Today's Stories

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

August 3, 2009

Pam Martens
Millions of Americans Pushed Into No-Law System by Colluding Banks

Anthony DiMaggio
Media Backlash: Obama and the Settlements

Udi Aloni
And Who Shall I Say is Calling? A Plea to Leonard Cohen

Mike Roselle
See the Mountains of WestVirginia ... Before They're Blown Up!

Dr. Susan Block
Beat It! Sex, Death and Michael Jackson

Roy Bourgeois / Margaret Knapke
School of Coups

Joe Bageant
A Yard Sale in Chernobyl

Dina Jadallah
Hiding the State

Dave Lindorff
Of Blue Dogs and Jellyfish

Martha Rosenberg
Grand Closings in Evanston: How the Recession is Hitting Illinois

Website of the Day
Why We Can't "Afford" Health Care

July 31 - August 2, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Biden and Clinton Mutinies

Gabriel Kolko
Searching For Enemies

John Prados
The Intelligence Oversight Mess

Joe Bageant
The Bastards Never Die

Tim Wise
Rationalizing Racial Oppression

Carl Ginsburg
Frist First: Follow the Money (and Find the Plump Heart of "Health Care")

Michael Fox
The Honduran Coup as Overture

John Lindsay-Poland
Revamping Plan Colombia

Michael Winship
Pay-to-Play: Washington's Sport of Kings

Rev. William Alberts
White Men Can Jump ... to Conclusions

Andy Worthington
Judge Orders Release of Tortured Gitmo Prisoner

Steve Breyman
Counting the Unemployed

Cyrus Bina
Racism, Class and Profiling

Missy Beattie
Promises Ignored

Ron Jacobs
Into the Vapid: Consuming the Cultural Product

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Party of Concessions: Democrats Never Learn

Lucia Alvarez
Fall of the House of Kirchner? Return of the Right in Argentina

Dave Lindorff
David Brooks' White Guy Nightmare

Lawrence R. Velvel
Madoff: What Should be Done Now?

Omar Barghouti /
Sid Shniad
United for Freedom and Universal Justice

James L. Secor
The Name of the Game is Wipe-Out

Belén Fernández
Zelaya in Nicaragua: Has Another Constitution Been Violated?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frank Lloyd Wright in Hollywood: the Ennis House as Imperial Ruin

David Yearsley
Beauty in Dark Places: Berlin's Olympic Stadium

Brian J. Foley
Pre-Eating: a Threat to Restaurants Everywhere

Alan Cabal
Onward, Into the Fog: Thomas Pynchon's
"Inherent Vice"

Kim Nicolini
The Way War Feels

Lorenzo Wolff
The Way It Felt the First Time: the Jump Rope Magic of the Shangri-Las

Poets' Basement
Four Poems From the Chinese

Website of the Weekend
Obama's Ex-Doc Knocks ObamaCare

July 30, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Victims of a Covert Tit-for-Tat War

Gareth Porter
Afghanistan's US-Backed Child-Raping Police

Saul Landau
Summer of Denial

Greg Grandin
Honduran Coup Over?

Diane Farsetta
Pentagon Pundits Get a Pass

Stephen Soldz
The King Case, the APA and the Missing Ethics Investigation

Alan Farago
Learning How to Survive in a Depression From "Weeds"

David Macaray
Cops and Labor Unions

Mike Howells /
Jay Arena
Volunteerism Will Not Rebuild the Gulf Coast

Christopher Brauchli
Oatmeal Envy

Website of the Day
Changing the SOFA

July 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Our Crisis, Their Gain

Clifton Ross
From Tegucigalpa to El Paraiso: a Voyage From Curfew to State of Siege

Paul Craig Roberts
How Fake is the "Recovery"?

Franklin C. Spinney
Winning Hearts and Minds, Pentagon Style

James Bovard Lackawanna Six: Bogus Charges and Martial Law

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, the Media and Public Opinion

Bouthaina Shaaban
How Will Arabs Wake Up?

Greg Moses
A Catch and Trade Policy for Labor Costs

Wajahat Ali
No Racism in Obama's Post-Race America?

Gary Leupp
Beer Will Not Solve This

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Musharraf, Imran Khan and Overseas Pakistanis

Website of the Day
Why Single-Payer Gets No Respect

July 28, 2009

Jean Bricmont
Bombing for a Juster World?

Uri Avnery
Obama, Netanyahu and the Settlements

Dean Baker
Right to Rent: a Remedy for the Foreclosure Crisis

Heather Gray
Stupid Cop Tricks: Driving Too Close to a White Female and Other Episodes in Racist Policing

Jonathan Cook
Can an "Arab Soul" Yearn for Israel's Anthem?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Beyond the F-22: the Future of Pentagon Reform

Belén Fernández
Thomas Friedman Does Afghanistan

Carl Finamore
The Hotel Workers' Kickass Local 2

Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Striking the World Cup

Harvey Wasserman
We All Stand Before Peltier's Parole Board

Website of the Day
Behind the Wheel

July 27, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Gates: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

Patrick Cockburn
Elections Shake Kurdistan

Roger Burbach
Hillary and Obama Nix Change in Honduras

Steve Breyman
Bomber Joe and Russia: Why is Biden Channeling Cheney?

Ramzy Kysia
Gaza: On the Right of Resistance

Stephen Soldz
Will the American Psychological Association Renounce the Nuremberg Defense?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Sexual Hocus Pocus in the Episcopal Church

Greg Moses
The Color Line is Black

Binoy Kampmark
Swine Flu Panic

Kim Ives
Lavalas and Haiti's Student Union Unite

Website of the Day
Meet the Paid Assassins of Health Care

July 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"A Damned Murder, Inc."

Clifton Ross
Surreal Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Party of "Change" Challenges Old Guard in Kurdistan

William Polk
Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman

David Sterritt
Screening the Politics Out of the Iraq War

Ray McGovern
Hooded in Bush's Hood

David Lindorff
Cops Gone Wild

Hannah Mermelstein
"The War is With the Arabs"

Carl Ginsburg
The Actually Existing Health Care System

Helen Redmond
The Selling of Single-Payer Features

John Ross
The Song of the Guerrilla

Bill Simpich
Fair Play for Cuba and the Cuban Revolution

Mark Weisbrot
Learning From China on How to Beat the Recession

Lee Sustar
U.S. Labor in Crisis

David Macaray
Union Workers Forced to Accept Massive Cuts

Felipe Matsunaga
Obama's Slow (and Familiar) Dance With Cuba

Sara Mann
Why Health Care Will Kill My TV

Martha Rosenberg
Which is Worse? Germs in Our Food or the Antibiotics That Kill Them?

Missy Beattie
Cha-ching Culture

David Ker Thomson
Empty Nest: a Natural History of Now

Ron Jacobs
United4Iran, a Footnote

Stephen Martin
The Crying of Lots 1 Thru 50

David Yearsley
Psst, I Show You a Feelthy Gluck

Gilad Atzmon
Bruno: a Glimpse Into Zionism?

Kim Nicolini
Guilty Laughter in the Dark: Seeing Brüno Twice

Poets' Basement
Kakak and McLellan

Website of the Weekend
Dead Prez: Summertime

July 23, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Masters of Perfidy: AIG and the System

Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Hypocrisy and the Honduran Coup: Term Limits Only Apply When Governments Help People

Jonathan Cook
The Reality of Israel's "Open" Jerusalem

Nadia Hijab
Israeli Warships in the Red Sea

Dave Lindorff
Living in a Police State: the Gates Incident

Laura Carlsen
21st Century Coups d'Etat

Steve Breyman
Bankers Beware?

Ellen Brown
How California Could Turn Its IOUs Into Dollars

Norman Solomon
Spinning Health Care

Jorge Mariscal
Youth Activists Demand Military-Free Schools

Website of the Day
Copy-Editing Sarah Palin

July 22, 2009

Bernard Chazelle
How to Argue Against Torture

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

Carl Ginsburg
The Recovery, Phase Two

Clifton Ross
Back to the Future? Return to El Salvador

Anthony DiMaggio
Health Care, Media and the Case for Socialized Medicine

Michael Donnelly
The Whoppers Behind WOPR

Nadia Hijab
Memoirs of a Lost Arab World

Dedrick Muhammad
Structural Inequality: News Not Fit to Print?

Charles Thomson
Cronyism at the Tate

Alan Farago
Ted Williams and the Florida Keys

Website of the Day
Himmelstein: Howard Dean is a Liar

July 21, 2009

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Iranian Election and Its Aftermath

Uri Avnery
Breaking the Silence on Israeli War Crimes

Dean Baker
Séance on Wall Street

Jonathan Cook
Team Twitter: Israel's Internet War

Dave Lindorff
Saving Private Bergdahl

Andy Worthington
Interrogating the Uighurs

David Macaray
Heat, Dust and OSHA

Carl Finamore
The Deferential Party

Harvey Wasserman
Cronkite and Three Mile Island

Walter Brasch
The Marie Antoinettes of Health Care

Website of the Day
Linebaugh: Magna Carta and the Commons

July 20, 2009

Pam Martens
Judicial Apartheid

Nikolas Kozloff
Honduras and the Big Stick: Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

Paul Craig Roberts
Threatening Iran

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Policy on China and Iran

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Time Bomb: Building in the Vineyard of the Mufti

P. Sainath
Put Your Money Down, Boys

Binoy Kampmark
The Moon Landing and the Cold War

Stephen Fleischman
The First Anchorman

Norman Solomon
Cronkite and Vietnam: Beyond the Hype

Andy Worthington
Predictable Chaos as Gitmo Trials Resume

Ron Jacobs
Out of the Haze, Into the Darkness: Recalling 1979

Website of the Day
Why Publishing Can't be Saved (as it is)

July 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
"Watch What We Do, Not What We Say"

Nikolas Kozloff
Chiquita in Latin America: From Arbenz to Zelaya

Joanne Mariner
CIA Apples: Bad at the Top of the Tree

Joe Bageant
America's White Underclass

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Road Signs: Wiping Arabic Names Off the Map

Saul Landau
Why So Much Sympathy for Madoff's Dupes and So Little for the Poor?

John Ross
Jurassic Fallout in Mexico

Sue Sturgis
Senator Sessions, Race and Impartiality

Anita Sinha /
Daniel Farbman
The Ricci Case and the Myth of Special Treatment

Peter Morici
Obama's Donut Economics

Pervez Hoodbhoy
Whither Pakistan? A Five-Year Forecast

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the Language of Power

Greg Moses
The Real Demand Crisis

Kia Mistilis
The Niger Delta Crisis

Missy Beattie
The Placebo President

David Ker Thomson
How Not to See: Things to Tell Your Eyeballs

James G. Abourezk
Evil Spirits: the Booze Strip in Indian Country

Paul Richards
Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?

Dave Lindorff
Dark Days for Working People (With Three Small Rays of Light)

Marc Levy
Just Like Hanoi Jane

Matt Siegfried
The Good War Goes Hot

Stephen Martin
Panopticon Blues

Ben Sonnenberg
Sembène's Faat Kiné

David Macaray
Casablanca: When Melodrama Trumped History

Charles R. Larson
A Pakistani, Victorian Novel Celebrating Women

David Yearsley
That's Women for You: Abbas Kiarostami's Così

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Rattle and Roll: the Sound From England's Gutters

Poets' Basement
Payne, Anderson and Williams

Website of the Weekend
Hitler Learns of Sarah Palin's Resignation

July 16, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
What Economy?

Afshin Rattansi Iranian Planes and the Hidden Toll of Economic Sanctions

Gregory V. Button
The Search for Environmental Justice in Perry County, Alabama

Evan Knappenberger
Profile of a Deserter

Michelle Bollinger
Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

Russell Mokhiber
White House to ABC News: No Obama Single-Payer Doc

Belén Fernández
Iranian Penetration, Oh My!

Alice Walker
What is Torture Like? A Letter to Obama

Nicholas Dearden
Paying the Climate Debt: the G-8's Troubling Model

Albert Osueke
Sotomayor and the Identity Mountain

Website of the Day
Sotomayor for the Prosecution

July 15, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Assassination Bureau

Vijay Prashad
A Political Recession

Dean Baker
Stimulus Arithmetic

Ray McGovern
Cheney Sweating Bullets

Jonathan Cook
Jenin's Model of "Economic Peace"

David Rosen
Shouts From the Gallery: the Sotomayor Hearings and the Culture Wars

Eric Walberg
Uighurs vs. Afghans: a Study in Contrast

Greg Moses
Three Dimensions of a Complete Stimulus Plan

Sousan Hammad
Decolonizing Israel

Binoy Kampmark
The Trial of Charles Taylor

Tracy McLellan
The Story of My Arrest

Website of the Day
11 Days in Saudi Gitmo

July 14, 2009

Eamonn McCann
The Emperors of Bombast: Bono, U2 and the Crisis of World Capitalism

Joanne Mariner
Obama's New Euphemism

Franklin Spinney
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope

Steve Heilig
Walking Mount Tam: an Interview with Gary Snyder

Ali Abunimah
Hamas' Choice

Dave Lindorff
The End of "Nice" Health Care Reform

Nikolas Kozloff
The Politics of Destabilization: McCain and Honduras

Ellen Brown
From Golden State to Subprime State

Alice Slater
How US Missile Defense Plans Sabotaged Nuclear Disarmament Talks With Russia

Ron Jacobs
Protest U.S. Aggression

Joe Allen
The Fight to Save James Hickman in Jim Crow-Style Chicago

Website of the Day
Mel Brooks Does the French Revolution

July 13, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Essence of the Regime

Mike Whitney
The Deflating Economy

P. Sainath
How the World Depression Hits Orissa

Gareth Porter
A US / Iraq Conflict on Iran

Paul Moore
Rap in the Streets, Rap in the Suites

Tim Wise
Off the Deep End: Private Clubs, Public Prejudice

Andy Worthington Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions

David Macaray
Cartoon Voices: Serf's Up in Hollywood

Cal Winslow
The Healthcare Worker War

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Spring in the Time of Obama

Website of the Day
Washington's Deep Game with China

July 10-12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Biden Problem

José Pertierra
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

John Ross
After the Honduran Coup

Conn Hallinan
The Settlements and the Quartet

Nikolas Kozloff
C Street Band: Sex Scandals, Moral Hypocrisy and the Far Right Agenda in Latin America

Clifton Ross /
Marcy Rein
U.S. and Honduras: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Good Neighbor

Carl Ginsburg
Summers' Clouded Crystal Ball

Michael Neumann
Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God!

Gilad Atzmon
The Left and Islam: Thinking Outside of the Secular Box

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Parable of the Golden Parachute

Ellen Hodgson Brown
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes

Jim Goodman
Rural America Needs More Than Listening Sessions

Christopher Bickerton
Europe's New Politics of Hard Times

Wendell Potter
Health Care Industry Adopts Tobacco Lobby's Tactics

Dave Lindorff
CIA Lies: Why Isn't Congress in Open Revolt?

David Ker Thomson
Switchbacking Toward Bastille Day

Anthony DiMaggio
The Michael Jackson Feeding Frenzy

Raymond Lawrence
Michael Jackson as Sexual Pervert: the Calumnies of Peter King

Walid El Houri
Neda and Marwa: a Tale of Two Murdered Women

Stephanie Westbrook
Yes, We Camp

Roger Gaess
The Shades of Highgate Cemetery

David Yearsley
Tara, America's Dream House

Kim Nicolini
Caution: Men at Work, Robbing Banks

Poets' Basement
Five Poems From the Japanese

Website of the Weekend
Free Tiga and Hugh!

August 17, 2009

Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

By RAY MCGOVERN

The hack columnists of the corporate press are missing the most obvious explanation for former Vice President Dick Cheney’s widely reported “disappointment” with former President George W. Bush on the issue of pardons — self-interest.

Barton Gellman of the Washington Post has now joined feature writers from Time in aping Cheney’s hagiographer in chief, Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard. They all choose to dote on Cheney’s loyalty to his former chief of staff, Irv Lewis “Scooter” Libby, while ignoring reasons why Cheney might have hoped for a presidential pardon himself.

Gellman is a talented journalist with a tainted record. He wrote a truly shameless article for the Post when it was competing with The New York Times for cheerleading laurels prior to the war on Iraq.

Remember those dangerous sounding “aluminum tubes” said to be procured by Iraq to develop a nuclear bomb — the ones that turned out to be for conventional artillery? The Bush administration tasked the Times’ Judith Miller and Michael Gordon to push the canard that the tubes’ technical properties showed the intended use to be as casings for rotors in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a key step in producing a nuclear bomb. The pair rose to the occasion with flair.

The Times front-paged their story on Sunday, September 8, 2002; and on the morning talk shows Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all referred to the Times story. The ploy worked like a charm. None of the talk show hosts dared ask an impolite question — like who gave the information to the Times.

The Post’s Gellman was suborned into doing a similar story on chemical weapons in the fall of 2002, when the White House was fuming at recalcitrant analysts in both the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA. The not-yet-corrupted intelligence analysts still there could simply not get the hang of it. They were having a hard time, sans evidence, in producing faith-based intelligence on “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.

DIA had issued a formal report saying there was no evidence of active chemical or biological weapons programs. And CIA analysts could find no credible evidence of meaningful ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite the extreme pressure to find some. (The CIA ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee there had occurred a “hammering” of analysts more severe than any he had seen in his 32-year career in the analysis directorate.)

On Dec. 12, 2002, the Post front-paged a Gellman report that “Islamic extremists affiliated with al Qaeda took possession of a chemical weapon in Iraq last month or in late October.” The story was attributed to “two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report and its source.”
Lest any readers miss the import, Gellman stressed that, if true, this “would be the most concrete evidence to support the charge, aired for months by President Bush and his advisers, that al Qaeda terrorists receive material assistance in Iraq.” The next 27 paragraphs of Gellman’s story were so laden with caveats and the subjunctive mood that they brought to mind Alice’s plaintive cry in Wonderland:

“There is no use trying, said Alice; one can't believe impossible things. I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
The Dec. 12, 2002 Post article drew loud complaints, including from the paper’s ombudsman, Michael Getler, who asked: “What, after all, is the use of this story that practically begs you not to put much credence in it? Why was it so prominently displayed, and why not wait until there was more certainty about the intelligence?”

Come on, Getler; you know why. Bush and Cheney were scraping for evidence to “justify” attacking Iraq. Gellman and your paper were happy to oblige.
Having proved his mettle, Gellman was able to acquire the kind of access to Cheney and his palace guard that would enable him to write a useful book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, with some striking revelations.

Cheney Lied to House Majority Leader

For example, Gellman describes how Cheney convinced then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a leading Republican opponent of war with Iraq, to vote in favor of the war resolution:
"Cheney ... had ... a borrowed hideaway office in the Capitol building. … He brings Armey in ... [and says] 'Let me explain to you what's really going on. ... Saddam is much more dangerous than we want to tell the public.'

"He told Armey two things that he's never said in public and that are not true," Gellman continues. "He said that Saddam personally … had direct ties with al Qaeda. And he said that Iraq was making substantial progress towards a miniature nuclear weapon" and would soon have “packages that could be moved even by ground personnel" and "a delivery system in their relationship with organizations such as al Qaeda."

These claims, writes Gellman, "crossed so far beyond the known universe of fact that they were simply without foundation."

But Gellman now seems to be angling for still more access to Cheney and his dwindling circle of supporters. In his Post article on Thursday, “Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush,” Gellman is back to fawning for food. Maybe he has another book in mind, confident that no one will take seriously the panegyric likely to come from the pen of Cheney’s “authorized biographer,” neocon Stephen Hayes.

Gellman’s sugary piece gets a little sickening, but bear with me. Apparently, it is easy to focus on Cheney’s imaginary redeeming qualities, if you limit your interviews to his inner circle. From Cheney’s second-term national security adviser John Hannah, and Aaron Friedberg, a foreign policy adviser, Gellman learns that Cheney “really feels he has an obligation to save the country from danger.”
Another interviewee was impressed by Cheney’s “continuing zeal” for the positions he took while in office. Gellman describes Cheney as “urgently focused … on shaping events.” Gellman also stirs up some empathy for the lion-in-winter ex-Vice President. According to Gellman, Cheney takes a morning drive to Starbucks for a decaffeinated latte (no caffeine because of his heart condition, you know) and attends the soccer and softball games of his grandchildren.

The trouble for Gellman’s sympathetic portrayal is that there is far too much evidence of criminal activity on the record about his subject, though you wouldn’t know that from reading the Post article.

What Cheney is “urgently focused” on right now is staying out of prison. As he sits writing his memoir in his own Eagle’s Nest over his garage in a fancy Virginia suburb, Cheney is pulling out all the stops to ensure that he does not have to face the music for war crimes.

For Cheney, there apparently will be no trips to Paris? No, that’s where Rumsfeld almost got arrested two years ago. After a war-crimes complaint was lodged, he had to go out the back door of the embassy and dart to the airport for the first flight back to the U.S., before the Paris magistrate decided whether or not to detain him.

I do think that Hayes, the pundits for Time and Gellman have it right when they say that Cheney is angry with George W. Bush. But they are disingenuous about why. By now they must have been able to figure out that when Cheney vents his anger at Bush’s failure to pardon Libby, the ex-Vice President is really livid that Bush did not issue a blanket pardon for Cheney and other co-conspirators. Cheney had every reason to expect the pardon (excusing crimes such as torture and launching an aggressive war by deceiving Congress), given that he seems to have engaged in those crimes with his boss’ full knowledge and encouragement.

Can these journalists be so dense that they miss this motive for Cheney’s anger? They paint a picture of a man intensely loyal to a favored subordinate; and that is no doubt true, since one’s power is diminished to the extent you are seen as unable to protect someone in your employ.

But when Cheney accuses Bush of abandoning “an innocent man” who had served the President loyally; when Cheney excoriates anyone who would “sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder” — he appears to be talking about himself as much as Libby. It is such an obvious allegory, a classic example of self-pity masquerading as altruism; and the pundits don’t get it — or, more likely, pretend not to.
My sense is that Cheney is feeling abandoned; that he senses a real danger of being brought to justice; and that he is waging a series of pre-emptive strikes to head that off.

Put yourself in Cheney’s shoes, as uncomfortable as they might be. Daughter Liz has disclosed more than once what has her father so agitated — press reports that Attorney General Eric Holder is close to appointing a special prosecutor to investigate White House-authorized crimes, including torture — not policy differences, mind you, but capital crimes under U.S. as well as international law.

Cheney’s war crimes and other felonies? Not enough room to list them all here. But suffice it to say that Cheney’s fingerprints – and those of his legal counsel David Addington – are all over the torture policies. Inspector General reports from the Department of Justice and from the CIA are scheduled to be released soon and are sure to reveal more Cheney fingerprints.

Attorney General Holder reportedly found the CIA IG report nauseating with what are bound to be stomach-churning accounts of torture.
Still more photos, videos and documents are likely to surface in the months ahead revealing more evidence of torture, kidnapping and perhaps hit-team activities – even if President Barack Obama succeeds in keeping most of the photos under wraps.

Reading recently about the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal, I was reminded that it was the movies of Nazi concentration camps that wiped the arrogant smirks off the faces of senior Nazi officials, defendants like Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess.

Bulldozers pushing corpses into open pits, bodies stacked like cordwood — the movies taken by U.S. soldiers of such atrocities had devastating effect. According to one witness, “Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel sat there, bent over and broken, mopping his lined face with a soggy ball of handkerchief.” The smirks never came back.

Cheney and his associates have got to be prepared for something similar, even though they were not vanquished in war. They probably consider the chances slight that they would be brought to an international court, even though Chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, pointedly warned at Nuremberg:

“…the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to the law. And … while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.”

As for violations of U.S. law, the list is long. Interestingly, two of the three Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 29 and 30, 1974, were based, in part, on misusing the CIA. Such misuse was brought to a whole new level, as Cheney visited CIA Headquarters promoting “intelligence” on non-existent threats and took a leading role in misusing the agency to torture detainees.

There’s also the possibility that some of Cheney’s co-conspirators will renounce their abuses, either out of genuine remorse for the hubris they showed at the height of their powers or in a bid to rehabilitate their careers. From his new job at Texas Tech in Lubbock, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales earlier this week conceded that he erred in using the word “quaint” and “the Geneva Convention” in the same sentence in a memo he signed on its way to President Bush when Gonzales was White House counsel.

Now that Gonzales has a job with health benefits, we can expect further steps to disassociate himself from the smoking-gun executive memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, which ordered that the protections of the Geneva Conventions would not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees.
It is also an open secret that Cheney’s chief lawyer, David Addington, drafted that memorandum, although Gonzales forwarded it on so Bush could sign it. Late last year the Senate Armed Services Committee reported that this Feb. 7, 2002 memorandum “opened the door” to a wide range of abusive interrogations.

Though Addington mid-wifed a whole generation of Bush-era illegalities, he has pretty much disappeared from public view.

It seems a sure thing that the next time Addington comes to testify on the Hill, the smirks he displayed when he and John Yoo appeared before the House Judiciary will have disappeared. Addington’s view of the law is so bizarre that he might be disbarred. He is more liability than asset to Cheney at this point.

The bottom line for Cheney is this: Too much has gone wrong, and Cheney cannot afford to take any chances that there will not be more cracks in the wall protecting Bush-era secrets.

The good news, as far as Cheney is concerned, can be seen in the clear signs that neither Obama nor Holder have any stomach for holding Cheney to account — and still less for holding Bush accountable.
Perhaps there is something in the water here in Washington, but folks in power seem far more interested in circumventing the law than enforcing it — political expediency wins out over solemn oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.

At times this avoidance of accountability assumes ludicrous proportions, with the Obama administration going the extra mile and more to cover up its predecessors' misconduct. For instance, releasing the suppressed testimony of Dick Cheney before U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in 2004 concerning the leaking of the name of CIA operations officer Valerie Plame (in order to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had accused the White House of “twisting” Iraq War intelligence) would certainly throw light on this sorry episode.

In the closing arguments of the trial at which Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice, Fitzgerald declared: “There is a cloud over the Vice President…and that cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice.”

Bush’s Justice Department refused to release Cheney’s testimony, even though, as Fitzgerald said, “there were no agreements, conditions and understandings” about keeping the transcript secret.

Then, instead of living up to President Obama’s promise of openness, the new administration continued to oppose releasing Cheney’s testimony. In addition to the many reasons adduced by the former administration for keeping the testimony secret, Obama/Holder’s lawyers added a new one, dubbed by Dan Froomkin the “Daily Show Disclosure Exclusion.”

A Justice Department lawyer actually argued in federal court that there should be an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act disclosure rules for documents that might subject senior administration officials to embarrassment — as on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” on Comedy Central. Justice civil division lawyer Jeffrey M. Smith contended that, if Cheney’s remarks were published, then a future Vice President might refuse to provide candid information during a criminal probe out of concern “that it’s going to get on the ‘Daily Show.’”

If I were Cheney, that feckless kind of lawyering would be music to my ears. I would read it as a sign of cowardice on the part of Obama and Holder.

Obama and Holder sometimes appear so eager to prove themselves to the Washington Establishment that they protect Bush-Cheney secrets even when a disclosure would serve an important national security goal.
After all, a powerful argument for releasing the Cheney transcript would be that it might discourage future senior government officials from leaking the identity of undercover CIA officers for craven political reasons. Also, it might give a politician pause before aiding and abetting a criminal cover-up.

It seems certain that prosecutor Fitzgerald asked Cheney to explain his handwritten note demanding that then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan falsely exonerate Libby in the Plame leak, like McClellan had already done for Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove.

Cheney wrote:

“not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others -”
However, instead of the words “that was,” Cheney had initially written, “this Pres” before striking through “this Pres.,” which was still legible.
You don’t have to be a crackerjack analyst to figure out why Cheney changed the active to the passive voice and struck out “this Pres.” The evidence indicates that President Bush was more directly involved in the Valerie Plame affair than is now understood.

Despite six months of resisting demands for a serious investigation of Bush-Cheney wrongdoing, Holder appears, finally, to be stepping to the plate with the intent of appointing a special prosecutor, albeit one whose authority may be tightly circumscribed.

But Cheney doesn’t want to risk the chance that a special prosecutor might insist on expanding the probe beyond the possible indictment of a few low-level operatives who exceeded the Bush administration’s prescriptions on how much water to use in waterboarding a prisoner.
So, Cheney appears to be pursuing a new strategy of pre-emption. His most obvious tactic is to tie his actions on torture tightly to Bush. On May 10 when Bob Schieffer asked Cheney how much Bush knew about the “enhanced interrogation techniques," the former Vice President stated clearly, if redundantly:

“I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew — he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the President. He signed off on it.”

Cheney seemed eager to answer the question. The idea, of course, would be to juice the jitters he already perceives at senior levels of the Obama administration, and to make it clear that no one will take Cheney down alone; i.e., without Bush right beside him.
In Cheney's view, this image of a former President in the dock is sure to deter dithering lawyers and politicos at the top of the White House and Justice Department, who are more interested in sniffing the political winds than in enforcing the rule of law.

My worst fear is that Cheney may be right.

Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). This article appeared at Consortiumnews.com.  Ray McGovern can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com

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