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Stunning New Print Edition of CounterPunch Will the US Labor Movement Rise Again in Chicago? Or is this just a power play at the top? JoAnn Wypijewski details what's really at stake in the great showdown as some of labor's most powerful bosses threaten to quit the AFL-CIO. No-holds-barred profiles of the SIEU's Andy Stern, Hoffa of the Teamsters and the other "insurgents". Jeffrey St Clair tells the incredible saga of the $30 billion bailout of Boeing. How the scandal reached the White House and Don Rumsfeld screamed, Let the woman take the fall. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the Judy Miller story. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, 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 donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch's Hot New T-Shirts for Women! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by Kathy Kelly Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories July 14, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Sticky Fingers: the Making of Halliburton 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                                                       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

Bastille Day July 14, 2005 Those Eight Black Pages What's the Real Story on Karl Rove? By JUDE WANNISKI When MSNBC's chief political correspondent Lawrence O'Donnell broke the Karl Rove story on the July 4th weekend, for a few days it looked like it was going nowhere. O'Donnell had announced on NBC's McLaughlin Group that the President's alter-ego and chief political confidante was the source who had told Time's Matt Cooper that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, had sent him to Niger, where Wilson had served as U.S. Ambassador in the Clinton administration, to find out if Saddam Hussein really was in the market for uranium oxide, "yellowcake," which would certainly mean he was still trying to produce nuclear weapons. If it were true, this would mean Rove might have perjured himself before the federal grand jury -- which had been called to ascertain if one or more government officials in revealing the name of a covert CIA operative had committed a felony. For the last two years, while this story has simmered in Washington, it had been assumed Rove was in the clear. Syndicated columnist Bob Novak, who first wrote about Valerie Plame's role in Wilson's mission in a July 14, 2003 column, had subsequently explained that he didn't know she was a "covert" CIA agent, but thought she was a Langley desk jockey, an "operative." Novak refused to reveal the names of the two administration sources who confirmed Plame's role, but he did say it wasn't Rove. In addition, Rove signed a general waiver of confidentiality that would seem to have released Matt Cooper from his promise of confidentiality. So if it were Rove, Cooper could name him and not face jail time for remaining silent. This seems to be why O'Donnell's assertion that it was Rove seemed unlikely. Yet then, within days, Rove's lawyer announced that Rove had talked to Cooper about Wilson and his CIA "wife," but that he had never mentioned her by name. Hmmmm. Cooper still refused to name his source, but when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and perhaps rule he didn't have to reveal his source, Time magazine decided to turn Cooper's notes over to the grand jury. At this point, knowing he would eventually tagged anyway, Rove gave Cooper a specific waiver of confidentiality to discuss his conversation with him back in 2003. Judith Miller of the NYTimes, who had reported on the Plame story, having been told by someone in the administration about it, now sits in a federal prison because she refused to reveal who that person is -- someone obviously not Rove. More about her later. All of this led me to believe there had to be more to this story than the surface noise, or Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would not have spent two years of his life trying to get to the bottom of things -- when it never seemed clear that Ms. Plame was a covert agent, traveling openly back and forth to her desk at Langley. It's now clear that there may be something VERY big going on here to explain all this time, money and effort. We don't know what it is, but it is in the hands of the prosecution and the federal courts, summarized in eight pages that Lawrence O'Donnell could write on July 7, on Ariana Huffington's website, "The One Very Good Reason Karl Rove Might Be Indicted." The headline is shocking in itself, coming from O`Donnell, a respected journalist, a man I`ve known since he served as chief of staff to the late Sen. Pat Moynihan in the 1980s. In his July 7 blog, the "one good reason" he cites involves eight blank pages in a February decision by Circuit Court Judge David Tetel who joined his colleagues in ordering Cooper and Miller to reveal their sources. Tetel had earlier indicated he would dissent because the matter did not seem to be a danger to national security, but after looking at the evidence presented by the prosecution he decided they had to testify because, as O`Donnell puts it, "he found that the press privilege had to give way to the gravity of the suspected crime." He also notes: "All the judges who have seen the prosecutors secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment." I certainly have no idea what`s in those eight blank pages, but I do know the Plame case involved President Bush`s assertion in his State of the Union Address prior to the decision to invade Iraq that Saddam Hussein had been attempting to buy "yellowcake," clear proof that he was still attempting to reconstitute a nuclear arsenal. It turns out that before the President made this assertion to the nation, members of his team, including CIA Director George Tenet, knew the documents supposedly proving Iraq's interest in yellowcake had been forged, and they also knew Joseph Wilson had returned from Niger months before the State of the Union address with a report that the information was false. It was only after the invasion that Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on July 6, 2003, laying out the case that the Bush administration had misled the nation. And it was within days that the press contacts began from the administration to the press, aimed at discrediting Wilson as a partisan who had supported Senator Kerry. Rove did complicate matters by calling Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball," telling him that Plame was "fair game." There have been all kinds of "impeachment" movements kicking around the Internet from antiwar advocates. The most serious followed revelations of the so-called Downing Street Memo several weeks ago, with British intelligence suggesting that Mr. Bush had made the firm decision to get rid of Saddam in the summer of 2002 and that he would make the intelligence "fit the policy." But I did not take any of that seriously because, in the end, we could never know if the President truly decided to lead the nation to war on false information or if he himself was misled by his team. Remember CIA Director George Tenet`s "slam dunk" on Saddam`s WMD? The Niger "yellowcake" story is a more serious problem for the administration, because it would be practically impossible to believe the President was misled at that late date if the man closest to him, Karl Rove, knew there was nothing to the Niger story but let the President go ahead with it anyway without telling him it was false. The precaution taken in the President`s address was to put the story to "British intelligence," so that would hopefully take care of that. But unless we know what`s in those eight blank pages we can`t be sure this still small cloud won`t grow and darken. Judith Miller`s willingness to go to jail for at least four months is another matter. We do know there was no journalist in America more responsible for promoting the idea that Saddam was hiding chemical and biological weapons. She`d written a book about it and it has subsequently been revealed that her primary source in the months before and after the war was Ahmed Chalabi. Now a member of the new National Assembly in Iraq, Chalabi is supposedly "out of favor" with the Bush administration on CIA reports that he was revealing classified information to Iran, but that is clearly a charade and Chalabi remains as close to the neo-cons as he ever was. His connections go back to his days as a fellow classmate at the University of Chicago with Paul Wolfowitz, now World Bank president, and the chief architect of the war. In 2003, Miller would have no reason to get a phone call from anyone in the White House about the Plame affair, but because she was a trusted advocate for the war among the neo-cons, she might have gotten the leak from another administration source who would not give her the clearance Miller got because it might blow the whole business sky high. I've still been wondering what is in those eight blank pages. In the week that elapsed since O'Donnell focused on them, there had been no other effort that I saw in the press to even speculate on "the gravity" supposedly therein. Last night, at least, I caught the Lou Dobbs show on CNN where he interviewed John Dean, the man largely responsible for doing in his boss, Richard Nixon, when he served as White House counsel during the Watergate period. Here was the exchange that interested me, when Dobbs commented on Judith Miller being in jail when there is still no evidence of a crime being committed: DEAN: No question. It`s a travesty that she`s in jail at this point and she`s protecting some source, who is not in jail or who is not even fessing up to relieve her of that responsibility. But you know, there are a lot of potentials here that -- how this may unwind and the reason I think the fact that there`s more to happen, is that when I read the opinion of Judge Hogan in the contempt proceeding, and I read the court of appeals decision of Judge Tatel... DOBBS: Judge Hogan, the judge who sentenced Judith Miller for contempt. DEAN: Correct. And Judge Tatel was the -- on the Appellate Court that reviewed that decision before it went to the Supreme Court and both of them have looked at the sealed record. And in that record, which they redacted in their opinion, but in their look at it, they said, this case is not where it started, it has made a dramatic turn, and this information that is now being requested by this special counsel, Fitzgerald, is needed. And therefore, they could see no basis to get around the problem of holding her in contempt or Cooper, if he wasn`t willing to testify. So, something`s happened in this case, Lou, that we don`t know and that`s why I think it may be -- well, it may be close to being over, we -- the fat lady hasn`t gotten near the stage yet. Jude Wanniski is a former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal, expert on supply-side economics and founder of Polyconomics, which helps to interpret the impact of political events on financial markets.