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Recent
Stories
April
1, 2003
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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April 3,
2003
Neutralizing
Dissenting Voices
Can You Feel
the Silence?
By DAVID VEST
For saying on Iraqi TV what everyone from grunt
to general had been saying to anyone who would listen, Peter
Arnett has been effectively silenced, summarily fired from his
job at MSNBC and National Geographic.
The same news cycle had not begun to
cool when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard
B. Myers, called for some more silencing, lashing out at critics
of The Plan, mainly from officers both active and retired whom
he was too cowardly to name. Such criticism, stammered Gen. Myers,
is misinformed, inaccurate and harmful to American forces in
combat.
Casualty figures of how many soldiers
had been killed or wounded by criticism of Rumsfeld, Myers and
Bush were not made available.
Rumsfeld himself could not comment on
the frustration expressed by the "coalition" field
commander, Lt. Gen. William Wallace, who says the enemy he's
fighting is "not the one we war-gamed against." How
could Rumsfeld be expected to have an opinion on this? He "hasn't
had a chance to read the reports." Besides, The Plan was
the property of Tommy Franks.
In trying to portray people like retired
general Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry Division
during the first gulf war, as candidates for membership in the
Dixie Chicks, Gen. Myers' remarks were as predictable as they
were despicable.
It's not as though McCaffrey is vying
for a spot on the Green Party ticket. Clinton's former drug czar
has made it clear that in his view there's nothing wrong with
what Bush and company are doing, they're just doing it wrong.
Imagine the righteous indignation of Myers and Rumsfeld if voices
actually opposed to the invasion of Iraq were allowed to be heard
on American television.
When the closest thing to a dissenting
opinion on network or cable TV during a war is the voice of a
retired general who declares repeatedly that he supports the
president and believes he is doing the right thing, and when
even that general has his patriotism questioned when he dares
to question the administration's tactics, do I have to tell you
how much trouble we are in?
Here's the real story: the number of
voices that had already been silenced, long before Peter Arnett
was "neutralized." How many voices were silenced when
marketing experts told the networks that viewers were "turned
off" by the mere sight of protesters? Think of the voices
that were silenced when the White House cancelled Laura Bush's
poetry festival. Thousands of voices are silenced whenever the
president leaves Camp David to attend one of his by-invitation-only
Potemkin events.
How many voices representing anything
resembling your own point of view have you heard on network or
cable TV? As someone said days ago, even NPR has become National
Pentagon Radio.
Speaking of the Dixie Chicks, all of
Nashville has fallen strangely silent. You would think at least
one or two fellow artists would want to "grab their back."
Veteran music writer Chet Flippo has warned artists to "shut
up and sing" if they know what's good for them.
With its English web site shut down by
a Denial of Service attack, Al-Jazeera has been partially silenced,
except when American TV chooses to run borrowed footage, which
happens about every three seconds.
Even voices in the Administration have
been strangely silenced. Did anyone at the White House go publicly
ballistic at the report that the Reverend Franklin Graham is
threatening to descend on Iraq and baptize anything that moves?
How many voices were silenced by something
as benign as the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch? All of us were
delighted by her deliverance. So much so, alas, that suddenly
all other war news was more or less drowned out by the feel-good
reporting. The rescue palpably changed the tone of nearly everyone
reporting the war. Bad news is "boring," this was exciting.
Lynch has left the building, Lynch has left the theater, Lynch
has landed in Germany, etc. Suddenly the day was full of "dramatic
developments." Which got more coverage, the rescue of one
American or the killing of an entire Iraqi family who failed
to stop at a checkpoint?
Which story was deemed more likely to
"bring this thing home to people"? You may have noticed
that TV reporters didn't hasten to camp in the yard and interview
family members of the soldier who shot the car full of women
and children.
You can also hear a lot of silence in
some of America's proud "coalition" partners, such
as Eritrea, a classic one-party state where no opposition is
tolerated. A funny kind of partner for overthrowing a dictatorship,
if you ask me.
Look, all Peter Arnett did, besides photograph
himself running around his hotel room, looking out the window
from time to time and stating the obvious when asked his opinion,
was to thank his Iraq hosts for their hospitality.
For this, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., thinks
firing isn't enough. Arnett should be met at the border and arrested
for treason should he come back to America, says the former baseball
player who made a career of intimidating the opposition with
high heat. Reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post
and other papers have also been accused of behavior "bordering
on treason" by right-wing commentators.
To make these charges is to assert that
the mainstream press should be nothing more than a corporate
rag, an in-house news organ that knows better than to print anything
the company deems not in its best interests. It's like sitting
around and waiting for the Enron company magazine to break the
Enron scandal.
I was interviewed for Romanian radio
in 1980, back during the Ceausescu years. I had been instructed
by representatives of the State Department to avoid at all cost
making any kind of political pronouncements and to refrain from
commenting on anything that could remotely be construed as controversial.
Otherwise I was encouraged to do the interview. What was there
left to talk about? I complimented the Romanians for their lovely
landscape, told them I was enjoying my visit to their fair land
and thanked them for their hospitality. Was that disloyal of
me?
Did Donald Rumsfeld thank Saddam for
his hospitality when they were photographed hugging like schoolgirls
in Baghdad in 1983? You bet he did.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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