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October 5, 2005 Ramzy Baroud Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt. Mike Roselle Houston, You've Got a Problem Joshua Frank The Scoop on Harriet Miers John Chuckman War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say Alan Farago Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys Mickey Z. An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski Christine & Ethan Rose Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims Gary Leupp An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History Website of the Day Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Desperation at Holyoke Paul Craig Roberts Condi Rice: Gunslinger Joshua Frank An Interview with Cindy Sheehan Seth Sandronsky The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens Jeffrey St. Clair The Great Green Scare October 1 / 2, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze Dave Marsh A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan Ralph Nader Gutless, Spineless and Clueless Flavia Alaya Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza Uri Avnery The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory Chris Kutalik The Battle at Northwest Airlines Greg Moses Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues Brian J. Foley I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet Nicole Colson Hunger Strike at Gitmo Ray McGovern Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility Fred Gardner Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit Justin Felux Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby! Will Youmans "Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine Mike Ferner What Else Shall We Do? David Krieger The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant Agustin Velloso Samson Returns to Gaza Saul Landau The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema Ben Tripp Right Down the Middle Poets Basement Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert Website of the Weekend Holler If Ya Hear Me   September 30, 2005 Mary Geddry Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill Paul Craig Roberts Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars Dave Lindorff Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time Gregory Wilpert "The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America" Benjamin Dangl "Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo James McMurtry We Can't Make It Here Anymore T.R. Johnson Return to the Ninth Ward   September 29, 2005 Sen. Russ Feingold Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America Carl G. Estabrook Obama the Enabler Ramzy Baroud Rhetoric and Reality of War Dave Lindorff What Opposition Party? Mike Whitney Brownie's Comic Opera Jozef Hand-Boniakowski What Noble Cause? Gary Handschumacher Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan Winslow T. Wheeler No Leaders in Congress Against This War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans   September 28, 2005 Dr. Eyad Serraj Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement Sounds Like William A. Cook Bush's Security Barrier Liaquat Ali Khan The Invention of Porno Torture Mike Whitney Apartheid Justice in America Joshua Frank Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home? CounterPunch Wire New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters Chris Genovali Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest Linn Washington, Jr. White Affirmative Action: How John Roberts Got to the Top   September 27, 2005 Forrest Hylton Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a Matter for Our Movement Jason Leopold The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist Jennifer K. Harbury Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration Ray McGovern Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent? Mike Ferner Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon Antony Loewenstein When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel in Australia Harry Browne Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms   September 26, 2005 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI Murders a Legend Joshua Frank Democrats Flee Peace Protests Lamis Andoni The Railroading of Taysir Alony Mike Marqusee Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals": Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement Rep. Cynthia McKinney They Can't Fool Us Anymore Ron Jacobs A Small March for Me, a Giant March for the Antiwar Movement Norman Solomon The Media and the Antiwar Movement John Chuckman Bush in a Bottle Paul Craig Roberts America is Running Out of Time   September 24 / 25, 2005 Kathy and Bill Christison Polluting Palestine: Settlements & Sewage Ralph Nader Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina Saul Landau The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada Greg Moses A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau Roger Burbach Hugo Chavez's Mission Vijay Prashad America's Shame Laura Carlsen After NAFTA Robert Fisk When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful Dave Lindorff A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They? Kirkpatrick Sale / Thomas Naylor Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration Maj. Anthony Milavic The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti: the Time for Action is Now   September 23, 2005 CounterPunch News Service In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes Bill O'Reilly Diane Farsetta Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks Robert Sandels Militarizing the Market Christopher Brauchli Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations Alan Farago Bird Flu Takes Flight Dave Zirin When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968 Maxine Conant A Simple Test for Bush David Price Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and Davis-Bacon Profiteering   September 22, 2005 Smith, Wood, Leas, and Greenfield Which Way Forward for the Green Party? a Report from Tulsa Patrick Cockburn Iraqis: This Government has No Authority Manuel Garcia, Jr. Thinking is Religious Freedom Lucia Dailey Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One Mokhiber / Weissman Are You a Speed Freak? Russell D. Hoffman The Nukes in Rita's Path Kona Lowell God's Hurricane? Jason Leopold GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina Website of the Day Robert Pollin on the Global Economy   September 21, 2005 Jorge Mariscal Military Recruiters: Counselers or Salesmen? Linda S. Heard Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak Joshua Frank NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan Eric Ruder "The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with Camilo Mejia Pierre Tristam The Struts and Bull Presidency Dave Lindorff The Real Story of the German Elections Mike Ferner Sit Down in DC Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Katrina Bling Bling Jeffrey St. Clair W Marks the Spot Website of the Day New Orleans: Survivor Stories   September 20, 2005 Steve Breyman Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental Justice George Galloway Et Tu, Greg Palast? Patrick Cockburn What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion? M. Shahid Alam Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out? Mike Whitney The Gitmo Hunger Strikers Winslow T. Wheeler It's Not Rocket Science Niranjan Ramakrishnan Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit Paul Craig Roberts Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?   >

October 5, 2005 America or the Empire Bush's Final Choice By RAMZY BAROUD Deep down, U.S. President George W. Bush should grasp the seriousness of his debacle. If true, then he must also appreciate the time element in averting the worse-case scenario, which he, along with an increasingly alienated number of ideologues are imposing on their country. Iraq is a multifaceted disaster, and its calamitous effects are hurting America on many levels. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq is creeping up to the 2,000 mark. The figure of those wounded and maimed -- some permanently disabled -- is several folds higher. This war is too costly. Hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted from the U.S. budget everyday to feed the war machine; good news for the Pentagon and the military establishment maybe, but not so good for the majority of Americans, especially the poorest among them. The U.S. Army is stretched too thin, bogged down in a war gone awry. Many National Guard units, whose sole mission is to tend to the nation's needs in times of crisis, were deployed to Iraq. The consequences of such indiscretions were exhibited in the Katrina disaster to a humiliating degree. Public opinion has been illustrative of Bush's heedless foreign-policy conduct. A recent CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll found that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq. The majority of Americans, according to the poll, want to see serious cuts in military spending and a diversion of resources to help in the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts. But that is simply not feasible. The security in Iraq is deteriorating, and the insurgency is gaining momentum. All attempts to diminish the authenticity or magnitude of the resistance have failed. What's going on in Iraq is not the work of a few infiltrators, nor can it be narrowly defined according to ethnic classification or the character of one or a cluster of individuals. If the war was a faltering empire's attempt to thrust itself in a highly strategic geopolitical location and thus gain control over precious energy sources, then it was a strategic blunder. It is threatening the stability of an entire region and also exposing the inadequacies of U.S. military capabilities. If U.S. military strategists -- especially those close to the president -- possess the courage to extract lessons from history and recognize the complexity of the political reality in Iraq, they would undoubtedly conclude that the war in Iraq is simply unwinnable. Knowing that the U.S. cannot prevail in the war, the Bush administration is focusing on winning time by diverting attention from Iraq with smoke screens. There was the "bringing democracy" to the Arab world charade, with its last episode being the elections mockery in Egypt. And before that was the frenzy over the Islamic madrassas and how they gives birth to "little terrorists" -- to use the outlandish term of one CNN journalist, and so forth. But every smoke screen has eventually dispersed to reveal the same tragic reality that the White House is laboriously trying to conceal: Bush's war has no future strategy and no quantifiable objective. Once these two elements are removed, all that is left behind is war for the sake of war, a perpetual, endless military strife devoid of meaning except that cruelly inferred by an extremist zealot or a conceited ideologue. Evidently, the Bush constituency thrives on both. Even a pompous president with a divine mission must recognize a disaster when he sees one. It is improbable that Bush actually believes his own rhetoric of a world full of promise, which he supposedly molded, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon or Gaza. Americans are distancing themselves from the conflict and the administration's inflated projections. Despite the duplicity and outright ignorance of the media, an estimated 300,000 antiwar protesters descended on Washington D.C. on Sept. 24, demanding an immediate end to the war in Iraq. They included representatives of 250 American families who lost loved ones in Iraq. Also coming in droves were hundreds of war veterans, many of whom became disabled in Iraq. They all came seeking answers, disclosure and an end to the incessant war madness that has engulfed their nation. But Bush is unlikely to yield. He too has a crowd for which he cares deeply, convoluted interest groups that are a bizarre mix of business elites and corporate contractors, religious fanatics and top military brass. Bush's immediate constituency is unified in its war agenda, each group for its own reasons. An immediate withdrawal from Iraq is an ideological defeat; an irreplaceable financial loss for some; an end, if temporarily, to unwarranted military interventionism and the injurious diminishment to America's political hegemony. Considering that occupying and controlling Iraq was the pinnacle of the Bush war advocates' infamous manifesto on how to "secure the realms" of an increasingly challenged empire, a withdrawal from Iraq would certainly be the end of that dream. Yet staying in Iraq in a futile "hunt" for "terrorists" with an augmenting insurgency that is steadily engulfing the whole country is nothing like the envisaged "cakewalk" fantasy that also foresaw Iraqis showering the liberators with flowers and candy. Iraq has grown to become the empire's most dreadful nightmare. This self-inflicted predicament presents Bush and his administration with two arduous options: to disown their commitment to the empire and to exit Iraq immediately, saving some face and an opportunity -- if only a meager one -- to manage the crisis they've helped create with the hope of reconciling with the majority of the American people, or to weather the Iraqi storm, hoping for a miracle before their ship is completely sunk. The hundreds of thousands of Americans who marched on Washington in protest of Bush and his costly wars -- in fact the majority of the American people -- have made their voices loud and clear. Will Bush and his self-righteous ideologues listen, just for once? Ramzy Baroud, a veteran Arab American journalist, teaches mass communication at Australia's Curtin University of Technology, Malaysia Campus. His forthcoming book, "Writings on the Second Palestinian Uprising," is being published by Pluto Press, London.

Coming in the Fall from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Coming This Fall Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair