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Today's
Stories
March 9, 2004
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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.
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March
9, 2004
He's Everywhere; He's Nowhere
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
By GREG WEIHER
Zarqawi is everywhere, and he is responsible for
everything.
That's what an unwary reader might conclude
from news coverage over the last several weeks.
"Abu Musab Zarqawi blamed for more
than 700 killings in Iraq" (NBC News, 03/03/04).
"Zarqawi has warned of attacks on
the majority Shia population with the aim of provoking a Sunni-Shia
civil war to wreck the US plans to pull out of Iraq on 30 June"
(Independent of London 03/03/04).
"Gen. John P. Abizaid said raids
by American Special Operations forces and efforts by the Iraqi
police against militants associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
had thwarted a major attack in Basra" (New York Times 03/03/04).
"There is growing evidence that
a terrorist [Zarqawi] with ties to al Qaeda was behind this week's
bombing in Iraq" (Christian Broadcasting Network 03/04/04).
"Every soldier in Iraq is looking
for Zarqawi," says Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt (Houston
Chronicle 02/22/04).
You generally have to get well into these
articles to find any qualification of these bold claims. But
the disclaimers are puzzlingly blunt given the flamboyant prose
that precedes them.
Under the headline, "New leading
terrorist a master of disguises, thought to be recruiting for
al-Qaida," the Knight-Ridder papers eventually note the
following: "So far, coalition officials have presented little
hard evidence to back their allegations," and "So far,
little evidence has been produced regarding Zarqawi's activities,
so it is not clear how firm the allegations are," (Houston
Chronicle, 02/22/04).
In a curious construal, the Independent
says about the supposed Zarqawi communiqué, "While
it is still not known whether the memo is a fake, its predictions
look as though they are coming true."
And the redoubtable New York Times quotes
a "senior American official" as saying: "that
he knew of no direct evidence linking Mr. Zarqawi to Tuesday's
attacks. 'That doesn't mean it's not what we expect to find,'
the official said" (New York Times 03/04/04).
Much of this latest furor results from
the US announcing in early February that it had intercepted a
letter from Abu Musab al Zarqawi to al Qaeda seeking its cooperation
in fomenting civil war in Iraq. In a previous article on the
CounterPunch website ("The Zarqawi Gambit," 02/26/04),
I listed reasons for a healthy agnosticism about allegations
concerning Zarqawi, al Qaeda, and the supposed attempt to foment
civil war in Iraq.
The first was that the alleged Zarqawi
letter could not have been more congenial to the Bush Administration
if it had been composed by Karl Rove. Invoking the spectre of
the universally-loathed al-Qaeda, it supported the interpretation
that all of our troubles in Iraq are caused by outside agitators,
not the Iraqis themselves. The inference is that violence in
Iraq is not part of a war of national liberation, not a structural
matter that will impede the flowering of American-style democracy,
but by agitation that will pass when we get our hands on Saddam
Hussein . . . or, I should say, Zarqawi. The second reason
for skepticism was that the communiqué was made public
when "American officials" revealed it exclusively to
the New York Times. Like many other government specials to the
Times, the only source cited was "senior government officials."
There was no attempt to consult non-government intelligence experts,
authorities on Al Qaeda, authorities on terrorist activities,
or scholars on the Middle East to explore any causes for skepticism.
Rather, the Times continued its habit of running with whatever
the U.S. government says. This has been characteristic of other
government "exclusives" to Times reporters that have
proven to be false.
The third reason for skepticism, not
to belabor the obvious, is that the Bush administration has lied
about intelligence on Iraq before. Remember the mobile weapons
labs, the Wagons of Mass Destruction? Remember the Scuds lurking
in secret locations in the desert? Remember the remote controlled
drones, poised to spew death from Poughkeepsie to Pomona?
Since the Times broke the Zarqawi story
on February 9, spawning columns by William Safire and David Brooks
and Jim Hoagland and countless speculative articles about Zarqawi's
evil activities, as well as multiple CPA press conferences, what
additional documentation of the authenticity of the Zarkawi letter
has been produced? What third parties have examined the compact
disc upon which the letter resided? What articles have appeared
about Arabists examining the text to see if the US translation
is reasonable? To see if the language is consistent with what
one would expect of a Jordanian like Zarqawi, and with other
communications attributed to him? To my knowledge, the answer
to these questions is "none."
On the other hand, there are additional
causes to be skeptical of the document's authenticity. In the
original story (02/09/04) American officials claimed the letter
"was seized in a raid on a known Qaeda safe house in Baghdad."
However, in his column of February 11, William Safire says that
the courier was captured by Kurdish Pesh Merga in Kalar, a town
about a hundred miles from Baghdad. This appears to have become
the preferred version, since the Knight-Ridder papers report
on February 22 that the letter was found on a courier captured
in northern Iraq. Where and how "US officials" acquired
the Zarqawi letter should be straightforward, particularly when
they deem it important enough for a special to the Times. So
why the confusion over such a simple thing?
We should also be skeptical about the
recurring claim that resistance in Iraq originates outside the
country. We have heard this story before, but always without
substantiation. After the Saddam Hussein regime fell and mortality
rates among American soldiers began to climb, high military and
defense officials asserted that foreign terrorists were streaming
into Iraq across Syrian borders. How inconvenient it was for
them when the commanders in charge of patrolling those borders
said there was no evidence to support such claims ("Commanders
Doubt Syria is Entry Point," Washington Post, 10/29/03).
When insurgents overran a police station
in Fallujah, killing fifteen to twenty Iraqi policemen, the Coalition
Provisional Authority initially reported confidently that the
attack was carried out by foreigners. The next day they admitted
that actual evidence proved the attackers were Iraqis.
Similarly, American and Iraqi officials
have been eager to link the Ashura bombings in Karbala and Baghdad
to Zarqawi and to "traveling jihadists" (Christian
Broadcasting network). The authorities reported taking fifteen
Iranians into custody. Of course, there was no shortage of them
in the area. Iranians are almost all Shiai, and Ashura is the
holiest day in the Shia religious calendar. An estimated 100,000
Iranians traveled to Karbala for the observance. The theory is
that foreigners want to attack the Shiai to foment civil war.
But it is not likely that Iranians, themselves devout Shiai,
would make such an attack.
Robert Fisk is particularly cogent on
the issue of outside agitators:
"Repeatedly the Americans have told
us that the suicide bombers were 'foreigners.' And so they may
be. But can we have some identities, nationalities? The US Defence
Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has talked of the hundreds of 'foreign'
fighters crossing Saudi Arabia's porous borders. The US press
have dutifully repeated this. The Iraqi police keep announcing
that they have found the bombers' passports, so can we have the
numbers?" (Independent, 03/03/04)
If Zarqawi is in Iraq, how difficult
can it be to find him? He is, after all, an amputee. Even an
amputee with a prosthetic leg tends to stand out in a crowd.
With any support from the natives, a CPA investigator who said
"I'm looking for a one-legged Jordanian" would have
a fair chance of generating some leads.
And that's the crux of the matter, isn't
it? It is not so difficult to believe that there are jihadis
in Iraq. But the suggestion set out in the alleged Zarqawi letter
and embroidered by "US officials" strikes me as preposterous.
This is the suggestion that insurrection is a matter of foreign
agitation, not of conditions endemic to Iraq. A one-legged foreigner
cannot foment rebellion and elude US capture without substantial
Iraqi support. An operation as sophisticated as the Ashura attacks
cannot be carried out without active involvement from a cadre
of Iraqis, and complicity by other Iraqis in fairly large numbers.
Such activity should leave a trail in Iraqi society a mile wide
. . . unless, of course, a substantial number of Iraqis are working
to cover it. The whole affair has a peculiar odor. To quote Robert
Fisk again: "Civil war. Somehow I don't believe it . . .
an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the
last prospect it ever wants to contemplate keeps shouting 'civil
war' in our ears and I worry about that."
Thanks to Michael Christiansen for
bringing the inconsistencty about the intercept of the alleged
Zarqawi letter to my attention.
Greg Weiher
is a political scientist and free-lance writer living in Houston,
Texas. He can be reached at gweiher@uh.edu.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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