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Now Available from CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included) Today's Stories January 30, 2004 David Miller The Hutton Whitewash January 29, 2004 Patricia Nelson Limerick John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist Ron Jacobs Homeland Security and "Legalized" Immigration Rahul Mahajan New Hampshire v. Iraq Greg Weiher Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on Moon and Mars Norman Solomon The State of the Media Union Cockburn / St. Clair Does NH Mean Anything?   January 28, 2004 Kathy Kelly Bearing Witness Against Teachers of Torture and Assassination   January 27, 2004 Steve Philion Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with CNN's Aaron Brown Daniel Ellsberg Leak Against This War: Expose the Lies from the Inside C.G. Estabrook Can George Ever Really be Elected President? Josh Frank Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke Screens Greg Moses Racism 101 All Over Again Gilad Atzmon Blood, Soil and Art Mike Ferner "We're All Lied To": an Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad Hammond Guthrie General Disorders of the Day   January 26, 2004 Sean Donahue The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's Drug War Zealot Gary Leupp David Kay's Admission January 24/5, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come" Laura Flanders State of the Conservative Union Simon Helweg-Larsen Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala Dave Lindorff Ground Control to Maj. George Susan Davis The Birdwatcher Menace Alexander Cockburn The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris 0   January 23, 2004 Yonathan Shapira An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out Standard Schaefer Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben Protests US Travel Policy Josh Frank In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's Vermont William A. Cook Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious   January 22, 2004 Sam Smith Howards End? Patricia Koyce Wanniski Lost in Space Alexander Lukin Putin and the Clans Katherine van Wormer Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations and Bush's Mind Forrest Hylton The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia   January 19, 2004 Justin E. H. Smith Inside America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution Richard W. Behan The GOP, Inc. Ray McGovern Bush's State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole? Werther SOTUS: the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura Phillip Cryan Media Collusion in Colombia's War Lee Sustar A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline? Arthur Versluis Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water Uri Avnery Anti-Semitism: a Practical Manual Steve Perry Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State   January 17 / 18, 2004 Fadi Kiblawi and Will Youmans The Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists Joshua Muldavin and Joseph Nevins Blaming the Symptoms Jeffrey St. Clair Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant Brian Cloughley Iron Hammers in Iraq Saul Landau Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq M. Shahid Alam Lerner, Said and the Palestinians Richard Manning Food Poisoning as Background Noise Marjorie Cohn The Guantanamo Concentration Camp Mike Whitney Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court Sadik Kassim Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov Carol Norris Arnold and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up Joe Quandt Suicide Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities David Krieger Imagining MLK Jr at 75 Bruce Jackson Making War, Making Movies Ron Jacobs Revolution in the Air: a review Richard Edmondson Rupert Murdoch and My Sister Richard Forno Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum Poets' Basement Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie   January 16, 2004 Kathy Kelly A Visit to Umm Qasr Prison William S. Lind More Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare Gillian Russom So. Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!" Ari Shavit Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris Adi Ophir Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris Dave Lindorff The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich Steve Perry Iowa Death Trip 2   January 15, 2004 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Memo to the President: Your State of the Union Address John Chuckman Dry Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc Chris Floyd Mind Over Matter Gil-Scott Heron Whitey on the Moon Gary Leupp The Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan   January 14, 2004 Greg Moses Happy Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots Kurt Nimmo Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights Dave Lindorff Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional Dems (and Dean) Jason Leopold O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton Alexander Cockburn Bush, Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last   January 13, 2004 William S. Lind How 2004 Looks from Potsdam M. Junaid Alam Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist? Mickey Z Snipers: No Nuts in Iraq Adolfo Gilly Chonchocoro: The Prisoner and the Presidents Steve Perry You Love God, Right?   January 12, 2004 Ben Tripp No Stan for the Kurds Norman Solomon The Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South Mike Whitney O'Neill's Revenge Jason Leopold From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq Uri Avnery Syria's Peace Proposal   January 10 / 11, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair Susan Davis Dangerous Books Diane Christian On Lying and Colin Powell Lisa Viscidi Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past Daniel Estulin Destroying History in Iraq Saul Landau Homeland Anxiety Elaine Cassel Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties? Bruce Jackson Making the Shit List Christopher Brauchli Baptizing Hitler's Ghost Francis A. Boyle The Deep Scars of War Lee Ballinger Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry Patrick W. Gavin Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott? Ramzy Baroud What Invaders Have in Common Michael Schwartz Inside the California Grocery Strike Gary Johnson An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page Dave Zirin An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball Mark Hand A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon Poets' Basement Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert           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 Search CounterPunch

January 30, 2004 More Halliburton News, Brought to You By Halliburton A Tale of Two "Employees"...Oops...Make That "Workers" By DAVID VEST Hardly had the words "unfairly maligned" escaped Dick Cheney's lips when his former company found itself neck-deep in yet another bribery scandal. Halliburton praised itself for "strong internal detective work" as it revealed the latest "apparent overcharges," amounting this time to $6.3 million. "In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways," wrote Thomas Hardy. The phantom detective agency formerly run by Cheney appeared to be going to extraordinary lengths to protect rather than divulge the identities of the two "employees" who allegedly demanded and got $6M in kickbacks for subletting a contract to a Kuwaiti firm (whose identity is also a mystery). Elements missing from both the "detective report" and, alas, the media coverage of the scandal: Who were these mysterious "employees"? How high up in the corporate hierarchy were they? What were their job titles? What has happened to them? Where are they now? Forbes called them "workers," as though they carried lunch buckets and sang Woody Guthrie songs. Apparently Forbes believes "workers" are typically in a position to sign-off on major international contracts and demand multi-million dollar kickback fees. Most accounts since the story broke have simply identified the alleged bribe-takers as humble "employees." In some versions they appear as "officials" or even "staffers." Sent by a temp agency, perhaps? It was up to The Guardian and a few other sources, mostly outside the U.S., to identify the perps as "executives." Whatever they were, they were placed high enough to be negotiating contracts big enough to permit them to skim off $6 million. Assume, then, that we are talking about "executives." What happened to them? Both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press reported last Friday that Halliburton had fired them. Most press accounts have repeated the firings as fact. Reuters, however, originally reported that Halliburton "declined to say the employees had been fired." Most interestingly, CBS News (also last Friday) cited unnamed sources who claimed the two people "left before the problem was discovered and were not fired." Did they leave with the $6M? If two "employees" grabbed $6M in kickbacks, some might (and did) wonder, why was it Halliburton (and not, say, the two crooks who took the bribe) who cut the check to reimburse the government? Is corporate money one thing, but personal money another? "The key issue here," said Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall, "is self-disclosure and self-reporting." Actually, Wendy, the issue is corruption. Hall's efforts to turn a confession of criminal behavior into an orgy of self-congratulation were nothing compared to the company's decision to relaunch an ad campaign to "counter negative publicity." Actually, the ads have been running since last November, with spots airing on CNN, MSNBC, Fox and selected local news programs. When they first appeared, Preston Turegano (of Sign-on San Diego) observed that the campaign makes Halliburton unique among other Iraq and Afghanistan contract holders, who "do not have TV spots ballyhooing their business in the Middle East." He found the ads reminiscent of the campaign Saudi Arabia launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, carried out for the most part by Saudi men. Halliburton is running paid print announcements, too. In a Houston Chronicle ad, CEO Dave Lesar says "not many companies have our know-how" then proceeds to call flipping omelets for troops a "special skill," not a "special interest." Lesar somehow neglects to mention the fact that, as NBC News reported last December, the Pentagon has repeatedly warned Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR that U.S. troops in Iraq were being served dirty food in dirty mess halls. The Pentagon reported finding "blood all over the floor," "dirty pans," "dirty grills," "dirty salad bars" and "rotting meats and vegetables" in military messes the company operates in Iraq. Blood all over the mess hall floor. Including the one where George W. Bush posed with a turkey on Thanksgiving. David Vest writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He and his band, The Willing Victims, just released a scorching new CD, Way Down Here. He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com Weekend Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair Susan Davis Dangerous Books Diane Christian On Lying and Colin Powell Lisa Viscidi Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past Daniel Estulin Destroying History in Iraq Saul Landau Homeland Anxiety Elaine Cassel Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties? Bruce Jackson Making the Shit List Christopher Brauchli Baptizing Hitler's Ghost Francis A. Boyle The Deep Scars of War Lee Ballinger Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry Patrick W. Gavin Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott? Ramzy Baroud What Invaders Have in Common Michael Schwartz Inside the California Grocery Strike Gary Johnson An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page Dave Zirin An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball Mark Hand A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon Poets' Basement Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /