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Today's
Stories
August 30,
2004
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites of TheNaderbasher.com
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"
Sex, Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
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
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August
30, 2004
What
More Could They Possibly Want?
Israeli
Moles in the Pentagon
By
MIKE WHITNEY
The FBI's investigation into Pentagon
official, Larry Franklin, on charges of spying for Israel, has
left many of us scratching our heads and wondering, "Why?"
The relationship between the
Bush Administration and the Sharon government is so incestuous
that is difficult to imagine that there are secrets of any consequence
that haven't already been fully shared.
Both the Pentagon and the Vice
President's office feature a number of high profile advisors
whose connections to Israel have raised questions about their
loyalty.
Alleged spy, Franklin, was
working directly under Douglas Feith who headed the now infamous
OSP (Office of Special Plans); the Pentagon's "sausage making"
unit, where intelligence was "cherry-picked" to make
it look as though Saddam was a greater threat than he was, and
to create imaginary links between Saddam and Al Qaida. Feith
led the way in making intelligence conform to policy.
He also collaborated in 1996
with David Wurmser (now working in VP Cheney's office) on a policy
paper for the Netanyahu government called, "A Clean Break".
The paper emphasized the importance of eliminating Saddam Hussein
to insure Israel's regional security. (The document also blasted
Oslo and the "land for peace" negotiations with the
Palestinians which are anathema to the vision of "Greater
Israel". This may explain the dramatic departure by the
Bush team from the policies of previous administrations. The
many Likud sympathizers in the administration torpedoed the Road
Map before it ever got off the ground.)
The obsession with toppling
Saddam among Israeli loyalists in the Bush Administration has
become such a commonplace observation that it hardly bears mentioning.
Everyone from Pat Buchanan to the Nation magazine; from General
Zinni to Senator Hollings has commented on it at length.
In a recent CounterPunch article,
former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern summarizes the phenomenon this
way:
"The neo-cons have considerable
difficulty distinguishing between the strategic requirements
of Israel and those of the US. There are not enough US troops
in Iraq to quell the resistance, but there are enough to prevent
any strategic threat to Israel. And so, the Bush administration
shows no intention of drawing down US forces from Iraq anytime
soon."
This judgment is becoming increasingly
familiar as more people are beginning to see the confluence of
interests that led to the Iraq war.
So, how does this affect our
understanding Larry Franklin's role?
Franklin is a mid-level official
who specializes in Iranian affairs at the Pentagon's policy branch.
So far, it has been suggested that he was trying to obtain information
for Israel on Iran's nuclear program.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of
the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said,
"Israel is very concernedthat the Ayatolla's will acquire
nuclear weapons because this is an unpredictable regime with
a close network to terror organizations around the world."
(CTV, News Staff)
No one could be more sympathetic
to Israel's concerns than the Bush administration; especially
regarding Iran, where the objectives of both countries seem to
seamlessly merge. Both countries want regime change, and both
want to install a Western friendly government that will allow
access to Iran's prodigious natural resources.
This communality of interests'
makes it more difficult to understand why Franklin felt required
to pilfer classified information and run the risk of being caught?
A Knight Ridder article reports
that:
"Two sources disclosed
that the information believed to have been passed to Israel was
the draft of a top-secret presidential order on Iran policy,
known as a National Security Presidential Directive. Because
of disagreements over Iran policy among President Bush's advisers,
the document is not believed to have been completed."
So, in fact, there were differences
of opinion concerning Iran policy at the highest levels of the
Bush administration.
The Knight Ridder article continues:
"Having a draft of the
document would have allowed Israel to influence U.S. policy while
it still was being made."
But, how could merely having
a "draft of the document" (provided by Franklin) allow
Israel to "influence" US policy?
If we consider a previous case,
where the administration's policies may have been altered by
false intelligence (provided by Israel); we can see how the process
works.
Following the invasion of Iraq,
Israeli Brig. General Shlomo Brom, who served in Israeli military
intelligence for 25 years, and acted as the deputy chief of planning
for the Israeli army, stated:
"Israeli intelligence
was a full partner with the U.S. and Britain in developing a
false picture of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
capability. It badly overestimated the Iraqi threat to Israel
and reinforced the American and British belief that the weapons
existed." (Peter Enav, "Isralei General derides findings
on Iraq" Ass. Press)
This shows how Israel provided
false intelligence to the Bush administration with the clear
intention of affecting policy. (Although, it's doubtful that
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld needed any further encouragement)
Could Franklin's "top
secret" information be used for the same purpose?
Although both the Bush and
Sharon governments' are devoted to "regime change",
they may miles apart on what that may involve.
Sharon would like to see an
end to Iran's nuclear program and an "Iron-fisted"
secular ruler (friendly to Israel) installed in Tehran.
However, the Bush administration
is probably wary of committing to another full-blown occupation
(Iran has a population of 70 million) after being "mired"
in Iraq for a year and a half.
If that's the case, then we
can assume that Washington will limit its aspirations to more
realistic goals. That would suggest an attempt to annex the prime
territory around the Caspian basin, and forgoing another massive
occupation. This could be accomplished by inventing a pretext
for intervention, such as, the suspicion of terrorist camps in
the region or "alleged" Al Qaida activity.
Political analyst Noam Chomsky
addressed this issue in his recent book "Hegemony or Survival".
In commenting on Israeli reconnaissance flights along Iran's
border Chomsky says:
"He (Robert Olson) suggests
that these operations are part of a long term effort to undermine
and perhaps partition Iran, separating its northern Azeri regions,thus
turning the country into 'an anemic geopolitical entity' barred
from access to the Caspian sea and Central Asia generally. Olson
also discusses one of the usual background concerns: to expedite
development of oil pipelines from the Caspian region to Turkey
and the Mediterranean, cutting out Iran." (Noam Chomsky;
"Hegemony or Survival" p 159-160; Owl Books)
Yes, Chomsky and Olson are
probably right. The Bush administration may have reduced the
scope of its plan and focused instead on their primary goal,
that is, the acquisition of 9% of the world's oil, vast reserves
of natural gas and crucial pipeline routes along the Caspian
Sea. This could be accomplished without a costly occupation of
the entire country.
Unfortunately, for Sharon this
veers dramatically from his scheme and does nothing to increase
Israeli security.
A scenario such as this would
force Tel Aviv to gather as much intelligence as possible in
an effort to change the administration's plans, even if it meant
exposing a high level agent to serious risk--by having him steal
classified documents and deliver them to an AIPAC courier.
After all, even if he's caught
"red-handed" (as he was, on video tape and wire-tap)
there's always a degree of "plausible deniability".
Deny Everything
Following the report of Franklin's
arrest an Israeli spokesman said, "We categorically deny
these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous".
Indeed.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can
be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com
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
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