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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! Hillary Clinton's Fatal Vices Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair dissect HRC in her White House years and conclude their series on the woman who may be the next president. PLUS Eva Liddell on the man who really set the course of the Bush presidency PLUS Andy Worthington on the battle for the rights of the Guantanamo detainees PLUS Debbie Nathan on what the border crackdown has done to the women crossing the Rio Grande. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Now Available! How the Press Led the USA Into the Iraq War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition September 8 / 9, 2007 CounterPunch Diary Will the US Really Bomb Iran? By ALEXANDER COCKBURN "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military." This particular spine-chiller comes from Alexis Debat, excitingly identified as "director of terrorism and national security" at the Nixon Center. According to Debat, the big takeout is what the U.S. Air Force has in store, as opposed to mere "pinprick strikes" against the infamous nuclear facilities. Predicting imminent war on Iran has been one of the top two items in Cassandra's repertoire for a couple of years now, rivaled only by global warming as a sure-fire way to sell newspapers and boost website hits. Debat was re-roasting that well-scorched chestnut, the "Shock and Awe" strategy, whereby-back in March of 2003-the U.S. Air Force proposed to reduce Iraq's entire military to smoldering ruins. In the event, "Shock and Awe" was a resounding failure, like all such pledges by Air Force commanders to destroy the enemy's military since the birth of aerial bombardments nearly a century ago. Such failures have never stopped the US Air Force from trying once again, and there are no doubt vivid attack plans now circulating the government. Will it come to pass? In his memoirs, I Claud (which I'm happy to say CounterPunch Books/AK Press will be republishing next spring,) my father offers a useful recipe on this matter of prediction. One morning, as we at length relaxed at breakfast by a brazier on the terrace of the Café du Dôme, he [Robert Dell, the diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian] said to me: "Do you want to get what used to be called a 'scoop' for your horrid little paper every day?" (The "horrid little paper" was, of course, the Daily Worker, whose diplomatic correspondent I then was.) "That would be nice." "Well then, all you have to do is to read all the continental papers available every morning, take lunch with one or more of Europe's leading politicians or diplomats, make up your mind what is the vilest action that, in the circumstances, the French, British, Italian or German government could undertake, and then, in the leisure of the afternoon, sit down at your typewriter and write a dispatch announcing that that is just what they are going to do. You can't miss. Your news will be denied two hours after it is published and confirmed after twenty four." So, whether in 24 hours or 24 days or at some point before the end of his term, we should predict Bush will send the bombers on their way to Teheran to destroy the usual targets--power stations and kindred civilian infrastructure, hospitals, maybe a few bomb shelters crammed with women and children. But will it really come to pass? Despite the unending stream of stories across the months announcing that an attack on Iran is on the way, I've had my doubts. Amid the housing slump here, with the possibility of an inflationary surge as the credit balloon threatens to explode, would the US government really want to see the price of gas at the pump go over $5? What would Hugo Chavez do? Even a hiccup in flows from Venezuela would paralyze refineries here, specifically designed for Venezuelan crude. China has a big stake in Iran. It's also Uncle Sam's banker. The Chinese don't have to destroy the dollar, merely squeeze its windpipe, or revalue their currency enough to double retail prices in Wal-Mart. The Republicans and the presidential candidates wouldn't want that on the edge of an election year. The Joint Chiefs of Staff know the Iraq War has almost broken the US Army. Wouldn't they adamantly oppose the notion of an attack on Iran, which would see Shiite resistance groups in Iraq cut US supply convoys from Kuwait bringing fuel and water to the big US bases? Wouldn't Shiite forces as a whole finally commence a campaign of eviction of the American occupier? Wouldn't this puncture the fantasy that General Petraeus' "surge" is working? The other side of the ledger isn't hard to fill in either. The oil companies like a crisis that sends up the price of their commodity. The Chinese are a prudent lot and don't want to rock the world economy. Politically, both they and Russia would like to see the US compound the disaster in Iraq and get into a long-term mess in Iran. Israel wants an attack on Iran, and the Israel lobby calls the shots in US foreign policy. What Israel wants, Israel gets. The US peace movement is in disarray, and sizable chunks of it would be delighted to see bombs shower down on the woman-hating ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad, the holocaust denier. Amid the disaster of their Middle Eastern strategy Bush and his advisors may hype themselves into one last desperate throw, emboldened by the fact that the selling of the surge has been a success even though all the Democrats need to do is cite the UN, which says the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has gone from 50,000 to 60,000 a month. Or quote Associated Press which counted 1,809 Iraqi civilians killed in August, compared with 1,760 in July. The Sunni split in Anbar province is not one likely to be replicated in Baghdad or elsewhere and anyway had nothing to do with the hike in US troop levels. Bush didn't dare go to Baghdad. Weigh it all up, and you'd be foolish to bet that an attack on Iran won't happen. I knew Noam Chomsky used to be dubious about the likelihood of a U.S. attack and emailed him last week to ask if he is still of that opinion. Here's his answer. Yes, I was quite sceptical. Less so over the years. They're desperate. Everything they touch is in ruins. They're even in danger of losing control over Middle Eastern oil -- to China, the topic that's rarely discussed but is on every planner or corporation exec's mind, if they're sane. Iran already has observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- from which the US was pointedly excluded. Chinese trade with Saudi Arabia, even military sales, is growing fast. With the Bush administration in danger of losing Shiite Iraq, where most of the oil is (and most Saudi oil in regions with a harshly oppressed Shiite population), they may be in real trouble. Under these circumstances, they're unpredictable. They might go for broke, and hope they can salvage something from the wreckage. If they do bomb, I suspect it will be accompanied by a ground assault in Khuzestan, near the Gulf, where the oil is (and an Arab population -- there already is an Ahwazi liberation front, probably organized by the CIA, which the US can "defend" from the evil Persians), and then they can bomb the rest of the country to rubble. And show who's boss. The peace movement had better pull itself together, remembering that should the bombs start to fall on Tehran, most of the Democrats in Congress will be on their feet, cheering. Note: A shorter version of this column ran in The Nation last Wednesday. Your Ad Here

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