|
August 4, 2002
Susan Davis
Fat Americans
August 3, 2002
David Krieger
Nuclear
Apartheid
Gilad Atzmon
The End
of Innocence
Gavin Keeney
Everybody's
a Critic
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
August 2, 2002
Ralph Nader
The Labor
Party
Chris Floyd
Moral Maze:
Bankruptcy Made Easy
Jeremy Scahill
Saddam,
Chemical Weapons and Donald Rumsfeld
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Deeds in the Black Hills:
Daschle Dooms the
Sacred Land of the Sioux
August 1, 2002
Steven Higgs
Activists
Under Siege
Anthony Gancarski
Draft
Picks:
Staffing the Latest War
Zeynep Toufe
Invisible
Children: AIDS,
Africa and Selective Vision
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
July 30, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Branding September 11
PS Burton
Financial
Journalism:
A Very Small Cog
Tom Stephens
Hypocrites in the House:
Fast Track After Midnight
Dave Marsh
Censorship
Goes Global
July 29, 2002
Linda Belanger
Why Do They Do It?
Alfredo Castro
Colombia's
Disappeared
Anne Brodsky
Inside Pakistan and
Afghanistan with RAWA
Andrew George
The Fires
of Summer:
Don't Blame the Greens
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
August
5, 2002
Inside Saddam's
Diary:
"I
Don't Have to Show You Stinkin' Anything"
by Bernard Weiner
Dear Diary:
This is so much fun! Watching those harebrained
idiots try to figure out what to do with me makes me smile. They
couldn't get me under the last Bush who tried, and it's not going
to be any easier this time.
Is it because I'm beloved by my people,
who loyally will resist the American invaders and their British
and "Iraqi Opposition" lackeys? Of course not. I'm
no fool. I rule by power and threat and torture and murder. But
I'm still here.
So what if I have to rub out some Kurds
or an entire layer of lieutenants or colonels when I suspect
an assassination plot? The troops and populace receive the lesson
and I still have my head.
Yes, of course, I'm doing all this out
of love for #1. But I'm also quite conscious that I have been,
and remain, a gigantic symbol in so many ways.
For the nation of Islam, and especially
for its beleagured Arabs, I'm a hero, because I am a constant
irritant to the West, and especially to America, and none of
them knows how to scratch me away into oblivion. I stand up to
them when nobody else does, and, even though most of my fellow
Muslims hate my guts and are scared that I'll maybe attack them
or otherwise bring ruin to the region -- especially when my nuclear
arsenal is completed -- they admire my courage and patience in
the face of so much overwhelming power. My audacity and tenacity
-- catchy, yes?
For the Americans, I am a symbol of "evil"
who must be eliminated because: 1) They foolishly ended their
last war against me and went home without finishing the job.
(Yes, I realize they rationalized their decision by "keeping
him in power as a counterweight to the fanatical mullahs in Iran.");
2) They think I'm developing "weapons of mass destruction"
and might use them against Israel, neighboring oil-countries,
or even pass them on to terrorists to attack the U.S. directly.
I'm not that dumb; I know what they'd do to me -- a nuclear missile
right into my deepest bunker -- but they can't be sure they know
what I'd do, and I like it that way.
Probably the cleverest thing I did during
the last U.S. invasion was to set the oilfields ablaze. They
weren't expecting that one. Now they don't know for sure what
I'm capable of doing; I might just be loony enough to unleash
biological and chemical weapons on the advancing U.S. troops,
or fire off a few missiles full of the stuff into Tel Aviv. (Actually,
I'm less worried about the Americans -- they're just confused
-- than I am about the Israelis. They took out my fledgling nuclear
program once before, and this time they'll simply level everything
they think is weapons-related. And it'll all be over in a day-and-a-half.)
The father Bush was an old-time warrior,
and a former CIA hand as well. I could figure out how he'd move.
This younger one, though, is something of a crazy cowboy, and
he's already demonstrated that he's capable of anything. Yes,
of course, he's a doltish puppet, but the folks around him use
him well, and his ignorance and threatening bluster -- and his
Texas fascination with violence -- actually serve their cause
well.
Speaking of violence, damn that bin Laden
guy! Even though I don't believe any of that religious crap,
I was setting myself up as the savior-to-be of the Muslim/Arab
world -- and had resurrected my weapons and research programs
after I got the U.N. inspectors to leave -- and then he had to
come along and engage the adoration of the Islam street by striking
the American beast in his own lair. And then Arafat, that corrupt
poseur, to counter bin Laden decided he'd have to ratchet up
the rhetoric and violence against mad-dog Sharon's Israel --
leaving me out here, hemmed in and handicapped by my situation,
twiddling my thumbs. At the most, I was #3 in the hero sweepstakes
in the Middle East. Qadaffi, poor soul, retired.)
Thankfully, George W. Bush has made my
stock shoot up once again, by labeling me one of the dread "axis
of evil," whatever that means, and promising to come and
get me. I'm a contender again, and I don't have to show you no
stinkin' anything.
Besides, you wouldn't find anything.
Sure, I've got my biological, chemical and nuclear programs and
missiles, but they're scattered and hidden underground so skillfully
-- I didn't waste these years since the U.N. left! -- that nobody
will ever find them, not even if I have to permit the inspectors
back in. They found a lot in those early days, but after awhile,
those dolts were so easy to fool. And we made their job such
a hassle -- simply by endlessly delaying their work, and standing
up to them and at times threatening them -- that they took flight.
That's the secret of my success -- infinite
patience -- along with determination, nastiness, and never, never
giving in totally to the West. Eventually, they get tired of
dealing with a hard-headed dictator and back away, or compromise.
Their leaders come and go. The embargo has more holes than a
collander. And I'm still here.
True, I don't like moving around from
palace to palace every night or two, but the dance is still fun.
Especially when I read about how divided the Bush Administration
is about what to do with me. Their military, and the British
military too, are opposed to a Western attack on Iraq, as well
they might be -- we'd tie them up here for years, and send a
lot of their young men home in garbage bags -- but the civilian
"hawks" in the White House and Pentagon (who have never
fought in a war, of course) are raring to take me out.
They want me out of the picture, but
not just because I thumbed my nose at Daddy Bush and got away
with it. What they really want is control of the oil. Not just
Iraq's but the whole thing: the Middle East, Caspian reserves
in the 'stans (the Afghan pipeline slots in here), Venezuela,
everywhere.
Of course, I have similar ambitions,
at least for this region -- I almost got Kuwait and I think maybe
I could have taken Saudia Arabia too -- and for what I can do
politically with the power of that oil-tap. I could create economic
chaos and depression in the West, get them to lean on Israel,
guarantee a Palestinian state's viability, become even more of
a hero amongst the Muslim masses. I wouldn't even need "weapons
of mass destruction" against the West.
In short, I'm in the way of their master
plan. If they can kill me, they'll install some equally brutal
military leader, but he'll be beholden to the West, and the Middle
East/Gulf once again will be totally under the thumb of outsiders.
I'll do anything to keep that from happening, maybe even taking
them down with me if they force the fight. The worst thing that
can happen is that I'll be seen as a martyr for the cause.
But I don't think it'll have to come
to that. I'll diddle with the U.N. for awhile (maybe agree to
a quick, one-month look-see), try to make sure that no Arab states
offer staging bases to the Western attackers, rattle my own sabers,
and probably the U.S. will "postpone" its attack.
Sure, Bush will look weak, but he'll
spin it and come at me from another direction, another time.
And guess what? I'll still be here.
Bernard Weiner,
playwright and poet, was the San Francisco Chronicle's theater
critic; a Ph.D. in government & international relations,
he has taught at various universities, and been published in
The Nation, Village Voice, The Progressive and CounterPunch.
Today's Features
David Krieger
Nuclear
Apartheid
Gilad Atzmon
The End
of Innocence
Gavin Keeney
Everybody's
a Critic
Alexander Cockburn
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save Dick Cheney?
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|