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Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly Click Here to Order 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly's Harrowing First-hand Account of Iraq Under the Squeeze of Sanctions and Missiles of Shock and Awe! Today's Stories August 3, 2005 José Pertierra Why Hamdi Isaac Yes and Posada Carriles No? August 2, 2005 Ramzi Kysia Disengagement and Diaspora: High Walls and Razor Wire in the Hebron William A. Cook Words Without Meaning: Torturing Bodies and Language Paul Craig Roberts When Armageddon Gets No Press Mike Whitney Chertoff's Preemptive Crackdown: 600 Arrests, Only 76 Charged Ron Jacobs Be a Hero: Demand That Johnny Come Home Norman Madarsz Before the Stun Gun: Jean Charles de Menezes, RIP Tim Wise The Faulty Logic of "Terrorist" Profiling   August 1, 2005 Virginia Rodino Why Bono and Geldof Got It Wrong: War and Global Poverty are Linked Diana Barahona Return to Venezuela: Land Reform and Neighborhood Doctors Joshua Frank Gitmo's Kangaroo Courts: First Torture Them, Then Rig Their Trials Mike Whitney The Consolidation of Powers: Rubber Stamp Roberts Norm Dixon The Worst Terror Attacks in History Norman Solomon Operation Withdrawal Scam James Petras The Corruption of Lula's Regime   July 30 / 31, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lost Nuclear Warheads Now in Iran? JoAnn Wypijewski Scenes and Silver Linings from Labor's Crack-Up: a Special Report from Chicago Sheldon Rampton War is Fun as Hell: the Video Games Recruiters Play Jack Z. Bratich Fingerprints of Power: a Summer of Double Super Secrecy Greg Moses How to Cool Your Heels in Texas When It's Late July Across the World Jordan Green From Woolworth to Wal-Mart: Economics and the Race Divide in a Southern City Patrick Cockburn Getting Out of Iraq: 5,000 US Troops Have Gone AWOL Brian Cloughley The Bush-Cheney Fixation on Iran Justin Taylor Harry Potter and the War on Terror Saul Landau Enhancements for the Imperial Life: Fashionism Takes Command! John Walsh Dems Field Another Pro-War Candidate: Meet Hack the Hawk Joshua Frank Color-Coded Justice: John Roberts's Racial Hang Up Ron Jacobs Who Needs Feminism? We Have Condi Rice! Fred Gardner The Ethan and Gavin Show John Chuckman Friedman on Terrorism: the Dumbest Story Ever Written Liaquat Ali Khan Lessons City Bombers Need to Learn from Newton and Donne Remi Kanazi Annexing Justice in Palestine Naveen Jaganathan The Gurgaon Riots Rock India Richard Heinberg Where is the Hirsch Peak Oil Report? Max Watts Francis Ona, the Napoleon of Mekamui Ben Tripp Write Your Own Editorial! Poets' Basement Whalen & Engel, Landau, Albert and Krieger     July 29, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Who's the Real Martyr? Judy Miller or Jim DeFede? P. Sainath The Class War in Gurgaon Niranjan Ramakrishnan How the West Was Lost: CAFTA and the Disassembling of America Dave Lindorff Marvelous Marvin Bush J.L. Chestnut, Jr. America's Racist Inventory: Oppression Breeds Violence Pat Williams Giving Away the Last Best Place Norman Solomon In Praise of Kevin Benderman: a Moral Leader of the Nation Goes to Prison Sen. Russ Feingold The Bad News About the Energy Bill   July 28, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Departing Iraq William S. Lind The Duke of Alba and George W. Bush Gilad Atzmon Blair the Camera Man Joshua Frank Passing CAFTA: Blame the Democrats Lila Rajiva Vision Mumbai Submerged Amina Mire Pigmentation and Empire: the Emerging Skin-Whitening Industry Website of the Day Gateway to Underground News     July 27, 2005 Roger Morris The Source Beyond Rove: Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal Gary Leupp Is Iran Being Set Up? Paul Craig Roberts US Falling Behind Across the Board Jackie Corr Class War on the Ruby River: the Billionaire with His Foot in His Mouth Mike Whitney The Coming End of the Housing Bubble Dave Zirin Why Lance Armstrong Must Break with Bush Christopher Bradley Why I Have Trouble Reading the News Norman Solomon Thomas Friedman, Liberal Sadist? Website of the Day Stormin' Norman     July 26, 2005 Suren Pillay The Enemy Within: When the "Other" is One of "Us" JoAnn Wypijewski Fission and Fizzle in Chicago: SEIU and Teamsters Quit the AFL Patrick Cockburn Iraq: the Unwinnable War David Anderson When the Greatest Outrage is the Lack of Outrage: NYC's Subway Searches Joshua Frank Hillary Clinton: Outflanking Bush from the Right Lenni Brenner Biography as Wish-Fulfillment: Jefferson, Hitchens and Atheism David Swanson Nuking Native Land     July 25, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts China-Mart Takes Over M. Shahid Alam Terrorism: America Defines Its Targets Uri Avnery March of the Orange Shirts Stan Cox Kreationism in Kansas Norman Solomon "Wagging the Puppy" Ramzy Baroud London Bombings: Barbaric, But Not Unexpected Mickey Z. No Gun Ri: 55 Years Later Website of the Day The Birth of a Hummingbird in 15 Images     July 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Islamo-Anarchs or Islamo-Fascists? Tariq Ali The War Comes Home Robert Fisk Something Happened Dave Lindorff Return of the Academic Witch Hunts Ricardo Alarcón Kidnapping in Miami: the UN, the US and the Cuban 5 Col. Dan Smith Living in a Twilight Zone: Troop Strength, Recruitment and the Draft Brian Cloughley The Pentagon's China Hypocrisy Kevin Zeese Growing Republican Opposition to Iraq War Bill Quigley Harrowing Hours in Haiti Fred Gardner The Reverberations of Raich Rep. Ron Paul The Patriot Act is a Threat to Liberty Joshua Frank Framing Abortion: Gonadal Politics and the Democrats Shivali Tukdeo Project Mumbai Makeover: Casualties of Development Gilad Atzmon Blair's "Evil Ideology" James Petras Baghdad: Barbarism and Civilization (a Fiction) Ben Tripp When Being American Was Fun Poets' Basement Krieger, Louise, Buknatski, Albert and Engel Website of the Weekend Remember the West Memphis 3   July 22, 2005 Heather Gray Home Grown Axis of Evil: Corp. Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott Decision David Domke The American Press and Credibility Lance Selfa Battle of the Insiders: No Heroes in the Plame Leak Scandal JoAnn Wypijewski Is This Really an "Insurgency" to Shake Up the Labor Movement?   July 21, 2005 Rose Ann DeMoro The Top 10 Problems with the "Crisis" in the Labor Movement William Blum London: Another Casualty in the War on Terror J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Whites Need to Learn Something: Dixie is Everywhere Christopher Brauchli Strange Affairs: Liberals and Alberto Gonzales Joshua Frank Plame Blame Game: the 5 Ws Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti's Elections: Time for a Reality Check Patrick Cockburn The True, Terrible State of Iraq and the Link to London Website of the Day Who Blew Up the Murrah Building?     July 20, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judge Roberts: Business as Usual Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Red Christmas Ray McGovern Did Dick Finger Valerie?: the Hand of Cheney Chris Floyd Judge Dread: John Roberts and the "Enemy Combatants" Uri Avnery "Silence is Filth" Dave Lindorff Westmoreland's Body Count Goes Up by One Norman Solomon Gen. Westmoreland's Death Wish Bill Quigley Travels in Haiti with a Wanted Priest       July 19, 2005 Tariq Ali An Isolated Regime John Ross Jihad Meets G-8 Davey D. More Clear Channel Censorship: "Don't F--K Around with Tha Police" Greg Weiher Muzzling Saddam: the Old Bait-and-Switch in Iraqi Jurisprudence Brian McKinlay An "Arse Licker" Goes to Washington: John Howard's Grand Tour Norman Solomon Nukes for India; Threats for Iran Dave Lindorff Get Back to Where We Once Belonged Bill Christison Bush's Itinerary: First Stop Syria, Next Stop Iran Joshua Frank Laura's Justice?: Meet Edith Brown Clement   July 18, 2005 Joshua Frank An Interview with Ward Churchill M. Shahid Alam A Muslim Problem: Did Thomas Friedman Flunk History? Jude Wanniski Memo to Patrick Fitzgerald Ron Jacobs A Weekend to Stop the War Mike Whitney The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station William MacDougall From "Bring It On" to "London Can Take It" Seth Sandronsky Temporary Recovery: New Frontiers in Labor Flexibility Richard Lichtman The Consolations of George Lakoff Paul Craig Roberts Can Congressional Republicans End Bush's Wars? Website of the Weekend Novels of the Neo-Cons   July 15 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Don't You Dare Call It Treason Jeffrey St. Clair Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton Paul Craig Roberts Economic Treason Harry Browne "What They Do to Us, They Will Do to You": Shell Oil in Mayo, Ireland Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron A Warning from Israel Andrew Rubin End of the Enlightenment: an Open Letter to Stephen Plaut Patrick Cockburn Iraq's Ghost Battalions J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Changes in Selma: Standing Up to Racism in the South Fred Gardner A Professional Bust Christopher Brauchli An Olympic Feat: How to "Double" Aid with No New Money Chris Floyd The Great Iraq Oil Giveaway Ben Tripp The Dark Incontinent Col. Dan Smith General Abizaid, I'm Glad You Asked Jason Leopold What Did Rove Say and When Did He Say It? Jack Random Miller Time Norman Solomon War and Venture Capitalism George Ochenski Liberate Montana's Rivers: Come One, Come All! Website of the Weekend Vote for CounterPuncher David Vest     July 14, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton Subcomandante Marcos This is What Will Do and How We Shall Do It: the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona Dave Lindorff No More Moral Relativism: the US is a Terrorist State Joshua Frank Rove Agency: Liberals and the CIA Jude Wanniski Those 8 Black Pages: What's the Real Story on Karl Rove? Dave Zirin Storming the Castle Kevin Zeese Exit Strategy: Within Reach? Robert Jensen War Myths and the Press Reza Fiyouzat A Worldwide Call to Free Akbar Ganji Carol Norris Governor Paranoid: Schwarzenegger Comes Unhinged Website of the Day Nate Osborn: Heroic Human Rights Activist and CounterPuncher   July 13, 2005 Brian Cloughley Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq George Galloway We Can't Separate the London Bombings from the Political Backdrop Carlos Fierro A Supreme Waste of Time Sarah Knopp Hate on the Border Norman Solomon "Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors Mickey Z. Water on the Brain Jim Minick The Right Tree in the Right Place Pat Williams American Indian Education for All Andrew N. Rubin Life Behind the Wall: "We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set" Website of the Day "London's Burning": the Mikey Mix     July 12, 2005 Laith al-Saud Voices of Resistance: an Interview with Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement Kara N. Tina "This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield William A. Cook The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This? Jack Bratich 2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma Amina Mire The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others Dick J. Reavis Lessons from the Christian Jihadists: the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke Kevin Zeese Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets Paul Craig Roberts No-Think Nation Website of the Day Coke Gags Indian Artist     July 9 / 11, 2005 Alexander Cockburn After the Bombings Uri Avnery War of the Colors in Israel Sheldon Rampton Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London Bill Christison Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement? Robert Fisk Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed Stephen Winspear Collateral Damage in London? Saul Landau Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken Behrooz Ghamari Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem Karl Beitel False Promises and Real Debt Relief Brian Concannon, Jr. Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires Fred Gardner Sentencing Season John Whitlow And What Does the Market Say? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us? Lila Rajiva Witches and Bastards Laura Carlsen CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities Jackie Corr Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket Dave Lindorff "My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter" N. D. Jayaprakash Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference Seth Sandronsky Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq Norman Madarasz The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party Ben Tripp The Inevitability of George W. Bush Poets' Basement Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel Website of the Weekend The Mother of All Enemies Lists     July 8, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception Tariq Ali The London Bombings: Why They Happened Monica Benderman One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality Rick Jahnkow Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement Christopher Brauchli Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra Kim Peterson Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror Joshua Frank Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments? Norman Solomon Messages from the Carnage Website of the Day An Interview with Ray McGovern   July 7, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr John Walsh More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry Mike Marqusee Message from London Gilad Atzmon London's Burning Nicole Colson Showdown at the Supreme Court Jack Random Judith Miller, Anti-Hero Norman Solomon Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War Len Colodny Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig? Cockburn / St. Clair Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr                                                             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.     Subscribe Online

August 3, 2005 Former B-52 Crewman Disputes Dumped Nuke Story Broken Arrows and Iran By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Concerning my weekend diary item about the possibility of nuclear warheads from a B-52 that crashed on February 3, 1991,ending up in Iran, John Vickers, a former B-52 flier and CounterPunch reader, offers some pretty persuasive criticisms on at least one part of the story. My weekend diary item, based on a conversation with someone in the arms business who doesn't want his name used, was that a B-52G flying over Baghdad on February 3 was carrying three SRAMS, missiles with nuclear warheads. The plane developed serious problems, including black-out of navigational systems, and as the plane limped down the African coast, fire prompted the crew to dump the SRAMS. They landed in shallow water off the Somali coast, were retrieved and may ultimately have ended up in Iran. Even at first hearing the story had some obvious problems, most notably the B-52's flight path, As one comment on my item ran: "In the exceedingly unlikely case of a total electric failure and lack of handheld emergency radios (commonly carried in survival vest of Military aircrew to communicate with SAR if aircraft downed) they would take a compass course towards the Maldives and then follow the island chain down to DG -- that's the off the Indian coast, definitely not Somalia." There were other notes about our story on the PPRuNe forum to the effect that "Posted comments confirm that a B-52 and 3 crew were lost near Diego Garcia on that date; so that part jibes with reality. But another commentator reports: 'the Boeing AGM-69 SRAM was retired from the US inventory in June 1990'." Bill Yerkes wrote, commenting that "the SRAM missile that you write about is supposed to carry a W 69 bomb. This is a 200-KT thermo-nuclear gadget and, obviously, as lightweight and small as old Ted Taylor could design - it is therefore, also obviously, not powered by uranium. It is powered by plutonium and Li 6.This fact would seem to undermine your thesis.[The "thesis" was the view of our initial informant that the warhead might have yielded enriched uranium for subsequent use in a "dirty" bomb.] The idea that the USAF would jettison the weapons makes sense - they'd had serious troubles with the solid rocket motor fuel becoming unstable and catching fire. The SRAM was taken out of service about the time of the event you cite." Now to John Vickers, former B-52 crewman, now a physical therapist in Miami. In February, 1991, Vickers was a captain in USAF, working as a radar-navigator in a B-52G , flying missions during first Gulf War out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Vickers confirms that a B52G did crash on flight approach into Diego Garcia on February 3, with three out of the six crew killed because they bailed out below safe ejection minimum altitude. One of those killed was Vickers' room-mate from B-52G Force Academy. qualification training and classmate ('86) at the Air . Vickers' crew was out of Barksdale, Louisiana, and that of the downed B-52 out of Blytheville AFB, Arkansas. He says that at that time B-52s weren't carrying SRAMs but primarily air-launched cruise missiles, ALCMS. In the war theater in 1991 the B-52s were armed with conventional air-launched cruise missiles, CALCMs, which are non-nuclear. "When those guys crashed on February 3," Vickers goes on, "the Air Force had air superiority. The war was going our way. There was no need to need to circle Baghdad with nukes. And if they had used a nuke, the electro-magnetic pulse would have destroyed the electro-magnetic spectrum for miles around, which could have made all US electronic equipment (GPS, radios, radar, etc.,)unusable. Not to mention killing all the Special Forces units that may have been on the ground. "If they were arming the B-52 with nukes they would have sent a more experienced pilot and crew. On the B-52G that went down the copilot and navigator were not well seasoned, as was the navigator. In fact the inexperience was one of the reasons the B-52 got into such trouble. It started out with fuel problems that developed into electrical problems, and then everything snowballed. The pilot didn't manage it well and wound up not giving the bail-out command until the aircraft's altitude was too low for safe ejection for several crew members. They crashed about ten miles short of Diego Garcia. Vickers also reckons that any suggested course down the Somali coast is not credible. Yesterday, August 2, I told my original informant about these onslaughts on the plausibility of his story about the nuclear munitions and trajectory of the B-52G, and asked how he could be so confident that three nuclear warheads had been found in shallow water off the coast of Somalia. On this part of the sequence his responses were detailed and can be summarized as follows. In the relevant time frame of early 1991 a deep sea diving/ treasure salvage operation was being run out of the Seychelles (some 700 miles or so east of the Somali coastline) in part at least as cover for a South African arms smuggling operation into Somalia. The apartheid-era South African military was sending packages of conventional arms destined for groups in Somalia, and dropping them in shallow water. The diver could not find these packages and had to broaden his search, then came across the SRAMs. He relayed their serial numbers via the UK to a retired senior officer in the USAF to find out what they were. The news from the senior officer was that these were nuclear munitions from a B-52. Subsequently, so this informant reports, the group that recovered the three nuclear warheads found a customer in the form of South Africa's defense minister, Magnus Malan. Malan was certainly a seasoned operator in smuggling and covert ops, having run multifarious conspiracies for the apartheid regime in its final period. He was deeply involved with supplying Savimbi in Angola and in other covert interventions and terror missions in southern Africa. Negotiations proceeded, but ­ so our source says ­ when the vendors of the SRAMS went to South Africa to finalize the deal and transfer, Malan met them at Jan Smuts airport and told them he'd just been fired by De Klerk and the deal was off. As a matter of record, Malan was indeed fired from his post as Defense Chief in 1991, was later arrested, in 1995, with 10 other former senior military officers and charged with murdering 13 black people in 1987 as part of a conspiracy to create war between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Zulu Inkhata Freedom Party. He was acquitted the following year. The subsequent supposed trail of the three SRAMs gets even fainter, with suggestions that they did ultimately pass into the hands of the South Africans, with their ultimate whereabouts a topic of speculation. So, we are left with what looks like the dove-tailing of two separate sequences, with those knowledgeable about the discovery of nuclear warheads off the Somali coast in mid-May , 1991, finding a possible retrospective explanation for the arrival of these warheads in these shallow waters in the known loss of a B-52G on February 3, 1991 on its way from the Iraq war theater to Diego Garcia. The notion that any nuclear materials from this saga might have ended up in Iran was purely speculative, dovetailed into much later radiation readings by UN nuclear inspectors. And of course the mention of Iran might have been mischief-making, on the Niger yellowcake model. However, our source on the Somali sequence does insist that he has heard from two separate informants working in Saudi Arabia during the first Iraq war that at least one B-52 was armed with missiles with nuclear warheads. One, in the Fleet Air Arm reported that a B-52 with nuclear munitions on board had got into trouble. The other, working on a US base, said that when a B-52 carrying nuclear munitions landed, they had to take extra security precautions. Footnote: the USAF plane that crashed into the swamps near Savannah, Georgia, carrying a nuclear weapon, was a B-47, not B-52.