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Coming Soon! From Common Courage Press Recent Stories May 23, 2003 Standard Schaefer Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits? Ron Jacobs Long Live People's Park! Michael Greger, MD Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply at Risk Elaine Cassel Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt." Sam Hamod The Shi'a of Iraq Christopher Greeder After the Layoffs Alexander Cockburn Derrida's Double Life (poem) Steve Perry Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23   May 22, 2003 Mark Gaffney Christian in Name Only Carl Estabrook Republic of Fear Carl Camacho, Jr. Reason for Hope Ben Granby What Rates a Headline from the Middle East? Vanessa Jones Terror Alerts in Australia Mickey Z. Instant Understanding Don Monkerud Snowballs in a Soggy Economy Barry Lando The Nether-Nether World of G.W. Bush Steve Perry Total Information Awareness: Secret Shadow Program?   May 21, 2003 Dave Lindorff Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain Chris Floyd How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity Dr. Gerry Lower Graham's God and Bush's Pathology Patrick Cockburn In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown are Everywhere Brian Cloughley The Fatuous Braintrust: Newt, Rummy and Wolfowitz Saul Landau Shopping, the End of the World and the Politics of Bush Larry Kearney Two Morning Poems, May 2003 Steve Perry Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted? Elaine Cassel Ashcroft Justice Comes to Iraq   May 20, 2003 Tariq Ali The Empire Advances Ahmad Faruqui Whither American Nationalism? Ben Tripp Dialysis with Osama Linda Heard The Cage of Occupation Cynthia McKinney Toward a Just and Peaceful World Edward Said The Arab Condition Mokhiber and Weissman Why Ari Should Have Resigned in Protest Long Ago Stew Albert Yale Men Steve Perry The New Face of Al-Qaeda   May 19, 2003 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing Evidence CounterPunch Wire "Terror" Slut Steve Emerson Eats Crow John Chuckman Blair's Awkward Lies Matt Vidal Corporate Media and the Myth of the Free Market Michael S. Ladah The Fine Print to Bush's Road Map Robert Fisk Bush's Eternal War Backfires Elaine Cassel Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years Jonathan Freedland Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic Steve Perry Play It Again, O-Sam-a   May 17 / 18, 2003 Uri Avnery The Children's Teeth Peter Linebaugh An American Tribute to Christopher Hill Gary Leupp Nepal Today Rock and Rap Confidential The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks Walter Sommerfeld Plundering Baghdad's Museums Ron Jacobs Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades Thomas P. Healy Dubya Does Indy Tarif Abboushi Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap Francis Boyle Debating US War Crimes in Iraq Mark Davis An Interview with Richard Butler Richard Lichtman American Mourning Michael Ortiz Hill Overcoming Terrorism Adam Engel Uncle Sam is YOU! Alan Maas The Best News Show on TV Poets' Basement Reiss, Guthrie, Albert Elaine Cassel Good Enough for an Alien Website of the Weekend The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq Song of the Weekend Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues   May 16, 2003 Leah Wells In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix Ben Tripp Fear Itself Sharon Smith The Resegregation of US Schools Ramzy Baroud Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating? Sam Hamod A Nation of Fear Phil Reeves Baghdad Pays the Price Robert McChesney The FCC's Big Grab Mark Engler Those Who Don't Count Steve Perry We're All Extras in Bush's Movie Website of the Day Iraq and Our Energy Future   May 15, 2003 Ayesha Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould How Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter Writing Campaigns Julie Hilden Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees: Can He Get a Fair Trial? Tanya Reinhart Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure Laura Carlsen Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus? Kenneth Rapoza The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts New Yorker's Goldberg Stew Albert A Story I Will Tell Steve Perry Bush's Little Nukes Website of the Day Strip-o-Rama   May 14, 2003 Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Jason Leopold The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret November Deal for Iraq's Oil David Lindorff Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's Alaska John Chuckman Giggling into Chaos Jack McCarthy Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism and Double Standards Wayne Madsen Assassinating JFK Again M. Junaid Alam The Longer View Paul de Rooij The New Hydra's Head: Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War James Reiss What? Me Worry? Steve Perry More on Saudi Arabia Bombings Website of the Day A Tribute to Ted Joans   May 13, 2003 Saul Landau Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves Michael Neumann Has Islam Failed? Not by Western Standards Uri Avnery My Meeting with Arafat Steve Perry The Saudi Arabia Bombing Jacob Levich Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas William Lind The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory The Black Commentator Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes Stew Albert Asylum Hammond Guthrie An Illogical Reign Website of the Day Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence   May 12, 2003 Chris Floyd Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad Dave Lindorff America's Dirty Bombs Sam Hamod and Elaine Cassel Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty Uzi Benziman Sharon and Sons, Inc. Jason Leopold The Decline and Fall of Thomas White Rich Procter George Jumps the Shark Federico Moscogiuri Going to Israel? Sign or Else Steve Perry Bush's War Web Log 5/12 Book of the Day Fooling Marty Peretz Website of the Day T-Shirts to Protest In           Hot Stories Cindy Corrie A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From Elaine Cassel Civil Liberties Watch Michel Guerrin Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians" Uzma Aslam Khan The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go Paul de Rooij Arrogant Propaganda Gore Vidal The Erosion of the American Dream Francis Boyle Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution Click Here for More Stories.   Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

May 24, 2003 The War is Far from Over Is Saddam Really Out of the Game? By WILLIAM S. LIND Unlike most military commentators, I do not think the war in Iraq is over. On the contrary, the real war is just beginning. America destroyed not merely Saddam's government but the Iraqi state, and a vast array of non-state actors are filling the vacuum with Fourth Generation war. Thus far, American efforts to re-create a state in Iraq have fallen flat. But even other observers who believe the war is still on think that Saddam is a goner. Here, I am going to go out on a limb. I am not sure that is the case. On the contrary, I think there is a possibility that Saddam has adopted a breathtakingly bold strategy that holds fair promise of success. Before I go on, please note that I said "possibility." I cannot know. If anyone has the information sources to know (other than Saddam himself), I certainly don't. But the possibility is sufficiently intriguing to be worth exploring. First, this possibility assumes that Saddam, or at least one of his sons, is still alive. Lacking evidence to the contrary, we should assume that is the case. Second, it assumes that Saddam realized, once American forces reached Baghdad, that they would eventually take the city. It is a general rule of sieges that the besieged party's situation is hopeless, absent a relieving force, and none was in prospect. Saddam, like Hitler, was not a military idiot, and this rule is centuries old. Let us assume that he knew it. Third, we can add, not a certain fact , but at least press reports, both British and American, that part of the reason the Republican Guard did not fight for Baghdad is that it was ordered to go home. Clearly, some Republican Guard soldiers made this decision on their own. Some, perhaps many, were abandoned by their leaders, which takes the fight out of any army. But if some went home because they were ordered to do so, it raises the question of who gave the order and why? Here, then, is the thesis: Saddam, realizing that a siege of Baghdad would inevitably end with the city falling and him killed or captured (and Saddam is very much a survivor), made a daring strategic choice. Rather than fight for Baghdad, he decided to preserve himself and his most loyal military forces as a "force in being" and, rather than attempting to hold on to the country, let the Americans take it, then re-take it from them through guerilla warfare. Though his Republican Guard troops went home, they still have weapons , he can communicate with them (though slowly and with difficulty), and some of them will still obey his orders. In fact, some of them are already initiating guerilla warfare in accordance with his strategy. The Baath Party, which the Americans have banned and thus driven underground, provides the infrastructure for the guerillas. American commanders in Iraq are openly saying that "remnants" of Saddam's forces are fighting. The Americans are blaming them for at least some of the continuing disorder that makes establishing a new Iraqi state so difficult. The Americans generals seem to believe that these "remnants" will be mopped up, sooner or later. But what if time and momentum are now on their side? Here, Saddam's advantage lies in a growing perception among Iraqis -- also reported in our press -- that life under Saddam was on the whole better than life under the Americans. True, they had no freedom. But they had food (the rations issued by Saddam's government just before the war started run out in June), clean water, electricity, medicine, domestic order, jobs and incomes. All of these disappeared with Saddam. The Americans are trying to restore them, but the continuing disorder makes that difficult or impossible. And Saddam's guerillas are doing their best to guarantee that the disorder continues, grows and spreads. It is not a bad strategy. In fact, if it works, it will go down in military history as a brilliant strategy. Could it enable Saddam to win, in what would be one of history's most dramatic comebacks? I think it could succeed in driving the U.S. out. This kind of war cannot be fought with fighter aircraft and tanks. It requires that American soldiers put their bodies on the line, every day. That means a steadily growing American casualty count, in a war that the American people have been told is already over and won. Here, the ghost of the Vietnam war looms large. It was just such claims of American victory, followed by repeated demands for more American troops and rising American casualties, that destroyed popular support for that war in the United States. From Saddam's perspective, there is one great difference from the Vietnam situation. If Saddam were to drive out the Americans, he would then face a vast Iraqi civil war, against the Shiites, the Kurds, and a wide array of Fourth Generation forces. My guess is that he would lose that war, with the Shiites the probable victors, and the outcome the Islamic Republic of Iraq. Or the result might just be endless chaos in a stateless Mesopotamia. Either way, the Americans would find themselves pining for the good old days of Saddam and Baath. Remember, all this is no more than a possibility. It is a thesis, not a reality, nor a prediction. But it is one of those possibilities that, from the standpoint of military analysis, is much too interesting to ignore. William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. Today's Features Standard Schaefer Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits? Ron Jacobs Long Live People's Park! Michael Greger, MD Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply at Risk Elaine Cassel Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt." Sam Hamod The Shi'a of Iraq Christopher Greeder After the Layoffs Alexander Cockburn Derrida's Double Life (poem) Steve Perry Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /