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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 From Gonzo to Pottygate The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire By SAUL LANDAU As media dissection of Senator Larry Craig's toilet stall indiscretion abates, George Bush prepares to resume center stage for his starring role in the "The Decline of the Imperial Presidency." In the last episode of this drama, Bush planned to nominate the recently resigned "brain," Karl Rove -- after the Senate rejected Michael Chertoff and Rush Limbaugh -- to replace Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General. Gonzalez etched his name in U.S. history by adding torture to democracy's great arsenal, while stripping away cumbersome baggage like habeas corpus. Gonzalez accomplished these Atlas-like feats while serving as White House Counsel and then Attorney General. After drafting a series of memos at Bush's request to strengthen Presidential power to combat enemies of democracy, Gonzalez visited then Attorney General John Ashcroft, barely conscious in a post operative state, to demand a signature on some of the documents. What loyalty! In subsequent gripping scenes, Gonzalez told skeptical Senators he didn't remember some of his actions. Some Senators said he lied. Others shook their salonic heads. Inside the Justice Department morale sank and Bush complained about how Gonzalez' "good name was dragged through the mud." What good name, asked a deus ex machina? U.S. democracy, I learned in school, along with all American children, means freedom from government intrusion, free elections and fair trials, symbols of our liberty that we now export. Since neither my grade school teachers nor the mass media challenged the adjectives -- free and fair, nor questioned intrusion -- a President, like George Bush, can still use them in his own play to paint a thin veneer to cover blatant imperial aggression abroad and violations of civil liberties at home. He has counted on the media not to ask questions. Elections stand as the prime symbol of democracy and since by 2004 searchers had found no evidence existed for Bush's alleged reasons for making war on Iraq -- WMD and links to al-Qaida -- White House playwrights changed the agenda: "Iraq as the first step in the war to make democracy in the Middle East." The White House stage managers decided Iraqis should hold elections. The play continued. After screening the candidates, Washington provided "security" for the big day. In late January 2005, with military patrols guarding polling stations and nearby streets -- the sound of drum rolls? -- Iraqis voted. The media responded as the scribes predicted. Images filled TV screens of Iraqis holding up their ink-stained fingers showing they had voted or were the media and the White House the objects of the proverbial finger -- as in screw you? "The Iraqi people gave America the biggest 'thank you' in the best way we could have hoped for," wrote Betsy Hart, a Scripps Howard News Service columnist, words Karl Rove could have scripted. Main stream analysts naturally avoided discussing the meaning of the vote. Only Naomi Klein stood as Cassandra, declaring that the finger might have meant "dissing" the United States. Klein said that the platforms of the winning parties showed "Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out the <U.S.-installed> government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for 'a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq'." (The Nation, Feb 28, 2005) Most responses met White House expectations. "The fact that the voting was going great despite the violence was something few people expected..The voice of the Iraqi people had risen above the clamor of insurgent violence." (Michael Yon, OnLine Magazine, Oct 10, 2005) When elections conform to the wishes of the imperial power, they represent democracy. When elections go wrong -- Hamas or Hezbollah winning in Gaza and Lebanon -- the empire script writers dismiss the results. In 1970, Chileans elected Dr. Salvador Allende to the presidency in Chile on a socialist ticket. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, an Iago-like character, described Chileans as "irresponsible" and advised President Nixon to alter their destiny. What drama when Nixon ordered the CIA to destabilize Allende and helped Chile's military stage its bloody coup in 1973! U.S. spinners staged repeated election facades in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, but couldn't get the actors -- "elected governments" -- to heed the U.S. directors and stop corruption and cronyism. Does this remind you of the Iraq drama? "Those darn puppet governments don't seem to understand they have to obey the puppet masters -- or else," said one young White House staffer. "Or else what?" answered a cynical spinmeister. "Get a new puppet? In Vietnam, the governments we installed didn't get their troops to fight. The South Vietnamese generals showed little interest in war except for the profit making part." Having staged elections, White House scribes sketched the other twin pillar of democracy drama: trials. In December 2003, following the capture of Saddam Hussein, the world watched a fabulous farce: Saddam Hussein's orchestrated execution -- 3 years later, via a U.S. orchestrated trial at least as free as a Salem witch trial. The <U.S.-created> court was stripped of jurisdiction to hear testimony related to U.S. roles in Saddam's crimes, like allegedly gassing his own people in Halabja in 1988 and slaughtering them en masse in southern Iraq in1991. Thus, key supporting actors like Rumsfeld and Cheney were exempt. Both had backed Saddam in the 1980s and George the First's policy in 1991 of not helping rebels who rose up against Saddam at his urging. Saddam's execution diverged from script when executioners baited the condemned man while slipping the noose over his head and he spat back insults at them. Oh well! Bush had learned from Daddy about the importance of show trials. In 1990, Panama George dispatched almost 25,000 troops to arrest the "military strongman," as the media labeled puny General Manuel Noriega. In 1989, Noriega had disobeyed Bush's command to help in the Contra war and thus became a serious narcotrafficker. Noriega then received a fair trial in Florida where 52 convicted felons testified against him and received time off from their sentences. (So what that the CIA and DEA used Noriega to get crucial intelligence and make major drug busts. What's truth got to do with democracy?) Bush the Second therefore understood that trial theater not only distracts the public from the horrors of occupation, but perpetrates the image of the demonized enemy. In the latest scenes, Saddam Hussein's cousin, Chemical Ali, and 14 other former Saddamites stood in the dock last week, accused of perpetrating "among the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history." The language conjured up images of these Iraqis dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese -- oops, Iraqi -- cities! Ali and company allegedly killed tens of thousands of rebellious Shiites in 1991, people George the First encouraged to rise up against Saddam. W's Daddy followed the adage Kissinger introduced in 1972, supporting a Kurdish uprising and then abandoning the Kurds to the Shah of Iran's slaughter machine. "Promise them anything, give them what they get and fuck them if they can't take a joke." The Ali trial continues Kissinger's joke. By mid 2007, as many as 1 million Iraqis have died, four million driven from their homes and hundreds of thousands incarcerated -- for no legal reason. In this context, White House playwrights demand that Ali go to trial for killing Iraqis -- in the past. The media, of course, fails to note the irony. As in Saddam's trial, U.S. script writers stripped the court of jurisdiction from hearing testimony of U.S. complicity in mass murders: providing Saddam with the ingredients for his deadly weapons and the logistics of where to drop them. The Bush Administration managers of Ali's trial want to show the United States as a virtuous law enforcement officer who caught another mass murderer and brought him to trial as civilized nations do. Pictures will come with the guilty verdict! William Randolph Hearst kibbitzed from his grave: "Without pictures, you can't keep them at war." As Bush's empire sink lower in world opinion polls, the drama moves from surrealism to cruel teenage comedy. Welcome to "Jackass III - the degeneration of the empire and its chief." Saul Landau is the author of A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD. His films are available on dvd from roundworldproductions@gmail.com Your Ad Here

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