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Today's
Stories
October 29
/ 30, 2005
Cockburn /
St. Clair
The
Libby Indictment: Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?
Peter Linebaugh
The
Wedges of Hephaestus
Tim Wise
Framing the Poor: Katrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media
John Chuckman
Bushspeak: Dark and Garbled Words
Brian Cloughley
The Fifth Afghan War
M. Shahid Alam
Israel and the Consequences of Uniqueness
Nikki Robinson
Crack Down at Kent State
Ralph Nader
Let the PIRGs Begin!: Student Activism Thrives
Joe DeRaymond
Requiem for Bethlehem Steel?
Fred Gardner
Death of an Organizer
Michael Dickinson
Insult Your Country
Dr. Susan Block
Fear and Sex: a Halloween Greeting
October 28,
2005
Jared Bernstein
Inflation
Up; Wages Down: Fastest Decline in Wages on Record
Virginia Tilley
Embracing
the Anti-Aparthied Movement in Israel/Palestine
Phil Gasper
The
Race to Execute Tookie Williams
Jennifer Matsui
It's Mardi Graft Time!
Manual Garcia,
Jr.
Is the US Really Against Torture?
Monica Benderman
In the Name of Justice
Jason Leopold
Fitzgerald
Focuses on the Forgeries
Dave Lindorff
Suddenly, Bush Endorses Right of Fair Trials
Otober 27, 2005
Saul Landau
The
Scandal Isn't the Leak, But the Illegal War
Stuart Hodkinson
Bono
and Geldoff: "We Saved Africa" Oh No, They Didn't!
Ingmar Lee
Stop
the Troops!: No Glory or Honor in Iraq
Lila Rajiva
License
to Bill: Gates Does India
Ilan Pappe
The
Last Moment of Hope
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Waiting for Fitzgerald
Michael Donnelly
Look Who's Talking Now: the GOP on Perjury
Ron Jacobs
Escape the Weight of Your Corporate Logo
Cockburn / St. Clair
White House in Meltdown
October 26,
2005
Kathy Kelly
For
Whom They Toll
Gary Leupp
Dialectics
of the Plame Affair
Mike Marqusee
Empire of Denial
Eric Ruder
War Crimes in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Constitutionally Divided Nation
Joshua Frank
Fitzgerald v. the Bushies: Hold Your Elation in Check
J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
The Legacy of Rosa Parks
Website of
the Day
Decent Work in America: the 2005 Work Environment Index
October 25,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Condi
and Syrian Regime Change: Could Somebody Recommend a President?
Ken Sengupta / Patrick Cockburn
Attack on the Palestine Hotel
Conn Hallinan
Sleight of Hand: Iran, India and the US
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Pulling the Court Strings
Jackie Corr
Barbara Bush: Poster Gorgon of the Houston Astros
Robert Day
Talk to Strangers
John Sugg
Judith
Miller and Me
October 24,
2005
Dave Lindorff
Revoke
Judy Miller's Pulitzer
Michael Donnelly
Shades of Iran/contra
Patrick Cockburn
A Nation Stands on Trial
Mike Whitney
Apres Rove
Norman Solomon
Iraq is Not Vietnam, But...
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Palestine
October 22
/ 23, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
When
Divas Collide: Maureen Dowd v. Judy Miller
Billy Sothern
Letter
from the Circle Bar, New Orleans
Saul Landau
Bush, an Assessment
Ralph Nader
An
Open Letter to Bush on Harriet Miers
Behrooz Ghamari
Whose Justice Does Saddam's Trial Serve?
Brian Cloughley
Bush the Strategist: Pyrrhus Without a Victory?
Diana Barahona
Venezuela's National Workers' Union
Fred Gardner
Dershowitzed!
Lee Sustar
What the War on Terror is Really About
Patrick Cockburn
Murder of Saddam Trial Defense Lawyer
Laura Carlsen
Mexico City Seamstresses Recall 1985 Quake
James Petras
China Bashing and the Loss of US Competitiveness
Joshua Frank
Invading Iran: Who is to Stop Them?
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
Disasters are Us
Michelle Bollinger
When Abortion Was Illegal
Missy Comley
Beattie
CSI: Iraq
Kona Lowell
Intelligent Design: Making High School Fun
Ben Tripp
Tanks for the Memories
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening To This Week
Poets' Basement
Albert and Engel
Website of
the Day
Indictment Watch
October 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
The
Democrats' Abortion Hypocrisy
Winslow T. Wheeler
Paying for Their Mistakes: Incompetence, Deception and the Defense
Budget
Col. Dan Smith
The Destruction of the National Guard
Norman Solomon
Media at Crossroads: 25 Years After Reagan's Triumph
Madis Senner
Abusing Katrina
Michael Donnelly
Richard
Pombo: DeLay in Cowboy Boots
October 20, 2005
Dave Lindorff
Impeachment
Comes to NYC
Ray McGovern
16
Fatal Words: Cheney's Chickens Come Home to Roost
Jeremy Brecher
/
Brendan Smith
Attack Syria? Invade Iran?: By What Constitutional Right?
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Refuses to Recognize Court
Kevin Zeese
Was the Iraqi Constitution Vote Fixed?
Ross Eisenbrey
Millions Would Lose Pay and Protections Under Enzi Amendment
Randy Shields
James McMurtry Makes It in Dayton
Justine Davidson
Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Small Victory
After Lucas
Cranach
Judy and Holofernes
Joe Allen
The
Scandalous History of the Red Cross
October 19,
2005
Christopher Reed
Koizumi and the Rape of Nanking
Stephen Soldz
Bush
and Avian Flu: the Excuses Begin to Fly
Chet Richards
War
and Intelligence
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam on Trial
Scott Richard
Lyons
Multicultural
Columbus?
Ralph Nader
An Interview with Rev. William Sloane Coffin
Website of
the Day
Shocking Video: Why Birds May Be Taking Viral Vengeance on Humans
October 18,
2005
Chet Flippo
Merle
Haggard: "Let's Get Out of Iraq"
Ron Jacobs
Dual Devotions: the Catholic Church and the US Flag
Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor
A Tale of Two Cities: From DC to Toledo
Dave Lindorff
Judy Miller: Little Miss Run Amok
Virginia Rodino
A Winter Patriot: Reflections on the Antiwar Movement
Thomas Healy
The Weather in Goshen: Still Radical After All These Years
Ralph Nader
A New New Orleans
Stephen Lendman
The Sorrows of Haiti
Patrick Cockburn
On the Eve of Saddam's Trial: a Divided Iraq
October 17,
2005
Peter Linebaugh
Spinoza
and the Black Limos
Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State
Cockburn /
Sengupta
"If
the Sunnis Don't Like It, That's Their Problem"
Mike Whitney
Miller's Confession: Last Gasp Before Indictments?
Uri Avnery
Iraq Now: What Awaits Samira?
Harold Pinter
Torture & Misery in the Name of Freedom
Website of
the Day
Al Joudi v. Bush
October 15
/ 16, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ayatollahs
of the Apocalypse
Patrick Cockburn
"This Constitution Won't Get Me a Job"
Saul Landau
Two Terrorists and a Lush: Osama, Posada and Bush's Drinking
Neve Gordon
"Beyond Chutzpah": Exposing Grave Moral Distortions
Moshe Adler
Poverty in New York City
Christopher Brauchli
Lynndie England's Burden
Diane Farsetta
The Emperor Doesn't Disclose: the Fight Against Fake News
Sam Husseini
Notes on Current Reporting About Judith Miller
Monica Benderman
From Chaos to Conscience to Peace
Mickey Z.
POW Abuse by US: Nothing New Going On Here
Douglas C.
Smyth
George W. Bush, the Honorius of Our Time
Lee Sustar
Will Delphi Bust the UAW?
Fred Gardner
Cannabinoids Arrive in Realm of Established Fact
Elizabeth Schulte
A Former Panther's Georgia Campaign: an Interview with Elaine
Brown
Joshua Frank
Will the Democrats Save Harriet Miers?
David Vest
Down with Formalism! Up with Values!
Ben Tripp
Epistle II: the Reawakenign
Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, Ford and Louise
Website of
the Weekend
The
Hidden Canyon
October 14,
2005
Farrah Hassen
A
Somber Ramadan in Syria
Ron Jacobs
The
Black Panthers: They Haven't Forgotten; Neither Should We
Sasha Kramer
USAID
and Haiti: the Friendly Face of Imperialism?
Katrina Yeaw
The Student Struggle in Italy
Nicole Colson
Bird Flu: Militarizing Health Care
Raúl Zibechi
Survival and Existence in El Alto
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo
Chávez and the Politics of Race
Website of the Day
LA Filmmakers Cooperative
October 13, 2005
Jeremy Scahill
Mr.
Bush Goes to Tikrit (Sort Of)
Jeff Birkenstein
A
Thoreau for Our Time: Why Cindy Sheehan Matters
Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher
Harriet Miers: Bush or the Constitution?
Stan Cox
Did You Know This About Iraq?
Anis Memon
The Curious Case of Russ Feingold
Gary Leupp
Miller, Libby and the June Notes
Dave Zirin
A Tribute to August Wilson
Matthew Koehler
America's Endangered Forests
Werther
The
Two-Headed Monster
Website of
the Day
Hurricane Song
October 12, 2005
Omar Waraich
Britain
and the Quake: Mean and Stingy
William Cook
Voices
Behind the Entombment Wall
Phil Gasper
Countdown
to a Legal Lynching
Dave Lindorff
Impeachment Now and Then: Clinton, Bush and the Polls
Matt Vidal
Capital, Power and Class
John Gautreaux
New Orleans will Never be the Same
Diana Johnstone
Srebrenica
Revisited: Using War as an Excuse for War
Mark Weisbrot
The IMF Has Lost Its Influence
Brian J. Foley
Gitmo Tribunals Endanger Public Safety
Website of
the Day
Columbus Day Lies
October 11,
2005
Roger Morris
/ Steve Schmidt
Strategic
Demands of the 21st Century
Lila Rajiva
Live from New Orleans: Abu Ghraib
Bill Quigley
New
Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again
Paul Craig Roberts
Natural Born Liars
Dave Lindorff
Recruiters in Schools: No Lie Left Untried
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Suspect Thy Neighbor
Mitchel Cohen
Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese
Tariq Ali
Pakistan will Never Forget This Horror
Website of
the Day
L'Heure Americaine
October 10,
2005
Cindy and Craig
Corrie
Rachel's
Words Live
Joshua Frank
Washington's War Dems
Gideon Levy
The Beautiful Life Without Arafat
Alan Wallis
The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square
Mickey Z.
In Defense of Liars
CounterPunch News Service
Vermont Independence Convention
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Police State is Closer Than You Think
Website of the Day
Dylan's Chronicles
October 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Rhetoric
and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People
Ralph Nader
Katrina
and the Growls of Greed
Jennifer Van Bergen
New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case
Saul Landau
An Oily Religious Dream
Jeff Halper
Setting Up Abbas
Lenni Brenner
The Millions More Movement and Zionism
Nikolas Kozloff
Bird Flu and Bush
Brian Cloughley
Training Soldiers in Iraq
Alice Slater
A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl?
John Gautreaux
A View from Cajun Country
Fred Gardner
Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Leveethan Approach
M.G. Piety
Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard
Tom Gorman
The Hitchens Doctrine
Mike Whitney
Bunker Days with George
Aseem Shrivastava
Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan
Ben Tripp
Religion, an Epistle
Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Ford
October 7,
2005
Larry Johnson
The
Plame Case: the Real Issues
Will Youmans
Why
Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus
Dave Lindorff
Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design?
Judith Scherr
Haiti's Children's Prison
Russell D. Hoffman
Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle
Jared Bernstein
Katrina and Jobs
Jennifer Van
Bergen
New
American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir
Website of
the Day
FBI Witchhunt
October 6, 2005
P. Sainath
"Take
That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal
Idol Again
Scott Parkin
When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged
Paul Craig
Roberts
Blundering
into Syria
Andréa Schmidt
Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion
Dave Lindorff
Easy
Money in the Big Easy
Joshua Frank
In Defense of Lew Rockwell
M. Junaid Alam
Jackboots at George Mason
Matthew Koehler
Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot
Robert Pollin
Is
the Dollar Still Falling?
October 5,
2005
Heather Gray
Militarization is Not an Answer for
Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines
Robert Jensen
Is
Bush a Racist?
Ramzy Baroud
Bush's Final Choice: America or
the Empire
Col. Dan Smith
Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything
is Bad"
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds Laughs Last
Paul Craig Roberts
Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons
Took Over
Alan Maass
Doing
the Right Wing's Dirty Work
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
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Onward,
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Weekend Edition
October 29 / 30, 2005
The
Libby Indictment
Beginning of the End?
Watergate 2005? Gotterdammerung for the Bushies?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Scooter
Libby was the lawyer who got the charges dropped against billionaire
scamster Marc Rich back in Clintontime. But that had more to
do with Rich's billions than with any legal talents Libby may
have. On the evidence of the
indictment brought by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
on Friday, October 28, one fact stands out: SCOOTER LIBBY IS
INCREDIBLY STUPID.
And this is what CounterPunch
gets from the Fitzgerald indictment as a whole.
Special prosecutor Fitzgerald
could have suggested that there is a cancer growing on the presidency,
metastasizing out of Dick Cheney's suite. He could have stated,
or even hinted that yesterday's indictment of Libby is the first
drum roll in a mighty symphony of prosecutorial onslaughts on
felonious conduct in high places.
But special prosecutor Fitzgerald
did none of these things. He trailed his coat plenty of times.
In his indictment of Libby he opens a couple of doors a few inches,
so that the attentive reader can see footprints that head off
towards the vice president's office. But then the door shuts
and there's no evidence that special prosecutor has an appetite
to prise it open again.
Despite all the enormous hopes
vested in the Plame affair, that it is playing the same role
in the downfall of the Bush administration as did the "third-rate
rate burglary" that kicked off Watergate, this could be
the end of the story, even if Fitzgerald has said there might
have to be further investigation of Karl Rove, identified in
the Indictments as Official A.
Back to Libby and his stupidity.
Put yourself in his shoes. You are about to go before a grand
jury and testify under oath. You know that the special prosecutor
has successfully subpoenaed White House and CIA logs. Your lawyer
whispers in your ear that the three most beautiful words in the
English language are "I don't recall". He claps you
on the back and, alone and unarmed, you enter the grand jury
room. You raise your right hand and swear solemnly that you will
testify to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth
so help you God.
And here's nice Mr Fitzgerald
asking you questions and you tell one staggering lie after another.
Not sneaky little half truths. Not mincing little evasions. No,
Sir! Not this Scooter! I work for Dick Cheney and I can really,
really tell a lie. And you do! You fire off volley after volley
of brazen falsehoods, stretchers so ripe with willful and considered
mendacity that it's a marvel the words don't explode in the jury
room like methane in an overheated pile of manure.
Fitzgerald: If you did not
understand the information about Wilson's wife to have been classified
and didn't understand it when you heard it from Mr. Russert,
why was it that you were so deliberate to make sure that you
told other reporters that reporters were saying it and not assert
it as something you knew?
Libby: I want --I didn't want
to --I didn't know if it was true and I didn't want people --I
didn't want the reporters to think it was true because I said
it. I --all I had was that reporters are telling us that, and
by that I wanted them to understand it wasn't coming from me
and that it might not be true. Reporters write things that aren't
true sometimes, or get things that aren't true. So I wanted to
be clear they didn't, they didn't think it was me saying it.
I didn't know it was true and I wanted them to understand that.
Also, it was important to me to let them know that because what
I was telling them was that I don't know Mr. Wilson. We didn't
ask for his mission. That I didn't see his report.
Basically, we didn't know anything
about him until this stuff came out in June. And among the other
things, I didn't know he had a wife. That was one of the things
I said to Mr. Cooper. I don't know if he's married. And so I
wanted to be very clear about all this stuff that I didn't, I
didn't know about him. And the only thing I had, I thought at
the time, was what reporters are telling us.
And of course there in the
investigative dossier on the table in front of nice Mr Fitzgerald
are all the records of Libby's urgent probes into Wilson and
Plames' relationship and activities weeks and months before he
talked to Russert or to Cooper. The grand jurors must have looked
at Libby, thinking, This idiot spouting perjuries at us is Vice
President Cheney's chief of staff? Our taxpayer money is paying
this moron's salary.
This is what CounterPunch gets
from Plamegate, and what we always got from Plamegate. The people
in charge of the nation's destinies these last five years are
very, very stupid. Only really stupid people could have thought
that outing Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA employee was a
good way of undercutting her husband, Joe Wilson. Cheney is stupid.
Rove is stupid. Bush is stupid. Libby, about whom we now have
a heap of useful material, is very, very stupid.
It's only because we have a
lazy and venal press that this hasn't been conclusively rammed
into the public's mind years ago. But the press is lazy, venal
and complicit.
Tim Russert wasn't calling
on Libby to probe for secrets. He was there, according to Fitzgerald's
indictment, to listen to Libby's complaint that a staffer of
MSNBC had been rude about him, Libby. Cooper of Time wasn't there
to disinter the dark mysteries of the yellow cake scam. He was
there to have a good gossip.
Now it could be that Scooter
Libby's next lawyer will sit down with his client and tell him
that he's going to the joint for a lot longer that Judy Miller's
85 days in prison unless he opens up for special prosecutor Fitzgerald
some investigative avenues so promising, so sensational, that
Mr Fitzgerald begins to see himself as a major star in the political
firmament. Maybe.
Or he may say, Scooter, cop
a plea asap, do some time and then let the President pardon you
on his way out of Dodge, same way as Clinton pardoned your former
client Marc Rich, and the same way Bush's Dad, as one of his
last acts in power, on December 4, 1992, pardoned Caspar Weinberger,
Duane R. Clarridge, Clair E. George, Robert C. McFarlane, Elliott
Abrams, and Alan G. Fiers Jr., all of whom had been indicted
and/or convicted of charges by Independent Counsel Walsh in the
Contragate affair.
In fact Bush Sr pardoned Weinberger,
though he was scheduled to stand trial two weeks later, so maybe
Scooter will hang tough and just try to run out the clock.
So we somehow doubt that the
Plame Affair still has legs, but even so, we have to go back
to the early 1970s to find rubble so satisfactorily piled up
around our imperial government.
In Nixon's case, top officials
and aides forced into resignation and in many cases prison, included
the vice president, the head of the FBI, two attorneys general
and four senior White House staffers.
On March 1, 1974, a grand jury
named President Nixon, among others, as an unindicted coconspirator,
for obstruction of justice concerning suppression of evidence
such as the White House tapes. In August of that year Nixon resigned.
Yes, it was quite a holocaust
at the top executive level. But many imperial institutions sailed
through the crisis supposedly ennobled. Kissinger's stature was
not dented and indeed his sway over State Department and Empire
was consolidated. President Ford had no option but to maintain
him as the arbiter of America's policies around the world.
The US Supreme Court sailed
on, led by Nixon's chosen instrument, Warren Burger. Both the
US Senate and House of Representatives gained an heroic aura
as the tv cameras turned Sam Ervin and even Howard Baker into
saviors of the Republic. The Democratic Party emerged with credit
and huge majorities in November '74.
Most of all, the Fourth Estate
was anointed (mostly by itself) as the vanquisher of despotism.
Contrast this to the inferno
that now threatens the Imperial Establishment on every front.
Since Nixon-time the Republic has had 31 years to run to seed,
fatter and more corrupt.
Already the most powerful politician in Washington, House majority
leader Tom DeLay, is under indictment and in consequence stripped
of his official position.
The future looks grim for Senator Bill Frist, who faces SEC and
Justice Department probes for insider trading.
On Capitol Hill there's open warfare between various factions
of the Republican Party, which this week climaxed with the conservative
faction successfully rejecting Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers
to the US Supreme Court, an incredible humiliation for the President.
With midterm elections looming and Bush's public approval ratings
tumbling, the collapse of discipline will only accelerate amid
the general panic.
The Bush high command is in
utter disrepute, openly attacked by Colin Powell's former chief
of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, as a dictatorial cabal.
Bush's deputy chief of staff,
Karl Rove, has been distracted and -- so the Miers fiasco showed,
offered poor counsel his boss, whose presidency hangs over the
precipice of ruin.
Consider the gloomy vista from
Bush the Unlucky's Oval Office, where even the birds in the Rose
Garden are omens of yet another national crisis (which is scheduled
to provide a bonanza to the drug companies, which a US Senate
subcommitee just voted to hold free of any liability if their
flu vaccines have the same lethal potential as they did in the
swine flu panic a generation ago.)
In Iraq the war is faring disastrously
and here in the Homeland it's increasingly unpopular. The hurricanes
have blown away all remaining public illusions about the venality
and incompetence of the President and his cronies. The economy
is rickety and a long-feared end to the housing boom may be upon
us. Symbolizing the sense that the jig is up, Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan is heading into retirement just before
the roof falls in.
Internationally, the US has
rarely been more despised. The armed forces are demoralized and
the reserve system in ruins.
Is there any institution not
compromised, not held in popular contempt? This crisis has no
Woodward or Bernstein to lend it luster. There is no doughty
popular hero at hand. The journalist's name on every lip is that
of Judith Miller, named coconspirator in the fomentation of a
war that has seen the deaths of 2000 Americans thus far. The
New York Times is in a state of civil war, just like the Republican
Party.
There's no sign that the Democratic
Party is gaining any traction from the Republican collapse. With
good reason. Never has a party been offered so many opportunities
and taken so little advantage from them. So far as the war is
concerned, powerful Democrats like Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton
are calling for more troops. Greenspan's long and pock-marked
tenure as the bankers' bulwark draws tearful cries of gratitude
from Democrats like Senator Paul Sarbanes.
In 2005 it is impossible to
link the Democrats with a single courageous stand or even constructive
idea. This week the party's top strategists -- mesmerized by
the twenty-first century's answer to the Framers, Dr George Lakoff's
childish nostrums -- were wrangling over two possible slogans,
"Together, we can do better," or "Together, America
can do better."
Meanwhile over 100,000 older
Americans lined up in mid October to file bankruptcy before the
old wipe-the-slate-clean Chapter 7 law expired. More than half
of these bankrupts have been ruined by health costs. The new
bankruptcy law, written by the banks and credit card companies,
made it through the Congress only with the help of Democratic
votes in the senate, which were duly forthcoming as they always
are.
If a Democrat, John Kerry,
had captured the White House in 2004, would this have made a
difference? Yes. The imperial machine would be probably be running
more smoothly. The war in Iraq would have been given a new infusion
of malign energy. You doubt this? It's hard to keep up with his
somersaults, but listen to Professor Juan Cole, liberal Democratic
guru on Iraq. He now says (in an interview with the Nation Institute's
Tom Engelhardt) that for the US to "up and leave" Iraq
would be to become an accomplice in genocide. He counsels the
heightened use in Iraq of "special forces and air power".
In other words, assassinations and saturation bombing. Come home
Robert McNamara, all is -- yet again -- forgiven.
It's not the role of radicals
to call for the election of a more efficient strategist and engineer
of a bloodthirsty and rapacious empire, Kerry's only claim on
the voters' attention anyone remembers. So let us give thanks
that Bush is in the White House, and holding the Imperial fleet
on a steady course to the rocks.
Footnote: Portions of the second
half of his column ran in the edition of the Nation that went
to press last week.
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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
WHAT'S
INSIDE
Grand
Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror
by Jeffrey St. Clair
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