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

 

Note: If you've had trouble accessing the CP homepage over the past couple of days, you're not alone. But, no, we weren't sabotaged by the Bush administration (or the Kerry campaign). One of our servers blew out on Tuesday. We're back up now, but the site may load slowly for the next couple of days until all of the kinks are worked out. Thanks for your concern and patience. AC/JSC

Before Kill and Run, Was There Rape and Run? Documents Show the FBI Gave Janklow a Pass by Stephen Hendricks; The Faces of Janus: Why the New York Times Has Always Been a Rotten Paper by Alexander Cockburn; Steal a Tree, Go To Jail; Steal a Forest, Stay in the Lincoln Bedroom: the Politics of Timber Theft by Jeffrey St. Clair; A Southern Africa Sojourn by Lawrence Reichard; The Kiev Con: Exposing David Duke's Illusory Doctorate; CounterPunch Online is read by 70,000 visitors each day, but 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!

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

Now Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)

Today's Stories

January 30, 2004

David Miller
The Hutton Whitewash

January 29, 2004

Patricia Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist

Ron Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized" Immigration

Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq

Greg Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on Moon and Mars

Norman Solomon
The State of the Media Union

Cockburn / St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?

 

January 28, 2004

Kathy Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of Torture and Assassination

 

January 27, 2004

Steve Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with CNN's Aaron Brown

Daniel Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the Lies from the Inside

C.G. Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected President?

Josh Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke Screens

Greg Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again

Gilad Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art

Mike Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad

Hammond Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day

 

January 26, 2004

Sean Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's Drug War Zealot

Gary Leupp
David Kay's Admission

January 24/5, 2004

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come"

Laura Flanders
State of the Conservative Union

Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala

Dave Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George

Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace

Alexander Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris 0

 

January 23, 2004

Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out

Standard Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben Protests US Travel Policy

Josh Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's Vermont

William A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious

 

January 22, 2004

Sam Smith
Howards End?

Patricia Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space

Alexander Lukin
Putin and the Clans

Katherine van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations and Bush's Mind

Forrest Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia

 

January 19, 2004

Justin E. H. Smith
Inside America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution

Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.

Ray McGovern
Bush's State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?

Werther
SOTUS: the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura

Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War

Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?

Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water

Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism: a Practical Manual

Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State

 

January 17 / 18, 2004

Fadi Kiblawi and Will Youmans
The Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists

Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins

Blaming the Symptoms

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant

Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq

Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq

M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians

Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise

Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp

Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court

Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov

Carol Norris
Arnold and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up

Joe Quandt
Suicide Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities

David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75

Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies

Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review

Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister

Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum

Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie

 

January 16, 2004

Kathy Kelly
A Visit to Umm Qasr Prison

William S. Lind
More Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare

Gillian Russom
So. Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"

Ari Shavit
Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris

Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris

Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich

Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2

 

January 15, 2004

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Memo to the President: Your State of the Union Address

John Chuckman
Dry Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc

Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter

Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon

Gary Leupp
The Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan

 

January 14, 2004

Greg Moses
Happy Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots

Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights

Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional Dems (and Dean)

Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton

Alexander Cockburn
Bush, Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last

 

January 13, 2004

William S. Lind
How 2004 Looks from Potsdam

M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?

Mickey Z
Snipers: No Nuts in Iraq

Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro: The Prisoner and the Presidents

Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?

 

January 12, 2004

Ben Tripp
No Stan for the Kurds

Norman Solomon
The Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South

Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge

Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq

Uri Avnery
Syria's Peace Proposal

 

January 10 / 11, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair

Susan Davis
Dangerous Books

Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell

Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past

Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq

Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety

Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?

Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List

Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost

Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War

Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry

Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?

Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common

Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike

Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page

Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball

Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon

Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert

 

January 9, 2004

David Lindorff
The Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses

Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand

Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non-existent WMDs

Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable

David Vest
Disabled Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld

 

January 8, 2004

Neve Gordon
Israeli Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail

Lenni Brenner
Dr. Dean and the Godhead

Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks

Mark Scaramella
Inside the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium

Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit

James Hollander
Journalists Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad

 

January 7, 2004

Democracy Now!
Uncharitable Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured

Greg Weiher
The Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem

Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003

Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors

Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky

Bob Boldt
God Talk

Ramon Ryan
Small Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising

 

 

January 6, 2004

Dave Lindorff
RNC Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads

Ron Jacobs
Drugs in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism

Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia

Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go

John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto

Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake

John L. Hess
A Record to Dissent From

Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT

David Price
"Like Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation

 

January 5, 2004

Al Krebs
How Now Mad Cow!

Kathy Kelly
Squatting in Baghdad's Bomb Craters

Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons

Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm

Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution

Gary Leupp
North Korea for Dummies

 

 

January 3 / 4, 2004

Brian Cloughley
Never Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History

Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time

William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11

Glen Martin
Jesus vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse

Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage

Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble

Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia

Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left

Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case

Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy

William Blum
Codework Orange!

Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara

Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA

Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler

Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100

Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick

Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes

Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis

 

 

 

January 2, 2004

Stan Cox
Red Alert 2016

Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans

Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana

Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?

David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth


January 1, 2004

Randall Robinson
Honor Haiti, Honor Ourselves

David Krieger
Looking Back on 2003

Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs

Stan Goff
War, Race and Elections

Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac

Website of the Day
Embody Bags


December 31, 2003

Ray McGovern
Don't Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation

Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria

Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned

Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George

Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead

 

 

 

December 30, 2003

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism

Annie Higgins
When They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary

Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades

Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish

Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat

Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?

 

 

December 29, 2003

Mark Hand
The Washington Post in the Dock?

David Lindorff
The Bush Election Strategy

Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War

Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?

Uri Avnery
Israel's Conscientious Objectors

 

December 27 / 28, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
A Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul

Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World

Saul Landau
Iraq at the End of the Year

Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey

Robert Fisk
Iraq Through the American Looking Glass

Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?

Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0

Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution

Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market

Susan Davis
Lord of the (Cash Register) Rings

Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California

Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish

Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce

Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music

 

 

December 26, 2003

Gary Leupp
Bush Doings: Doing the Language

 

December 25, 2003

Diane Christian
The Christmas Story

Elaine Cassel
This Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us

Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock

Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead

Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

Alexander Cockburn
The Magnificient 9

Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season

 

 

 

December 24, 2003

M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics of Empire

William S. Lind
Marley's List for Santa in Wartime

Josh Frank
Iraqi Oil: First Come, First Serve

Cpt. Paul Watson
The Mad Cowboy Was Right

Robert Lopez
Nuance and Innuendo in the War on Iraq

 

 


December 23, 2003

Brian J. Foley
Duck and Cover-up

Will Youmans
Sharon's Ultimatum

Michael Donnelly
Here They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco

Uri Avnery
Sharon's Speech: the Decoded Version

December 22, 2003

Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks

Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?

Marjorie Cohn
How to Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue

Kathy Kelly
The Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"

 

December 20 / 21, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
How to Kill Saddam

Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy

Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali

David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole

Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis

Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the Islamic World

Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee

Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush

Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared

Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression

Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN

Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and Latino Prisoners

Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler

John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane

Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful

Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis

Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race

Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie

 


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


Search CounterPunch

 

January 30, 2004

Deception with a Purpose

Hutton Whitewash Leaves Blair in the Dock

By DAVID MILLER

The Hutton report gave an immediate political victory to the Blair government. But the all-embracing nature of the whitewash means that a spectre is haunting the Blair government. By bracketing off the issue of the reliability of the September 2002 dossier and--not widely noticed--whether the government knew it was unreliable, he fails to put the government in the clear in the wider court of public and world opinion.

According to Alastair Campbell, Hutton shows that 'the government told the truth, the Prime Minister told the truth, I told the truth'. Similarly Blair claimed that the allegation that he had 'misled the country' is itself the 'real lie'. But Hutton did not say that the claim that the government 'probably knew' was untrue. He said it was 'unfounded'--not necessarily the same thing--and he defined his terms of reference so narrowly that questions of intelligence were ruled out. His conclusions on the claim that Iraq could launch chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes, precisely echo Blair's attempt to spin the BBC report. 'The idea that we authorised or made our intelligence services invent' the evidence 'is absurd' said Blair on the day after the original Radio Four report. Hutton exonerates the government on the grounds the 45-minute claim was regarded by the intelligence agencies as 'reliable'.

But the allegation on the BBC was not that the intelligence on the 45 minutes claim was invented or even untrue but that it was 'sexed up'. As Andrew Gilligan himself put it on the 29th May 2003, the information 'did come from the [intelligence] agencies'. The 45 minute claim in the dossier was that Iraq 'can deliver chemical and biological agents using an extensive range of artillery shells, free-fall bombs, sprayers and ballistic missiles the Iraq military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of a decision to do so' (p.17).

This claim involves at least three separate falsehoods known at the time. First, that the chemical and biological agents existed and were weaponised, which the UN reports used as evidence by the government in the dossier suggested was untrue. Second, that the Iraqi's had long range delivery mechanisms in breach of UN resolution 1441; also suggested by the UN to be untrue. Third that such weapons could be deployed in 45 minutes. The claim on 45-minutes was revealed at the Hutton inquiry by both John Scarlett of the JIC and Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, to refer only to battlefield weapons, which was known at the time by the government. Hutton, in other words, exonerates the government of something of which they were not accused.

The wider issue this raises involves the further erosion of public trust in the mechanisms of liberal democracy leading to an ever increasing need for the Blair government to use all possible means of deception and spin to maintain power in the face of a deeply sceptical electorate. Blair appears not to recognise the magnitude of the allegations against him claiming that 'there could not be a more serious charge' than that of 'deception, duplicity or deceit'.

But, in fact the case against Blair involves not simply 'deception' but deception with the purpose of a pre-emptive attack on a third world nation already crippled by sanction resulting in up to 40,000 deaths. The allegation in other words is of war crimes in which duplicity and deception performed a key strategic role. It is this which is the spectre which will continue to haunt Blair and his government.

David Miller is the editor of "Tell Me Lies: Propaganda & Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq" Pluto Press. He can be reached at: david.miller@stir.ac.uk

Weekend Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Bush as Hitler? Let's Be Fair

Susan Davis
Dangerous Books

Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell

Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past

Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq

Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety

Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?

Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List

Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost

Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War

Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry

Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?

Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common

Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike

Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page

Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball

Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon

Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert


Keep CounterPunch Alive:

Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

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