American policy in cahoots with the Bush oil régime,
whose loyalty lies not to the American public but to its own
self-enrichment -- that America will not leave Iraq as long as
some 30,000 members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, in Perle's
words, remain active.
So now maybe they're gonna change the
term to inactivating?
By inactivating, Bush, Perle, Wolfowitz
and the other members of their criminal régime mean the
planned mass murder of some 30,000 Iraqis in Iraq. If they do
it the way they did it in Vietnam, just like Bob Kerrey's little
mission in Thanh Phong, they also plan to inactivate the families
and friends of these 30,000 people.
You can't terrorize insurgents into submission
unless you do it this way, as the Israelis have taught us so
well. You have to terrorize everyone. Just like the Israelis
terrorized the Palestinians into a state of submission.
The newspaper and TV commentators applaud
this Iraqi experiment in targeted kills and mass murder as boosting
the morale of the American occupation army.
Just today the headlines hailed the inactivating
of Saddam Hussein sons as a righteous act that was more than
merely morally justifiable, but something akin to Divine justice.
And no one is astounded, because the
vast majority of Americans were ethically inactivated a long
time ago, through 50 years of government propaganda. In order
to enjoy their SUVs and cell phones, they will rejoice while
George W. Bush, in his role as God Almighty, cuts a swath of
righteous savagery through the world, mass murdering everyone
he and the cabal designate as their personal enemies -- just
like George W. Bush, all by his little lonesome, tried convicted
and sentenced Saddam Hussein and his family to death, and then
went out and killed them.
From now on, Bush alone chooses who lives
or dies, and no one can stop him. It is the One Commandment that
the American empire is based upon. And that's how we have become
a nation of assassins, void of conscience.
Call it Apotheosis by the Divine Right
of Execution. Or call it what it really is: sick.
Douglas Valentine is the author of The
Hotel Tacloban, The
Phoenix Program, and TDY.
His new book The Strength of the Wolf: the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics, 1930-1968 will be published by Verso. Valentine was
an investigator for Pepper on the King case in 1998-1999. For
information about Valentine and his books and articles, please
visit his website at www.douglasvalentine.com.
He can be reached at: redspruce@attbi.com
Valentine's last article for CounterPunch
was:
An Act of State: the Assassination
of Martin Luther King
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
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