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June
26, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
June 25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
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Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
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Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
June
19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
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What's Next?
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Jacobs
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in the Age of Bush
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Castro
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Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
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Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
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Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
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Fagen
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Hamod
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Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
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Perry
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June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
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Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
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Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
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The Bush Administration
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June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
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Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
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Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
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Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
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June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
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Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
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US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
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Of Dissidents and Dissonance
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Rebellious Judges
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Where We Are
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Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
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Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
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The G8 and Africa
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Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
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AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
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June
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David
Vest
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Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
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Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
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June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
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Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
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Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
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June
27, 2003
Will He Replace Ari?
The
Catch and Release of "Comical Ali"
By DAVID LINDORFF
According to a report in the London's Daily Mirror,
American military forces this captured, and arrested, iterrogated,
and finally released Iraq's famed information minister, Mohammed
Saeed al-Sahaf.
Saeed al-Sahaf, you may recall, provided
a much-needed element of comic relief during the televised U.S.
invasion of Iraq, repeatedly denying U.S. and British military
advances, and even denying that U.S. forces had entered Baghdad
when reporters were already seeing American military vehicles
driving on local streets and when the sounds of battle could
be heard from the hotel where press conferences were being held.
In the U.S. media, he had even earned
the nickname "Comical Ali," a take-off on the nickname
of another Iraqi official in charge of Iraq's purported (but
never actually located) unconventional weapons program dubbed
"Chemical Ali."
The question puzzling me, however, is
what exactly the U.S. occupying authority intended to charge
poor Comical Ali with when they first picked
him up. He was, after all, not torturing anybody-- except with
laughter.
The guy was a flak. His job wasn't to
tell the truth. It was to tell reporters whatever his bosses
wanted him to tell them about the course of the invasion.
Sort of like his White House counterpart
Ari Fleischer.
So was Viceroy Bremer planning on charging
Saeed al-Sahaf with lying?
That would be a good one, given what
we know about the lies we were all told leading up to this war
by British P.M. Tony Blair, President George Bush, V.P. Dick
Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, et al.
There are two ways of approaching at
this situation.
Maybe we should encourage the military
to go ahead and prosecute Saeed al-Sahaf for public lying. Then
we could bring that concept home to the U.S. and bring similar
charges against the whole Bush administration, using the legal
concept of reciprocity. That would get a jump on Comical Ali,
who could be counted on otherwise to adopt the defense of lying
raised last Sunday in Bush's defense by the New York Times: "They
all did it."
And why stop there? We could go after
the corporate flaks who routinely deny that their companies have
engaged in malfeasance, corruption, pollution, labor law violations,
safety violations, etc. Just going after the flaks for the tobacco,
power and automotive industries alone for lying in public could
keep an army of prosecutors busy for years.
Alternatively, maybe it would be just
as well to let U.S. authorities hypocritically go after Saeed
al-Sahaf alone. The spectacle of watching someone be prosecuted
and jailed just for telling whoppers might conceivably jar some
jaded Americans into contemplating the state of affairs we've
arrived at here at home, where lying by White House officials
has become so routine that it no longer merits any notice or
comment in the media or any condemnation by the public
Sadly, it looks like Bremer and the Pentagon
have realized that holding poor Saeed al-Sahaf was a no-win situation,
and two days after picking him up, they've let him go, just another
retired spinmeister.
Keep an eye on this guy, though. He had
what it takes, and when Iraq's quisling regime of compradores
and U.S. lackeys is up and running, it will need someone who,
with a straight face, can call a dictatorship a democracy, a
colony an independent state and exploitation productive investment.
If anyone can do that, it's the guy who insisted Iraq was winning
the war until American tanks were at his doorstep.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
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