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Today's
Stories
September 21,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Attention
Deficit America
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.
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September 21, 2004
Washington
Stood By While Genocide Took Place
What's
Behind the Horror in Darfur?
By
DAVID WHITEHOUSE
Nineteen months of scorched-earth assaults--conducted
by mounted Arab militias in concert with government planes and
helicopters--have forced most of the African population in Sudan's
western Darfur region to flee. According to UN estimates, 50,000
people have been killed, and 1.4 million people have fled their
homes--and now live in poorly supplied refugee camps.
At least 3,000 more fled new
assaults in the past two weeks. But reports indicate that attacks
have slowed down--because the objective of destroying most of
the area's African villages is already accomplished.
To discourage resettlement,
the militias--known as "janjaweed"--have poisoned many
of the arid region's wells with animal carcasses and human corpses.
Some of the janjaweed now haunt the fringes of the refugee camps
and kill--or rape--those who stray outside. Others have been
integrated into the Sudanese army or the "police" forces
that patrol the camps.
U.S. officials have predicted
that as many as 1 million more could die by the end of the year
from hunger and disease if foreign assistance does not increase.
The UN's World Food Program reports that donors have so far provided
less than half of the $194 million necessary for relief operations
in 2004.
Although donors may boost their
support for air drops of food to the camps--many of which are
now isolated by seasonal rains--direct Western intervention is
unlikely. One reason is that the Sudan government has warmed
to the idea of an increased presence of African Union (AU) troops
in Darfur--something that is favored by both European and U.S.
officials.
Darfur, a region the size of
Texas, currently has a token force of 300 AU soldiers, but a
UN-AU plan calls for 3,000 more by the end of the year, plus
1,200 AU police. The janjaweed were estimated to number 20,000
in July.
The Sudan government launched
its campaign of ethnic cleansing in early 2003 in response to
a local insurgency by the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and
the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The rebels, mostly Islamic
farmers who identify themselves as African, demanded an end to
government neglect of the region, President Umar al-Bashir's
campaign to "Arabize" local administration and his
backing of the earliest janjaweed raids.
The janjaweed are drawn from
nomadic livestock herders--also Muslims--who consider themselves
Arabs. Conflicts between farmers and herders over land and water
have sharpened since the late 1960s when prolonged drought caused
the Sahara Desert to expand.
The government exploited these
conflicts and subcontracted to the janjaweed the work of combating
the insurgency--allowing them in return to keep what they can
loot. The central government perfected this method--of swallowing
up an anti-government insurgency with a local ethnic slaughter--in
two decades of war in the country's south against the Sudanese
People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
Under pressure from the U.S.,
the SPLA and Bashir reached an agreement in May to share power
and the south's oil wealth. Washington hoped the arrangement
in the south would show that Bush's "war on terror"
had brought peace--and would allow U.S. oil companies back into
Sudan. But the Darfur crisis has forced Bush to distance himself
again from the Bashir regime.
So the U.S. is looking for
ways to convert the indigenous rebel groups into proxies of the
West. There's already a connection. From its inception last year,
the SLA has received support from Chad, a U.S. client. This assistance
is part of a decades-old practice of the region's governments
to back insurgencies of ethnic or political allies against neighboring
states.
And there's another connection.
The SLA's strikes against government outposts in 2003 are widely
seen to have been inspired by the headway made by the rebels
of southern Sudan, the SPLA, thanks to U.S. backing. This open
support followed quiet, privatized support from U.S. Christian
evangelicals who backed the Christian and animist fighters of
the SPLA against the Islamists of the central government.
As Darfur's Africans teeter
on the brink of catastrophe, the SLA and JEM have taken a hard
line in negotiations with the government--clearly emboldened
by the idea that the U.S. stands behind them. But the more deeply
the U.S. gets involved, the more the rebels will become pawns
in the U.S. game for regional influence.
And to some extent, the SLA
and JEM may already be sucked up into the ethnic war. Although
they took up arms to press real grievances, reports from Al Jazeera
and The Economist in August alleged that the rebels themselves
began to engage in ethnic cleansing.
Even military intervention
by the African Union is not neutral. Its most prominent backer
is the regime of Nigerian military strongman Olusegun Obasanjo,
who wants to curry favor with the U.S. and elevate Nigeria as
a reliable "sub-imperial" power. Any sizable intervention
would depend on the U.S. for equipment and arms, so the AU's
efforts will represent an indirect form of Western intervention--the
path that Bush may prefer as the U.S. seeks to develop African
proxies for future use.
While U.S. troops--and credibility--are
tied up in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush may settle for a long-term
siege of Sudan, through UN pressure and AU troops. Secretary
of State Colin Powell spoke last week of divisions within the
Bashir regime between hardliners and moderates--the administration's
way of saying that they hope for a coup by elements friendly
to the U.S.
U.S. puts
oil profits first
U.S. RELATIONS with Sudan have
shifted sharply more than once in the past 20 years, but not
out of concern for the welfare of ordinary Sudanese. Whichever
party held the White House, the key question was always how the
U.S. could gain advantage over its geopolitical rivals--especially
in exploiting the region's oil wealth.
U.S. oil giant Chevron discovered
major oil deposits in southern Sudan in 1979-80. Within three
years, the Sudanese government unleashed a genocidal war against
Christians and animists in the south--clearing villagers out
of the oilfields so that Western oil companies could set up shop
in "uninhabited" territories.
The U.S. maintained close relations
with the government through this period, even as Sudan's army
and its local Islamic proxy militias began enslaving thousands
of southern women and children. At the same time, Sudan further
cemented its connection to the U.S. by backing Eritrea's struggle
for independence from Ethiopia--a cause that the U.S. suddenly
embraced when Ethiopia aligned itself with Washington's Cold
War rival, the former USSR, in the late 1970s.
Under Jimmy Carter, Sudan became
the sixth biggest recipient of U.S. military aid by 1980. But
as the Cold War came to an end a decade later--and the Sudanese
civil war disrupted Western access to the oilfields--the U.S.
began to lose interest.
In 1991, George Bush Sr. made
a full reversal of support when Sudan opposed his war against
Iraq. He withdrew U.S. food aid to Sudan in the middle of a famine.
Under Bill Clinton, two developments
drove the U.S. toward an even sharper confrontation with Sudan.
One was a campaign of Christian fundamentalists--including in
George W. Bush's hometown of Midlands, Texas--to pressure Clinton
to support the southern rebels. The other was Sudan's harboring
of forces hostile to the U.S., including Osama bin Laden, who
lived in the country from 1991 to 1996.
Following the 1998 bombings
of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton "retaliated"
with a cruise missile attack on targets supposedly associated
with bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The assault destroyed Sudan's
al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, which produced half of Sudan's
medicines and all of its chloroquine, a malaria medicine.
Clinton claimed--falsely, as
the administration admitted a year later--that the factory was
producing chemical weapons for al-Qaeda. But in 2000, Clinton's
last year as president, President Bashir began to cooperate in
rooting out the most militant anti-American Islamist groups in
the country--setting the stage for Bush Jr. to attempt a re-reversal
of policy.
George W. Bush sought "constructive
engagement" with Bashir, especially because trade sanctions
that date from the Clinton years have cut U.S. companies out
of the reviving oil business. Sudan's reserves could produce
oil at half the rate of Kuwait if fully developed.
While the U.S. was disengaged,
Malaysia, India and China--the U.S.'s looming new geopolitical
rival--made oil connections to Sudan. China has even become Sudan's
top foreign investor and controls the oil concession in southern
Darfur.
Bush pressured the Christian-animist
rebels in the south to negotiate with the government. As talks
progressed toward the May power-sharing deal--after 2 million
civilian deaths since 1983--Bush hoped that the new war in Darfur
would just go away.
To sweeten the deal, Bush promised
to take Sudan off the list of "states that sponsor terror"--just
when the atrocities in Darfur grabbed the world's attention.
So no one should believe the latest twists and turns in the U.S.
relationship with Sudan have anything to do with concern for
the Sudanese people.
David Whitehouse writes for the Socialist
Worker.
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. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
/
|