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Today's
Stories
July
13, 2005
Andrew
N. Rubin
Life Behind the Wall: "We are
No Longer Able to See the Sun Set"
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
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.
|
July 13, 2005
It's Only Isolated Pockets
of Problems
The Fake Optimism
of Washington's Warriors
By
NORMAN SOLOMON
In front of TV cameras, Pentagon officials
do their best to make war sound wise and noble. Most of all,
they lie.
Sometimes they do it with bold
assertions, other times with intentionally tangled syntax. But
those who give the orders that consign young soldiers to participation
in horror must assure the folks back home that all the carnage
is under control. The officials strive to project an aura of
calm about the unspeakable; they mumble cliches about grief that
cannot touch it.
For the most powerful war-makers
in Washington, the most dangerous potential enemies are the citizens
of the United States who might insist on an end to taxpayer subsidies
for mass slaughter. To forestall such a calamity, officials proclaim
endlessly that the war's worst days have passed and the future
looks increasingly bright for the ravaged land and for the freedom-loving
invaders whose invasion has ravaged it.
And so, on Tuesday night, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff glibly responded to questions
from Jim Lehrer on the PBS "NewsHour." And while the
historic disrepute of the phrase "light at the end of the
tunnel" precluded using it in the interview, Gen. Richard
Myers was close to chirpy. Along the way, he tried to make the
war in Iraq sound like an uplifting exercise in civic engagement,
inevitably headed toward triumph.
The general was tap dancing
in the footsteps of many who came before him -- during another
long war based on deception and the assumption that the USA must
keep killing in order to be credible on the world stage. When
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara visited Vietnam for the first
time, he came back and told the press that he'd seen "nothing
but progress and hopeful indications of further progress in the
future." McNamara made that statement in May 1962.
More than four years later,
in October 1966, McNamara held a news conference at Andrews Air
Force Base after returning from a trip to Vietnam. Again he spoke
with enthusiasm about the progress he'd seen there. But former
Pentagon aide Daniel Ellsberg has recounted that McNamara made
that presentation to the press "minutes after telling me
that everything was much worse than the year before."
Of course the commander in
chief is not to be outdone. He is, among his other duties, the
commander of war lies. And so, as with George W. Bush today,
Lyndon Johnson professed to be grandly optimistic when he proclaimed
in early 1967: "Peace is more within our reach than at any
time in this century."
Fifteen months ago, at a turning
point when resistance to the occupation erupted with fury in
a number of Iraqi cities, the response from American officials
was to put happy-face stickers on the carnage. "We have
isolated pockets where we are encountering problems," said
Dan Senor, a spokesperson for the top U.S. manipulator in Iraq,
Paul Bremer. A week later, on April 13, 2004, President Bush
declared: "It's not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is
relatively stable."
These kinds of statements may
seem like mere pep talks or, in retrospect, miscalculations.
But they're integral to the war-making process -- continually
speaking of light that's just over the horizon, while corpses
pile up in grisly shadows alongside the lies that keep a war
going on top of the lies that got it started.
On Tuesday night, host Jim
Lehrer asked Gen. Myers: "Do you consider Iraq a success
from your point of view?" The general replied: "I do
now, I do. I mean I don't know why I said now. I do, absolutely;
I think it's a success." A couple of minutes later he was
exuding confidence about the future: "It's going to be a
difficult fight, but we're going to be successful in this fight."
Washington's warriors insist
that Iraq is not Vietnam. Any geographer would certainly agree.
But imperial wars share similar characteristics -- including
the profound fact that the people who live in a country are more
committed to it than the invaders are. This war can't be won
for reasons that have everything to do with why it's wrong. The
occupiers are on the lowest moral ground. No amount of fake optimism
in Washington can change such realities in Iraq.
This excerpt is from Norman
Solomon's new book War
Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,
published in July 2005. For more information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
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