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Today's Stories

July 18, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Can Congressional Republicans End Bush's Wars?

 

July 15 / 17, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Don't You Dare Call It Treason

Jeffrey St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton

Paul Craig Roberts
Economic Treason

Harry Browne
"What They Do to Us, They Will Do to You": Shell Oil in Mayo, Ireland

Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe and Tamar Yaron
A Warning from Israel

Andrew Rubin
End of the Enlightenment: an Open Letter to Stephen Plaut

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Ghost Battalions

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Changes in Selma: Standing Up to Racism in the South

Fred Gardner
A Professional Bust

Christopher Brauchli
An Olympic Feat: How to "Double" Aid with No New Money

Chris Floyd
The Great Iraq Oil Giveaway

Ben Tripp
The Dark Incontinent

Col. Dan Smith
General Abizaid, I'm Glad You Asked

Jason Leopold
What Did Rove Say and When Did He Say It?

Jack Random
Miller Time

Norman Solomon
War and Venture Capitalism

George Ochenski
Liberate Montana's Rivers: Come One, Come All!

Website of the Weekend
Vote for CounterPuncher David Vest

 

July 14, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton

Subcomandante Marcos
This is What Will Do and How We Shall Do It: the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona

Dave Lindorff
No More Moral Relativism: the US is a Terrorist State

Joshua Frank
Rove Agency: Liberals and the CIA

Jude Wanniski
Those 8 Black Pages: What's the Real Story on Karl Rove?

Dave Zirin
Storming the Castle

Kevin Zeese
Exit Strategy: Within Reach?

Robert Jensen
War Myths and the Press

Reza Fiyouzat
A Worldwide Call to Free Akbar Ganji

Carol Norris
Governor Paranoid: Schwarzenegger Comes Unhinged

Website of the Day
Nate Osborn: Heroic Human Rights Activist and CounterPuncher

 

July 13, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Cold Blooded Murders in Iraq

George Galloway
We Can't Separate the London Bombings from the Political Backdrop

Carlos Fierro
A Supreme Waste of Time

Sarah Knopp
Hate on the Border

Norman Solomon
"Isolated Pockets of Problems": the Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors

Mickey Z.
Water on the Brain

Jim Minick
The Right Tree in the Right Place

Pat Williams
American Indian Education for All

Andrew N. Rubin
Life Behind the Wall: "We are No Longer Able to See the Sun Set"

Website of the Day
"London's Burning": the Mikey Mix

 

July 12, 2005

Laith al-Saud
Voices of Resistance: an Interview with Dr. Mohammed al-Obaidi of Iraq's Peoples' Struggle Movement

Kara N. Tina
"This is How We Do It": Report from the Gleneagles Battlefield

William A. Cook
The London Bombings: Why Has It Come to This?

Jack Bratich
2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise v. Big Pharma

Amina Mire
The Problem with Speaking in the Name of Others

Dick J. Reavis
Lessons from the Christian Jihadists: the Virtues of Burning Crosses and Colored Smoke

Kevin Zeese
Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Vets

Paul Craig Roberts
No-Think Nation

Website of the Day
Coke Gags Indian Artist

 

July 9 / 11, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
After the Bombings

Uri Avnery
War of the Colors in Israel

Sheldon Rampton
Blaming Galloway: Rhetoric vs. Reality in London

Bill Christison
Hiroshima's 60th Anniversary and Nukes in Iran: an Opportunity or Just More Hand-wringing from the Peace Movement?

Robert Fisk
Blair's Alliance with Bush Bombed

Stephen Winspear
Collateral Damage in London?

Saul Landau
Mission Accomplished: Iraq is Broken

Behrooz Ghamari
Thomas Friedman's Muslim Problem

Karl Beitel
False Promises and Real Debt Relief

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Throwing Gasoline on Haiti's Fires

Fred Gardner
Sentencing Season

John Whitlow
And What Does the Market Say?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The London Blasts: Who's Being Transformed, Them or Us?

Lila Rajiva
Witches and Bastards

Laura Carlsen
CAFTA: Deepening the Inequities

Jackie Corr
Ted Turner and Jiminy Cricket

Dave Lindorff
"My Brother Went Over There Gung Ho; Now He's Just Bitter"

N. D. Jayaprakash
Why the CIA Tried to Kill Chou En Lai at the Bandung Conference

Seth Sandronsky
Meet the "Truth Tour": Rightwing Radio Hosts Go to Iraq

Norman Madarasz
The Choking of Brazil's Worker Party

Ben Tripp
The Inevitability of George W. Bush

Poets' Basement
Louise, Albert, Landau, Davies and Engel

Website of the Weekend
The Mother of All Enemies Lists

 

July 8, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Blowback Hits Britain: Londoners Pay Heavy Price for Blair's Deception

Tariq Ali
The London Bombings: Why They Happened

Monica Benderman
One Soldier's Fight to Legalize Morality

Rick Jahnkow
Beyond Opt-Out: the Counter-Recruitment Movement

Christopher Brauchli
Dear Vet: If You Want to Eat While You Recuperate, You Gotta Pay Extra

Kim Peterson
Bombs in the Underground: Terror Begats Terror

Joshua Frank
Leakers and Liars: Inching Toward Indictments?

Norman Solomon
Messages from the Carnage

Website of the Day
An Interview with Ray McGovern

July 7, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr

John Walsh
More Hawkish Than Bush: Dems in Full Battle Cry

Mike Marqusee
Message from London

Gilad Atzmon
London's Burning

Nicole Colson
Showdown at the Supreme Court

Jack Random
Judith Miller, Anti-Hero

Norman Solomon
Judith Miller, Drum Majorette for War

Len Colodny
Is Bob Woodward Still Protecting Al Haig?

Cockburn / St. Clair
Judy Miller: the Luckiest Martyr

 

 

July 6, 2005

Elaine Cassel
Political Necrophilia in Florida: Jeb Bush and Terri Schiavo, a Strange Affair

Sean Donahue
Why the G8 Debt Relief Plan Won't Help Nicaragua's Poor

Jeremy R. Hammond
State Sponsors of Terrorism, Applying the US Standard

Joshua Frank
Will Rove be Indicted?

Ali Khan
The "Gift" of US Democratization

Michael Dickinson
Billy Graham's Final Crusade: Blessed are the Warmakers

Norman Solomon
How to Plunge Deeper into a Quagmire: Withdrawal and US Credibility

Dave Zirin
Triumph of the Shrill: Tony Blair's Olympiad

Gary Leupp
Accusing Ahmadinejad

Website of the Day
Humiliation in Baghdad: "Not Something We Would Do"

 

 

July 5, 2005

Behrooz Ghamari
What's the Matter with Iran?: How the Reformists Lost the Presidency

Elaine Cassel
Why This Progressive Will Miss Sandra Day O'Connor

Ron Jacobs
Robert and Mabel Williams's Great Fight for Justice

Bob Libal
The Right's Assault on Academia

Dr. Peter Rost
Mea Culpa from a Big Pharma CEO

Mark Engler
The Big Debt Deal: Where's the Jubilee?

Gideon Levy
They Broke the Public's Heart

Dave Zirin
The Great Olympics Scam

Sameer Dossani
The Trouble with Gleneagles

 

 

July 2 / 4, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
"Bomb Teheran!" Urges Jilted Condi?

Lenni Brenner
Jefferson, God and the Fourth of July

Laura Carlsen
Zapatista's Red Alert

James Petras
The Pretensions of Neoliberalism: Six Myths About the Benefits of Foreign Investment

William A. Cook
Kings of Serpents

Brian Cloughley
Quagmire of the Vanities

Saul Landau
The Mass Media, Symbols and Ownership

Tom Crumpacker
Who Has What to Hide About Luis Posada Carriles?

Greg Moses
Dylan's America

Dr. Susan Block
My Adelphia Story: a Tale of Censorship, Fraud, Christian Family Values and Really Lousy Cable Service

Fran Shor
Disassembling Bush's Iraq War: Liberated into a No Man's Land

Fred Gardner
Study: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

Moshe Adler
The New London Case: Corporate Giveaways That Destroy Communities, But Don't Create Jobs

David Model
The Downing Street Memo: So What's New?

Seth Sandronsky
California Spying, Schwarzenegger-Style

Ramzy Baroud
Managed Democracy in the Middle East

Suzan Mazur
Frank Carlucci the First: the "Sublime Prince" of Scranton

Ben Tripp
Voltaire, I Can Dig Your Rap

Justin Taylor
Faux Biography and the Pleasures of "Lint"

Brendan Bailey
Mesh Caps, Vice Magazine and the Trouble with Irony

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Louise

Website of the Weekend
Radical Reference

 

 

July 1, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
With Friends Like These: Bush Buddies Karimov and Musharraf

Pat Williams
What Real Westerners Think About Bush's Pseudo-Cowboy Palaver

Gary Leupp
Summer Surprise?

John Stauber
Mad Cow in America: the USDA Continues to Lie

John Chuckman
The Blessings of Canada

Justicia y Paz
Colombia's Disappeared: Their Names, At Least!

Cockburn / St. Clair
It's Put Up or Shut Up for Bush and the Dems on the Supreme Court

 

June 30, 2005

Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to Carl Levin: Compassion for Iraqis

John Stauber
Oprah Not the "Only" Mad Cow in America

Virginia Rodino
All Roads Lead to Baghdad: Unity in the Anti-War Movement

Jason Leopold
Meet the New Chair of the FERC: James Kelliher, the Man Who Invited Enron to Write Bush's Energy Policy

Dave Lindorff
What Was Bush Thinking?

Greg Moses
Racism at Cape Cod

Norman Solomon
Memo to the Iraq War

Joshua Frank
Israel's Theocrats

Alexander Cockburn
The Political Function of PBS

 

June 29, 2005

Mike Schaefer
How the Washington Post Lied About Its Own War Poll

Roger Burbach / Paul Cantor
Bush's Big Democratic Hoax in Iraq

Sharon Smith
Democrats Shift into Reverse

Sam Husseini
A Quick Way to End the Insurgency

John Stauber
Put a Photo of Mad Cow #2 on a Milk Carton

Ahmad Faruqui
Is Militarism Irreversible in Pakistan?

Linda S. Heard
Bush's Speech: the View from Cairo

Stew Albert
Chet Helms: a Rock and Roll Hero

Ray McGovern
Bush at Ft. Bragg: Stay the Crooked Course

 

 

June 28, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
A Defeat Bred in Deceit

Landau / Hassen
Bush's Meddling in Internal Syrian Politics

John A. Murphy
Keeping Nader Off the Ballot: an Analysis of Political Profiling in Pennsylvania

Mike Whitney
More Lies from Rumsfeld: Those "Meetings" with Insurgents

CounterPunch News Service
JFK on Staying in Vietnam: Is Bush Reading from Kennedy's Playbook?

Dave Zirin
Pining for the Pistons

Dave Lindorff
Showtime in Washington

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: a Bloody Mess

 

 

June 27, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Blood Sacrifices for Empty Slogans

Mike Marqusee
G8: Who are the Hijackers?

Mark Scaramella
When a Corporate Raider Claims Economic Hardship: the Court-Approved Lies of Charles Hurwitz

Leigh Saavedra
Press Apologists for Torture

Kathy Kelly
Where is the UN?


June 25 / 26, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals

Jennifer Van Bergen
America's Parallel Legal Systems

George Corsetti
This Land is Their Land: Condemnation for Corporations

Mark Chmiel / Andrew Wimmer
Let's Open the Gulag: a People's Mission to Gitmo

Kevin Zeese
Counter-Recruitment: How to Keep the Military From Getting their Hands on Your Kids

P. Sainath
Russian Roulette in Vidharbha

John Stauber
How to Bury a Mad Cow

Scott Handleman
Gay in the Third World

Tom Barry
The Politics & Ideologies of the Anti-Immigrationists

John Walsh
Looking for Peace in All the Wrong Places

Justin E.H. Smith
The Hairless Apes of Kansas vs. the Reality-Based Community: Why Progressives Have a Stake in the War on Evolution

Alan Wallis
The Story of Pinky: the Drug Trade in My Neighborhood

Ben Tripp
Negative Space: an Artful Lesson

Frederick B. Hudson
Songs to Lose Your Loneliness By: the Raised Voices of Sweet Honey in the Rock

Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Engel, Davies, and Albert

 

 

June 24, 2005

Ray McGovern
The Downing St. Fixation: Fixing to Fix "Fixed"

Jorge Mariscal
"They Only Call Us Americans When They Need Us for War": the Paradox of Mexican Americans in Iraq

Desiree Hellegers
Portland vs. the FBI

Zeynep Toufe
What Do the American People Know and When Did They Know It?

Joshua Frank
Call Him Senator Con Job

David Lindorff
Which Flag Would Jesus Burn?

Michael Neumann
Victory and Recruitment

Website of the Day
Gagging Dr. Dean

June 23, 2005

Christopher Brauchli
Thomas Griffith and Rule 49: He Practiced Law Without a License; Now He's a Federal Appeals Court Judge

Clay Conrad
Killing Off the Jury with Tort Reform

Standard Schaefer
A Retort to Military Neo-Liberalism

P. Sainath
Vidharbha: No rains and 116F, But It Does Have "Snow" and Water Parks

Mark Engler
CAFTA Deserves a Quiet Death

Norman Solomon
Voluntary Amnesia in America

Cockburn / St. Clair
Frank Calzon

Kathy Kelly
Where You Stand Determines What You See

 

June 22, 2005

Kevin Zeese
The Bush Administration's Psy-Ops on the American Public: an Interview with Col. Sam Gardiner

William S. Lind
Afghanistan: the Other War

Arsalan Iftikhar
Patriots Against the PATRIOT Act

Dan Nagengast
Give Populism a Chance: From France to Kansas

David Krieger
To the Graduates: We Live in an Interdependent World

Kathleen & Bill Christison
Tempest in Santa Fe: Confronting Israeli Myth-making

 

 

June 21, 2005

Brian Cloughley
Destroy the Unbelievers!

Mike Whitney
President Disconnect

Dave Lindorff
Who Needs Big Bird, Anyway?

Mark Weisbrot
Bush's Lonely Campaign Against Hugo Chavez

Matthew R. Simmons
The Coming Saudi Oil Crisis

Dave Zirin
The Crass Slipper Fits: Ron Howard's Terrible "Cinderella Man"

Virginia Rodino
The Anti-War Movement and Impeachment

Paul Craig Roberts
A War Waged by Liars and Morons

 

June 20, 2005

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Tariq Ali
To the Gates of the Gleneagles Hotel!

Mickey Z.
WMDs American-Style: It's 60 Years Since Alamogordo

William Blum
Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends

Gary Leupp
Old News Indeed: In 1999, Bush Craved Chance to Attack Iraq

Jason Leopold
Someone Tell Bush Iraq Wasn't Behind 9/11, Before He Starts Another War

Dave Lindorff
Why the Media Should be Schiavo'd

Alan Maass
The GM Job Massacre

Uri Avnery
Condi and Hamas

Website of the Day
Crimes Against Poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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July 18, 2005

The Epiphany of Walter B. Jones

Can Congressional Republicans End Bush's Wars?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

If President Bush has competent advisors, he must know that his Iraqi war has become a liability for him and for the Republican Party and might easily become a catastrophe.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 45% of Americans doubt President Bush's veracity compared to 41% who regard him as honest.

The poll also finds that a majority of Americans regard Iraq as a more important issue than the lack of jobs and that more Americans now disapprove of Bush's performance than approve.

This is not good news for a president whose war is going badly. On June 27, General George Casey, US commander of the multinational coalition in Iraq, told morning TV audiences that the Iraq conflict "will not be settled on the battlefield." The Iraq conflict, Gen. Casey said, "will ultimately be settled by negotiation."

Instead of firing Gen. Casey, as he would have done in the past, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld backed him up. Rumsfeld also told TV audiences that "coalition forces are not going to repress the insurgency," which might "go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."

That was not what Americans promised a 3-week war wanted to hear. Even inattentive Americans could discern that if the Bush administration could be so far wrong on the duration of the war, it could also be very wrong on the reasons for the war.

The poll showing the sharp drop in belief in Bush's credibility was conducted during July 8-11 and released on July 13. The poll reflects the public's new awareness of the interminable conflict. With about 15,000 American casualties (dead and wounded), the cost of the war is starting to come home.

The outcome of the invasion is far removed from the Bush administration's promise of a cakewalk strewn with flowers. The war has also proven to be extremely expensive at a time when Americans are hearing that Social Security and Medicare are running out of money. Americans want to know why Bush is investing $300 billion in a training ground for al Qaeda when America's elderly cannot pay their prescription bills.

On top of this comes the Karl Rove problem. Famous as Bush's principal advisor, Rove has apparently been fingered as the administration official who committed the felony of leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent in retaliation for her husband exposing the neoconservative lie that Iraq had purchased nuclear material from Niger.

For Bush, the Rove problem brings back the issue of how we got ourselves at war in the first place.

The US military and the Republican establishment have done a good job of sticking by Bush even though they now understand that he misled them and put them at risk in a gratuitous war.

A retired general, Barry R. McCaffrey, recently told the House Armed Services Committee that "the Army and Marine Corps are at risk of experiencing a disaster during the coming three years. There is little reserve or surge capability to respond to new challenges."

McCaffrey, in effect, told the Armed Services Committee that the civilians in the Pentagon were out to lunch. The civilians' war-fighting strategy downplays the need for troops and relies on firepower and high-tech weapons.

General McCaffrey, currently a professor at West Point, told the Armed Services Committee that America simply lacks the troops to deal with Iraq. The general also said that even if the Pentagon could be weaned away from its high-tech fantasies, most recruitment goals are not being met. The US military is shrinking during war time.

The reason, of course, is that most Americans don't any longer see the point of the war. We were all for war when we heard our vice president Cheney and national security advisor Condi Rice, now secretary of state, tell us that Iraq had a mushroom cloud in store for American cities. But when we found out that this was all drivel, we started wondering why John Jones's son, an all-state quarterback, got his arms and legs blown off in Iraq.

The American people noticed when the CIA said that the US invasion of Iraq has turned that country into a training ground for terrorists and al Qaeda supporters. The last thing the US needs to be doing is subsidizing Osama bin Laden, and that is exactly what the Bush administration is doing in Iraq.

Hope for Bush and for America is at hand. US Representative Walter B. Jones, (R, NC) has introduced a resolution-the Homeward Bound Resolution-that requires President Bush "to announce, not later than December 31, 2005, a plan for the withdrawal of all United States Armed Forces from Iraq. "

The Congressional Research Service has taken a close look at the Resolution and has advised that the Resolution is "advisory in nature rather than mandatory. It appears to leave a great deal of discretion with the President for setting a timetable for the withdrawal of troops."

Walter B. Jones is a six-term member of the House Armed Services Committee. He is the member of Congress who required congressional dining rooms to rename French fries "freedom fries." When patriots such as Jones realize that we have made a mistake, it is time for us all to realize it.

Many Americans are so incensed at Bush for fabricating the reasons for invading Iraq that they think they prefer for his ill-fated war adventure to continue until it produces enough rope to hang him and his administration.

I understand their anger at being deceived over life and death matters. However, the longer this war continues, the more Americans there will be without arms, legs, eyes, and lives; the more terrorists will spring from Iraqi deaths; the more threatened Israel will become; and the stronger bin Laden and his successors will be in the Middle East.

In my opinion Bush deserves to be impeached. However, the goal is to stop the carnage that is turning the US into a pariah and placing our economic future into the hands of our Asian bankers.

Who wants another American soldier killed or maimed for nothing other than a neoconservative agenda based on lies, ignorance and hubris?

Walter B. Jones is an American hero. He has provided cover for President Bush to comply with the will of Congress and withdraw from Iraq. Every American of good will should support the Homeward Bound Resolution. Let history deal with George W. Bush and his war.

The Homeward Bound Resolution and its supporters will be America's redemption.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com