home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

New Stories Exclusively in the Print Edition CounterPunch

The Empire Viewed from Oceanside by Alexander Cockburn; Rumsfeld's Enforcer: the Mysterious Career of Stephen Cambone by Jeffrey St. Clair; "We Want to Kill Westerners": Inside the Saudi Oil Bombings: by Patrick Cockburn; The Last Straw? Kerry, Judges and Abortion: Brandy Baker. In May, CounterPunch Online was read by over 20 million viewers! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Now Available: Hot New CounterPunch T-Shirts!

Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!

Today's Stories

June 12 / 13, 2004

Peter Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede

June 11, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Reagan in Truth and Fiction

Ron Jacobs
Ray Charles' Legacy of Spirit

Chris Floyd
Funeral Games

Steven Sherman
How Reagan Destroyed the Democrats and Paved the Way for Clinton

Mokhiber / Weissman
Remembering Reagan

Norman Solomon
Media's Mourning in America

Paul Alexander
The Kerry Fantasies of Chalmers Johnson

CounterPunch Wire
The Terror Hour: Miami TV Station Invites Commandoes to Talk About Planned Attacks on Cuba

 

 

June 10, 2004

Noam Chomsky
The Apotheosis of Reagan : Divinity Through Marketing

Gary Leupp
Bush, the Religious Scholar

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Street Has Spoken: New Govt. Made Up of CIA Pawns

Saul Landau
Force-Feeding Lies About Free Trade

Scott Evans
Settling for the System: How Punkvoter.com Became Just Another Tool of the Democrats

Jacob Levich
John Kerry's World of Hurt: Senator Supports Beam Weapons

Zeynep Toufe
Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures"

Nico Pitney
Reform at Wal-Mart?

Dave Zirin
Son of a Reagan: What a Sporty 6-Year Old Saw at the Revolution

Jack McCarthy
Where Were You When Reagan Croaked?

Gary Corseri
Nouns That Should be Acronyms

David Price
Reagan and the Black Budget

Website of the Day
Inequality by the Numbers

 

June 9, 2004

Mustafa Barghouthi
Israel's Common Use of Torture Must be Exposed

Mike Whitney
Alan Dershowitz, Still Defending Torture

John Chuckman
Why the CIA will Always be a Costly Flop

Jim Tarbell / Roger Burbach
Bush's Democratic Charade in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Put Reagan on the $3 Bill

Miguel D'Escoto
Reagan was the Butcher of My People

Becky Burgwin
The Betrayal of Smarty Jones: Flogging a Natural Born Hero

Patrick Cockburn
The Rich Have Been Warned to Leave Baghdad

 

June 8, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse?

Dave Lindorff
The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam?

Phillip Cryan
Torture, Bombings & the Press in Colombia

Mark Zepezauer
Getting Reagan Wrong

Mickey Z.
Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions

John L. Hess
Reagan and Bush in Normandy

Alex Dawoody
Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance

Christopher Fons
Reagan in a Word: Mean

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Some Tenets are More Important Than Others

Ahmed Bouzid
Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun

Michael Leon
Bush the Narcissist

 

June 7, 2004

Jason Leopold
New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes

Patrick Cockburn
The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing

Dennis Hans
From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy

Tracy McLellan
Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics

Bill Blum
The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War

Ben Tripp
What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter

Susan Davis
Reagan, In a Nutshell

Phil Gasper
Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance

Website of the Day
A Child's ABCs of Terrorism

June 5 / 6, 2004

C. Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

Saul Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession

Dave Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

Brian Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong

Rich Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Elaine Cassel
A Sorry FBI

Cathrin Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia

Ben Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra

Kurt Nimmo
The Madness of King George

Ron Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)

Laura Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?

Lenni Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met

Abigail Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner?

Mark Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes

Gerry Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too

Toni Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised

Derek Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

M. Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom

Matt Siegfried
An American Way of War

Dave Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley

Poets' Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

 

June 4, 2004

Chris Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House

Cornwell / Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy

Wayne Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink

Greg Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq

Yitzak Laor
Before Rafah

Ghali Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?

Jane Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey

CounterPunch Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?

John Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush

Mike Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW

Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?

Website of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire

 

 

June 3, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma

Dr. Susan Block
America in tha Hood

Michael Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin

John Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged

Christopher Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month

Samia Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case

Diane Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead

Scott Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba

Paul de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective

 

 

June 2, 2004

Brian Cloughley
The Liars are Winning

Ray McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence"

Josh Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive

Mike Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots

Jackie Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana

Robert Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too

Alexander Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"

 

June 1, 2004

Gary Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him

William A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah

Dave Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?

Kevin Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?

Jacob Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production

Kathy Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government

Website of the Day
Remind Us

 

 

May 29 / 31, 2004

Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day

Janine Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day

Mike Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib

Alfred W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research

Douglas Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions

Chris White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto

Bruce Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu

David Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire

Saul Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?

Kurt Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA

Elaine Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders

Will Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"

Ben Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches

Dr. Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!

Kia Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh

Mickey Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!

Jon Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times

Patrick B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance

Stephen Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel

Tom Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New

Dave Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad

Gregory Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"

Erik Cummings
Jung Meets Bush

Poets' Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert

 

May 28, 2004

Rafael Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5

Greg Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib

Dave Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work

Norman Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times

Rep. Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba

Paul McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After

Alexander Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"

 

 

May 27, 2004

Amy Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times

Douglas Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs

John L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of

Stew Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist

Dave Dellinger
a 1993 Interview

Christopher Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids

Rampton / Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony

 

 

May 26, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours

Robert Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech

Zeynep Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation

Conn Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection

Tom Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes

Derek Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot

CounterPunch Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art

Andrew Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran

 

May 25, 2004

Joe Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas

Col. Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity

Gary Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home

Toni Solo
A Developing War in the Andes

Marc Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11

Stephen Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops"

Website of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy

May 24, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!

Kurt Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages

Sam Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time"

Mike Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb

Stan Goff
Open Season on MAMs

Image of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs

 

 

May 22 / 23, 2004

Paul de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary

Jeffrey St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer

Brian Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq

Saul Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People

Brandy Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry

Randall Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Rafah

Ben Tripp
Assume the Worst

Bruce Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business

Josh Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers

Peter Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib

Chloe Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy

Linda Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value

Adrien Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse

David Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy

Ron Jacobs
Turnaround

Poets' Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella

 


May 21, 2004

Ray Close
The Canards of the Apologists

Christopher Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"

Amira Hass
Darkness at Noon

Jack McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army?

Bill Kauffman
Nader v. Bush

Omar Barghouti
No More Tears for America

Ghali Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza

Christopher Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture

Website of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much

 

May 20, 2004

Andrew Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi

Kathy Kelly
A Visit from the FBI

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India

Tom Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.

Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy

Robert Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle

Billy Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year

Website of the Day
Rafah Today

 

 

 

 

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

 

Weekend Edition
June 12 / 13, 2004

Not Really a Puppet Government?

Meet the New Iraqi Leaders

By GARY LEUPP

These are not America's puppets. This is a terrific list and really good government, and we're very pleased with the names that emerged.

Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor

The selection of Ghazi al-Yawer as the president of "sovereign" Iraq has been spun by the mainstream media as a victory for the more independent-minded members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council over the Coalition Provisional Authority (i.e., U.S. occupation regime) headed by Paul Bremer III, as well as Lakhdar Brahimi, special adviser to UN General-Secretary Kofi Annan. The latter two are said to have strongly favored octogenarian Adnan Pachachi (whose father, uncle, and father-in-law were all Iraqi premiers) for the largely ceremonial post. Sunni nationalist, former foreign minister (in the 1960s), long-time resident of the United Arab Emirates and London, adviser to of Jordan's King Abdullah, leader of the Iraqi Independent Democrats Movement, fluent English-speaker, frequent traveler to America and reliably pro-U.S., Pachachi seemed to enjoy greater popularity than al-Yawer and for that reason might provide the new (puppet) government greater legitimacy.

Bremer is depicted as lecturing the IGC on the superiority of his candidate, the one also favored by Brahimi (whose daughter, by the way, is engaged to marry a son of King Abdullah), and delaying the vote by a day to get his way. However, the story goes, the IGC showed surprising independence (during negotiations described as "bitter," "frantic," and "grueling"), insisting on al-Yawer, whom the Americans only reluctantly accepted to fill the job, after Pachachi, offered it, declined citing "elements in the Iraqi political class who were against me." (Subsequently, Pachachi has blamed his rival and long-time CIA operative Ahmad Chalabi---now on the outs with the Bush administration and accused of serving as an Iranian spy---for sabotaging his candidacy through a "shabby conspiracy" to depict him as "a puppet of the U.S."

President Bush states simply that Brahimi, as assigned, made the selection. "I had no role in picking, zero," he said June 1. "It was Mr. Brahimi's selections." But Brahimi for his part asserts, "Bremer is the dictator of Iraq. He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country" CNN on the other hand, cites an Iraqi-American businessman, who says that since the Governing Council selected al-Yawar instead of Pachachi "I don't think it's really a puppet government." That lets the U.S. off the hook and allows CNN to declare confidently: "The bottom line: Iraqis politicians took control of this process."

Then there's the (more important) prime minister's position. Brahimi initially wanted Hassain al-Shahristani, a devout Shiite close to Imam Ali al-Sistani (whose support could be crucial to U.S. plans) and nuclear scientist imprisoned under Saddam Hussein. He fit the bill specified by Washington: "a Shia Muslim who was not too close to any faction or party, but also not so much of a technocrat that he had no political standing." But initial reports in Washington that he had been chosen for the post were contradicted by Brahimi after al-Shahristani allegedly turned down the offer. Reportedly his Persian surname was an issue. Instead (again) the Governing Council had its way and chose, with enthusiasm, Dr. Ayad Allawi, a British-educated neurosurgeon, secular Shiite, and leader of the Iraqi National Accord, again showing its independence from the U.S. (But asked about the selection, Brahimi states diplomatically, "The Americans were governing this country, so their view was certainly taken into consideration. Whether Dr Allawi was their choice, whether they manoeuvered to get him, you know, in position--- that, I think, you better ask them.") The Guardian reports he "was taken off guard" by the selection that Bush, as noted above, attributes to him.

Okay, anyway, so who are these Iraqi-chosen independent helmsmen of sovereign Iraq? Ghazi al-Yawer, civil engineer, nephew to the chieftain of the powerful Shammar tribe and descendent of Iraqi parliamentarians, studied at Georgetown University in the United States and then in Saudi Arabia, where he lived in exile for two decades. He was (is?) vice-president of Hicap Technology, a telecommunications and perimeter security systems company in Riyadh. With flowing gown and Arab headdress, he may strike a more sympathetic chord among Iraqi nationalists than Allawi, who prefers western suits. He has been depicted repeatedly as "a critic of the occupation," and indeed criticized the first draft of the Anglo-American UN resolution supporting the establishment of an interim regime in Iraq. The plan, he declared "falls short" in failing to restore full sovereignty to Iraq, and by allowing only limited control over U.S. troops in the country. He has condemned U.S. tactics in Fallujah and stated that the U.S. is responsible for the deplorable security situation in the country. "We blame the United States 100 percent for the security in Iraq. They occupied the country, disbanded the security agencies and for 10 months left Iraq's borders open for anyone to come in without a visa or even a passport." But he has also stated "We should remember our friends who fell during the battle to liberate Iraq" and expressed opposition to attacks on U.S. and other foreign troops. Since his position is largely ceremonial, his criticism of the opposition may actually serve the latter's interests, by providing a show of harmless dissent abetting the global projection of a Free Iraq.

Al-Yawer is participating in the Group of Eight meeting in Georgia. Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia were also invited but declined to attend, considering the invitations demeaning. This is because they came in connection with the "Greater Middle East Initiative" (supposedly for "democracy") that Bush has been peddling since the fall of 2002, and which plainly represents interference in sovereign states' affairs. Al-Yawer's presence shows his willingness to join such reliables as Jordan, Tunisia and Bahrain in contributing legitimacy to the trumpeted "democratic" Initiative, which is really, of course, a neocon-initiated "regime change" project. "We're pulling for him," said Bush in Georgia. "I'm going to thank him for having the courage to stand up and lead and tell him that America will help him." In turn, al-Yawer says, "We are working together. These people are in our country to help us." Almost sounds like a cozy relationship.

What of Ayad Allawi, the more important figure? He is even more Washington's stooge, by common report a longtime MI-6 and CIA operative. A Baath Party member from his teens, he studied in Britain in the 1960s, when, according to a classmate quoted by al-Jazeera, he "spent his time dealing with assassins, doing the dirty work for the Iraqi government, until his time was up and he became their target." He became a "close aide" to Saddam Hussein, but had a falling out with the Iraqi leader by the 1970s, after which he went into exile in Britain and made his services available to MI-6. There, in 1978, he narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt. He forged a relationship with the CIA; according to Samuel R. Berger, national security adviser in the Clinton administration, "Unlike [Ahmad] Chalabi, he was someone who was trusted by the regional governments. He was less flamboyant, less promotional."

The CIA and MI-6 backed Allawi's organization, the Iraqi National Accord.

The Washington Post (June 8) cites "several former intelligence officials" as stating that that organization "intent on deposing Saddam Husseinsent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A."

Former CIA officer Robert Baer recalls that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed." In the mid-1990s, Baghdad claimed that terrorists had exploded a bomb in a movie theater, producing many civilian casualties; CIA officials state that Allawi's group was the only such organization engaging in bombings and sabotage at that time. It almost sounds as if the new Prime Minister has a background in terrorism.

In 2002, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord received attention when it passed on to the British government a report that Saddam's regime could fire germ warfare missiles as far as Cyprus within 45 minutes of giving the order. Published in a dossier in September 2002, the report helped prepare British public opinion for the Iraq war. In January 2004 a New York spokesman for Allawi acknowledged this was in fact "a crock of shit." Almost sounds like the new Prime Minister is a bald-faced liar. And then there's the story about that supposed top-secret, hand-written memo by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service revealed to the world last December. I have referred to it as "the neocons' dream memo" since it implausibly describes a three-day "work programme" undertaken by none other than Chief 9-11 Hijacker Mohammed Atta at a Baghdad base of Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal in 1991, and refers to a "Niger shipment" of some unspecified material arriving in Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Who confirmed the authenticity of the memo, released through the Iraqi Governing Council? Why, none other than Dr. Allawi! And since each element of the putative al-Tikriti memo had been already debunked by U.S. intelligence, and only kept afloat by the most duplicitous of the neocons, it almost sounds like the Prime Minister is an especially shameless bald-faced liar and abject puppet of his imperialist sponsors. (Interesting, too, that it first appeared in The Daily Telegraph, owned by Conrad Black, and part of the Hollinger Group on whose board of directors sits Richard Perle, Black buddy and leading warmongering neocon.)

In his speech to the nation following his appointment, Allawi thanked the occupation "led by the Americans who have sacrificed so much to liberate us." (Other new government officials have avoided such effusive language, knowing how it grates on the sensibilities of average Iraqis.) He declared that the nation will need further help "in defeating the enemies of Iraq." I must doubt that this gentleman is in any way less useful to the ongoing imperialist project in Iraq than Mr. al-Shahristani might have been had he been appointed to the post, or that al-Yawer is appreciably less useful than Pachachi might have been. While their compatriots accused of complicity in "insurgency" against an illegal invading force are paraded naked, smeared with excrement, piled into naked pyramids, raped and murdered, these gentlemen are generously accorded the veneer of dignity. Such dignity is necessary to confer some credibility, and thus compensate for the credibility gap unexpectedly produced by the unfortunate exposure of the occupiers' true face. So Allawi and al-Yawer, the face of Iraqi sovereignty, no puppets, mind you, but men (in Bush's words) "with the courage to stand up and lead" with America's courageous help.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu


Weekend Edition Features for June 5 / 6, 2004

C. Douglas Lummis
Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs

Saul Landau
Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession

Dave Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited

Brian Cloughley
Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong

Rich Gibson
The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Elaine Cassel
A Sorry FBI

Cathrin Schütz
On the Ruins of Yugoslavia

Ben Tripp
Call Me, Mr. Cassandra

Kurt Nimmo
The Madness of King George

Ron Jacobs
They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So)

Laura Flanders
The Lynne Cheney Show?

Lenni Brenner
Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met

Abigail Jones
Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner?

Mark Latham
Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes

Gerry Adams
I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too

Toni Solo
Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised

Derek Seidman
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

M. Junaid Alam
Torture is Just the Symptom

Matt Siegfried
An American Way of War

Dave Zirin
The Politics of Charles Barkley

Poets' Basement
Albert, Krieger, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Overnight Sensations

Google
WWW http://www.counterpunch.org

 

Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /