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Today's Stories Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz John Wayne and the New Orleans Indians   September 6, 2005 Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Our Birmingham: Did Katrina Blow Off the White Sheets of American Racism? Dan La Botz Katrina: State Failure and Human Solidarity Larry Bradshaw / Lorrie Beth Slonsky Trapped in New Orleans: First By Floods, Then By Martial Law Chuck D. Hell No We Ain't Alright Debbie Dupre / Bill Quigley Thank God There's No One to Bomb in Retaliation Omar Wariach Edward Said vs. Orwell and Hitchens: "It's Racism at the Bottom" Mike Whitney Why Rehnquist Doesn't Deserve to be Buried on US Soil Carol Norris In the Wake of Katrina Norman Solomon Firing Mike Brown is not Enough Michael Neumann But What About the Snipers? September 5, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Resurrecting Karl Marx David Vest The Battle of New Orleans:It's Looking a Lot Like Fallujah John Blair Don't Rebuild New Orleans, At Least Where It Was Fidel Castro What Cuba Has Offered the People of the Gulf Coast Mike Whitney 80,000 Rodney Kings in New Orleans Alan Farago Talking Points for a City of Corpses Doug Giebel Bush's New Orleans: "So This is Where He Used to Come to Get Drunk" Mark Chmiel Beatitudes for This New American Century Carol Wolman, MD God to Bush: "You Blew It" Norman Solomon Bush's Answer to Cindy Sheehan: "It Was About Oil" Eli Stephens An Administration Without Shame Peter Linebaugh Loo! Loo! Lulu! Loot!   September 3 / 4, 2005 Alexander Cockburn From Mitch to Katrina Paul Craig Roberts Failure on Every Front Gary Leupp New Orleans and the System that Destroyed It Dave Lindorff Profiteering from Disaster: the Real Looters Wear Pinstripes Dan La Botz Time for the U.S. to Start Over Jonathan M. Feldman From Iraq to New Orleans: the U.S. as a "Failed State" Landau / Hassen The Cuban 5: In Prison for Fighting Terrorism Tim Wise In the Name of the Lord: "Those Looters Should be Shot" Mitchel Cohen People of the Dome: "Let Them Eat Shit..." Dave Zirin The Superdome: the Earth's Most Damnable Homeless Shelter Mike Ferner Waiting on the Outside World: Who Will Rescue America? Rep. Cynthia McKinney Shame on the Bush Administration Jason Leopold Bush's Demented Priorities: the State of Marriage Over the State of Louisiana Justin Felux Kayne West is My Hero: "Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" Monica Benderman Iraq War as Thrill Ride: Getting Off the Rollercoaster Ben Tripp Grab a Towel, You're Next Jordan Flaherty Notes from Inside New Orleans Bill Pahnelas A Rising Tide has Swamped All Boats Seth Sandronsky Hurricane Katrina Exposes the True Face of Capitalism Mark Donham Where's Karl Rove? Fred Gardner CHP Agrees to Follow Law; Justice Stevens Apologizes Joshua Frank Winning the West Jackie Corr The Privatization Mob Poets' Basement Albert, Engel, Louise   September 2, 2005 Evan Jones Katrina and the Corps of Engineers: Manufacturing Disaster David Stocker How Good is Your Levee? Frankly, Scarlet I Don't Think He Gives a Damn Dave Lindorff Baghdad on the Big Muddy Norman Solomon The Smirk of a Killer: Ending the Impunity of the Bush White House Mike Whitney How Bush Deals with a Disaster He Helped Create: Blame the Looters Eli Stephens What They Should Have Learned from Hurrican Ivan Ron Jacobs Katrina, Iraq and Blood Profits Christopher Brauchli Onward Christian Assassins Harvey Wasserman Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead CounterPunch Wire Faith-Based FEMA? Feds Directing Katrina Money to Pat Robertson Glen Ford Will the "New" New Orleans be Black?   September 1, 2005 Dr. Greg Henderson, MD Situation Critical: a Doctor in the Flood Paul Craig Roberts How New Orleans Was Lost Mike Whitney Hurricane Donald: How Rumsfeld Smashed the National Guard Lee Sustar Left Behind to Drown: the Poor and Hurricane Katrina Dave Lindorff The Real Disaster: Bush and the Democrats Lynn Gonzalez The Cindy Spark: Mainstream America Stirs Chris Floyd The Perfect Storm August 31, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair New Orleans After Katrina John Walsh Democrats and the War Bernstein / Mishel Bush Economy: Incomes Down; Poverty Up! Alan Farago What are the Hurricanes Trying to Tell Us? Norman Solomon The National Guard Belongs in New Orleans, Not Baghdad Bryan Newbury "Hey, Shoot that Black Guy Running Off with the Bottled Water!" Jason Leopold What's Eating Cindy Sheehan? Website of the Day The Swiftboating of Cindy Sheehan   August 30, 2005 Gary Leupp Venezuela: Launch Pad for Muslim Extremism? Joshua Frank Bunny and the War Profireers Evelyn Pringle The Woman Who Blew the Whistle on Halliburton Gets Canned Urariano Mota To Die by Mistake: the Killing of Jean Claude de Menezes Ron Jacobs High Water Everywhere CP News Service An Open Letter to Alberto Gonzales: Free the Cuban 5 Roger Morris The War for the Future   August 29, 2005 Seth Sandronsky Pat Robertson, Big Oil's Televangelist Norman Solomon War Liberals and Cindy Sheehan Charles Sullivan Nation of Fools Paul Craig Roberts Does Anyone Know What We're Doing in Iraq? Website of the Day Monsanto Threatens "Bitter Greens" August 27 / 28, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Assassination: as American as Apple Pie (and Torture) Ricardo Alarcon The Cuban 5 in Atlanta: a Long March Towards Justice Diane Christian The Politics of Death: Assassination M. Shahid Alam How to be a Good Victim Laith al-Saud Baghdad Circus: Iraq's Constitutional Process Diane Farsetta School of the Americas Fights Back: PR Plan for Pentagon's "Demonstration Village" Saul Landau Reagan and Bottled Water: the Privatization of Everything Tom Barry Hurricane Hugo: Relating to Venezuela Nicholas Rowe Barenboim in Ramallah: an Unfinished Symphony George E. Bisharat Enforce the Ban on Settlements Dave Lindorff Another Mother for War: the Exploitation of Tammy Pruett Fred Gardner Pot Shots: Doing the Right Thing, Even If You Are Fearful John Francis Lee The Juggernaut of Jingo Evan Jones I.F. Stone on the Perils of Empire Ali Khan Defining Aggression Poets' Basement Albert, Nettnin, Engel, Ford, Krieger, Louise August 26, 2005 Lee Sustar Showdown at Northwest Ramzy Baroud Cindy Sheehan and the Power of the Ordinary Christopher Brauchli The Return of Edwin Meese Peter Harley The Wall as a Good Thing? John Snider Not One of the Gang Kathleen Christison Can Palestine be Put Back in the Equation?     August 25, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Hegemony Lost: the American Economy is Destroying Itself Cockburn / St. Clair Loewenstein's Big Mail Bag: Gaza and "the Shame of It All" J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Racial Politics in California They May Vote for You, But They Won't Have Lunch with You Chhandasi Pandya Libeling Venezuela Richard Ward Impressions from Camp Casey Norman Solomon Exploiting the 9/11 Anniversary: Will the Media Help Bush, Again? Joshua Frank Will the Real Leaders Please Stand Up? Seth Sandronsky GM, the UAW and US Health Care Lucinda Marshall The Democratic Unraveling: How Not to Mention the War VIPS Memo to Bush: Try a Circle of Wise Women Ralph Nader It's Time to Make the Iraq War Personal     August 24, 2005 Stan Goff Containing the Anti-War Movement: the Hayden Plan Rachard Itani Papal Double Standards Elisa Salasin The Militarization of Our Children Ron Jacobs Who Would Jesus Assassinate? John Chuckman Robertson and Posada: Bush's Kind of Terrorists Leibowitz / Heller Gaza: Disengagement or Military Redeployment? Douglas Valentine Suicide as Sacrament Thomas Nagy Congress Should Go to Crawford: an Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan Alexander Cockburn Hitchens Backs Down, Says Sheehan "Not a La Rouchie" Website of the Day Stations of the Cross       August 23, 2005 Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler Pat Robertson is Not a Christian Karen Kilroy Pittsburgh and Salt Lake City Protests: Violent Echoes of Kent State Stew Albert Fascism in America: Are We There Yet? Joshua Frank The Democrats and Cindy Sheehan Dave Zirin Pedaling Away from Principle: Lance Armstrong Cozies Up to Bush Julia Olmstead Our Reckless Chemical Dependence: A Little Round-Up With Your Precautionary Principle? CounterPunch Wire Prosecuting Bush in Canada for Torture: a Legal Update Jason Leopold Bush's Lips Move, But He Says Nothing Diane Christian The Politics of Death     August 22, 2005 Sonia Nettnin Gaza Stripped, the Occupation Remains Mike Whitney "Shoot to Kill": Tony Blair's First Trophy Kevin Zeese The Latest Falsehood: the US is in Iraq to "Stablize It" Norman Solomon Bush's Bloody Option: Escalate the War in Iraq Christopher Brauchli Secret Talkers Jeff Bale The Left's Challenge in Germany Greg Moses Raw Talk Revival at Camp Casey Two     August 20 / 21, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Can Cindy Sheehan End the War? Saul Landau Terrorism Then and Now: Townley Talks Kevin Zeese an Interview with Tom Hayden Greg Moses A Daytrip without Cindy Ray McGovern Cindy Sheehan and Creative Protest Fred Gardner Merck Gets Whacked Martin Smith Rebellion in the Ranks: the Soldiers' Revolt in Vietnam Benjamin Granby Gaza's Economy: the Key to Sharon's Strategy? Frankie Lake Dirty Tricksters: How the Federalist Society Operates Joshua Frank Failing Nature: the Democrats and the Environment Ron Jacobs When Sympathy is Not Enough Tom Crumpacker Moral Values and the CIA Mike Ferner "All of Our Stories are Sad" James Petras Suicide Bombers: the Sacred and the Profane Col. Dan Smith The President's Dilemma Dr. Teresa Whitehurst What de Menezes Didn't Know Ben Tripp Moses on Top of Old Smokey Poets' Basement Landau, Albert, Engel and Louise     August 19, 2005 Alexander Cockburn A Short History of Meat, Part 4: Cutting Up Mochie Neve Gordon After the Withdrawal Gary Leupp The Pandora's Box of Iraq's Constitution William S. Lind Getting Swept Vijay Prashad The Rosa Parks of the Anti-War Movement Dave Lindorff Something Has Happened Pat Williams Social Security and the American West John Pilger Free Speech and the War on Terror Elaine Cassel Judge Roberts and the Death Penalty     August 18, 2005 Alexander Cockburn A Short History of Meat, Part 3: Vegetarians, Nazis for Animal Rights, Blitzkrieg of the Ungulates Greg Moses Cindy, the Peace Train and the Little Ditch that Could Ramzy Baroud Theatrics in Gaza: the Disengagement That Isn't Joshua Frank Bush's Emotional Incapacities Monica Benderman For Cindy: There's No Glory in Dying Paul Craig Roberts Courthouse Jackboots: Corrupted Justice   August 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn A Short History of Meat: Part Two, the March to Porkopolis Robert Jensen America's Good Germans? Carl G. Estabrook News Notes from the Global War on Terrorism Mike Whitney Greenspan and the Housing Bubble Niranjan Ramakrishnan Shaming the Shameless Norman Solomon Slurs, Lies and Innuendos: Blaming the Antiwar Messengers Dave Zirin In Defense of Felipe Alou Jennifer Loewenstein The Shame of It All: Watching the Gazan Fiasco CounterPunch Clarification     August 16, 2005 Greg Moses Mona in a Field of Crosses at Camp Casey, Texas Thomas Larson The Unmitigated Gall of Dinesh D'Souza Diana Barahona Uneasy Standoff in Venezuela's Media Wars Dave Lindorff The Inquirer's Minds Don't Want to Know Rep. Cynthia McKinney A Letter to President Bush: Meet with Cindy Sheehan Elisa Salasin Hitchens Slimes Cindy Sheehan David Krieger Amazing Grace and Cindy Alexander Cockburn A Short History of Meat: Part One, Peter's Dream Website of the Day Reclaiming Appalachia: a Mountain Takeover     August 15, 2005 Greg Moses Pilgrims of Protest in Crawford Paul Craig Roberts Slouching Toward Armageddon? Mike Whitney Failing in Iraq Robert Jensen The Challenges We Face CounterPunch Wire Judge Fines Voices in the Wilderness $20,000 for Taking Medicine to Iraq; Voices Refuses to Pay Norman Solomon Someone Tell Frank Rich the War Isn't Over Kathleen Christison Camp David Redux: Anatomy of a Frame-Up   August 13 / 14, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair When Down is Up: the "Stricken" President William Blum The al-Dubya Training Manual Gary Leupp High Tide for the Neocons? Jack Z. Bratich Secreting the News: Anonymous vs. Confidential Sources Brian Cloughley The Ridiculous Rice Ron Jacobs Klan Justice: Mississippi is Still Burning John Farley "Beyond Chutzpah" Too Hot for Harvard Bookstore? Dave Lindorff Making the World Safer...for Nukes Tim Wise Animal Whites: PETA and the Politics of Putting Things in Perspective J.L. Chestnut, Jr. There's Not One Real Liberal or Conservative in the Senate John Gershman The Bolton Opportunity Felice Pace Saving Northwest Forests: Time for a Fresh Look Fred Gardner Feds Takeover Prosecution of Dustin Costa David Krieger The Fable of the Emperor and the Grieving Mother Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Being a Protestant Fundamentalist Ben Tripp GWAT: a Tone Poem Poets' Basement Reiss, Nettnin, Engel and Louise     August 12, 2005 Christopher Brauchli Courting God: Justice Sunday II Greg Moses A Crawford Peace House Morning with Cindy Sheehan Ramzy Baroud Israel's Nuclear Puzzle Norman Solomon Cindy Sheehan's Message: Repudiating Bush and Dean Chris Genovali Why is a Canadian Politician Trying to End Protections for US Grizzly Bears? Chris Floyd Cheney and Halliburton, the Stench Gets Worse Tariq Ali Blair's New Authoritarianism     August 11, 2005 Saul Landau Globalization and Its Discontents Dave Lindorff Privatization will Harm Same Sex Couples Ralph Nader Dear Cindy Sheehan: May You Prevail Where Others Have Failed Talli Nauman Radioactive Border: the Hot Mounds of Samalayuca Gary Leupp Politics of an Outing: Plame, Ledeen and Iran Sharon Smith The New Anti-War Majority Paul Craig Roberts Why is Cheney Lobbying for a Boost in China's Nuclear Capability?     August 10, 2005 Tim Wise Indian Mascots and White Rage Ron Jacobs Rumsfeld's Delusions Joshua Frank Dean and the PDA: Don't Believe the Hype Cynthia McKinney The 9/11 Op-Ed the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Refuses to Run Rick Wilhelm Peter Jennings, Excuse Maker for War and Empire Stan Goff Homegrown Resistance     August 9, 2005 Mike Ferner What One Mom has to Say to Bush: Cindy Sheehan in Dallas Monica Benderman Is Being a Conscientious Objector Now Criminal? Mike Marqusee Making Excuses for Killing De Menezes Rep. Cynthia McKinney Strange Fruit and Tree-Shakers Paul Craig Roberts Watching the US Economy Crumble     August 6-8, 2005 Alexander Cockburn How the British Destroyed India Jason Leopold Halliburton and Iran: Still Doing Business After All These Years? Ray McGovern Iran, Truth-Tellers and the Devotees of Preemption David Krieger From Hiroshima to Humanity Sharon K. Weiner / Robert Jensen From Hiroshima to Iraq and Back Fred Gardner The Budtender's View of a Rip-Off     August 5, 2005 Bill Christison New NIE Report on Iran's Nukes will Not Deter US's Posture of Extreme Aggressiveness Paul Craig Roberts Kelo: a Supreme Assault on Personal Liberty Alexander Cockburn The Taj Mahal as Kitsch; the Editor and the Water-Walking Guru     August 4, 2005 Tom Barry Inside Bush's "World Democracy Movement" Lila Rajiva John Bolton's New Internationalism Greg Moses Bush Teaches Intelligent Design in Prison Alexander Cockburn Indian Journal: Why Indian Farmers Kill Themselves August 3, 2005     August 3, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Broken Arrows and Iran: a B-52 Pilot Remembers Paul Craig Roberts The Kelo Calamity: Money, Power and Eminent Domaine William A. Cook Innocent Victims: From Hiroshima to Lower Manhattan Dave Zirin Bush's Texas Rangers: a Crackhouse for Juiced Players? Dave Lindorff Court Packing and Worker Rights José Pertierra Why Hamdi Isaac Yes and Posada Carriles No?   August 2, 2005 Ramzi Kysia Disengagement and Diaspora: High Walls and Razor Wire in the Hebron William A. Cook Words Without Meaning: Torturing Bodies and Language Paul Craig Roberts When Armageddon Gets No Press Mike Whitney Chertoff's Preemptive Crackdown: 600 Arrests, Only 76 Charged Ron Jacobs Be a Hero: Demand That Johnny Come Home Norman Madarsz Before the Stun Gun: Jean Charles de Menezes, RIP Tim Wise The Faulty Logic of "Terrorist" Profiling     August 1, 2005 Virginia Rodino Why Bono and Geldof Got It Wrong: War and Global Poverty are Linked Diana Barahona Return to Venezuela: Land Reform and Neighborhood Doctors Joshua Frank Gitmo's Kangaroo Courts: First Torture Them, Then Rig Their Trials Mike Whitney The Consolidation of Powers: Rubber Stamp Roberts Norm Dixon The Worst Terror Attacks in History Norman Solomon Operation Withdrawal Scam James Petras The Corruption of Lula's Regime     July 30 / 31, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Lost Nuclear Warheads Now in Iran? JoAnn Wypijewski Scenes and Silver Linings from Labor's Crack-Up: a Special Report from Chicago Sheldon Rampton War is Fun as Hell: the Video Games Recruiters Play Jack Z. Bratich Fingerprints of Power: a Summer of Double Super Secrecy Greg Moses How to Cool Your Heels in Texas When It's Late July Across the World Jordan Green From Woolworth to Wal-Mart: Economics and the Race Divide in a Southern City Patrick Cockburn Getting Out of Iraq: 5,000 US Troops Have Gone AWOL Brian Cloughley The Bush-Cheney Fixation on Iran Justin Taylor Harry Potter and the War on Terror Saul Landau Enhancements for the Imperial Life: Fashionism Takes Command! John Walsh Dems Field Another Pro-War Candidate: Meet Hack the Hawk Joshua Frank Color-Coded Justice: John Roberts's Racial Hang Up Ron Jacobs Who Needs Feminism? We Have Condi Rice! Fred Gardner The Ethan and Gavin Show John Chuckman Friedman on Terrorism: the Dumbest Story Ever Written Liaquat Ali Khan Lessons City Bombers Need to Learn from Newton and Donne Remi Kanazi Annexing Justice in Palestine Naveen Jaganathan The Gurgaon Riots Rock India Richard Heinberg Where is the Hirsch Peak Oil Report? Max Watts Francis Ona, the Napoleon of Mekamui Ben Tripp Write Your Own Editorial! Poets' Basement Whalen & Engel, Landau, Albert and Krieger       July 29, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Who's the Real Martyr? Judy Miller or Jim DeFede? P. Sainath The Class War in Gurgaon Niranjan Ramakrishnan How the West Was Lost: CAFTA and the Disassembling of America Dave Lindorff Marvelous Marvin Bush J.L. Chestnut, Jr. America's Racist Inventory: Oppression Breeds Violence Pat Williams Giving Away the Last Best Place Norman Solomon In Praise of Kevin Benderman: a Moral Leader of the Nation Goes to Prison Sen. Russ Feingold The Bad News About the Energy Bill     July 28, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts Departing Iraq William S. Lind The Duke of Alba and George W. Bush Gilad Atzmon Blair the Camera Man Joshua Frank Passing CAFTA: Blame the Democrats Lila Rajiva Vision Mumbai Submerged Amina Mire Pigmentation and Empire: the Emerging Skin-Whitening Industry Website of the Day Gateway to Underground News     July 27, 2005 Roger Morris The Source Beyond Rove: Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal Gary Leupp Is Iran Being Set Up? Paul Craig Roberts US Falling Behind Across the Board Jackie Corr Class War on the Ruby River: the Billionaire with His Foot in His Mouth Mike Whitney The Coming End of the Housing Bubble Dave Zirin Why Lance Armstrong Must Break with Bush Christopher Bradley Why I Have Trouble Reading the News Norman Solomon Thomas Friedman, Liberal Sadist? Website of the Day Stormin' Norman     July 26, 2005 Suren Pillay The Enemy Within: When the "Other" is One of "Us" JoAnn Wypijewski Fission and Fizzle in Chicago: SEIU and Teamsters Quit the AFL Patrick Cockburn Iraq: the Unwinnable War David Anderson When the Greatest Outrage is the Lack of Outrage: NYC's Subway Searches Joshua Frank Hillary Clinton: Outflanking Bush from the Right Lenni Brenner Biography as Wish-Fulfillment: Jefferson, Hitchens and Atheism David Swanson Nuking Native Land     July 25, 2005 Paul Craig Roberts China-Mart Takes Over M. Shahid Alam Terrorism: America Defines Its Targets Uri Avnery March of the Orange Shirts Stan Cox Kreationism in Kansas Norman Solomon "Wagging the Puppy" Ramzy Baroud London Bombings: Barbaric, But Not Unexpected Mickey Z. No Gun Ri: 55 Years Later Website of the Day The Birth of a Hummingbird in 15 Images     July 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Islamo-Anarchs or Islamo-Fascists? Tariq Ali The War Comes Home Robert Fisk Something Happened Dave Lindorff Return of the Academic Witch Hunts Ricardo Alarcón Kidnapping in Miami: the UN, the US and the Cuban 5 Col. Dan Smith Living in a Twilight Zone: Troop Strength, Recruitment and the Draft Brian Cloughley The Pentagon's China Hypocrisy Kevin Zeese Growing Republican Opposition to Iraq War Bill Quigley Harrowing Hours in Haiti Fred Gardner The Reverberations of Raich Rep. Ron Paul The Patriot Act is a Threat to Liberty Joshua Frank Framing Abortion: Gonadal Politics and the Democrats Shivali Tukdeo Project Mumbai Makeover: Casualties of Development Gilad Atzmon Blair's "Evil Ideology" James Petras Baghdad: Barbarism and Civilization (a Fiction) Ben Tripp When Being American Was Fun Poets' Basement Krieger, Louise, Buknatski, Albert and Engel Website of the Weekend Remember the West Memphis 3   July 22, 2005 Heather Gray Home Grown Axis of Evil: Corp. Agribusiness, the Occupation of Iraq and the Dred Scott Decision David Domke The American Press and Credibility Lance Selfa Battle of the Insiders: No Heroes in the Plame Leak Scandal JoAnn Wypijewski Is This Really an "Insurgency" to Shake Up the Labor Movement?   July 21, 2005 Rose Ann DeMoro The Top 10 Problems with the "Crisis" in the Labor Movement William Blum London: Another Casualty in the War on Terror J.L. Chestnut, Jr. Whites Need to Learn Something: Dixie is Everywhere Christopher Brauchli Strange Affairs: Liberals and Alberto Gonzales Joshua Frank Plame Blame Game: the 5 Ws Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti's Elections: Time for a Reality Check Patrick Cockburn The True, Terrible State of Iraq and the Link to London Website of the Day Who Blew Up the Murrah Building?     July 20, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Judge Roberts: Business as Usual Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Red Christmas Ray McGovern Did Dick Finger Valerie?: the Hand of Cheney Chris Floyd Judge Dread: John Roberts and the "Enemy Combatants" Uri Avnery "Silence is Filth" Dave Lindorff Westmoreland's Body Count Goes Up by One Norman Solomon Gen. Westmoreland's Death Wish Bill Quigley Travels in Haiti with a Wanted Priest       July 19, 2005 Tariq Ali An Isolated Regime John Ross Jihad Meets G-8 Davey D. More Clear Channel Censorship: "Don't F--K Around with Tha Police" Greg Weiher Muzzling Saddam: the Old Bait-and-Switch in Iraqi Jurisprudence Brian McKinlay An "Arse Licker" Goes to Washington: John Howard's Grand Tour Norman Solomon Nukes for India; Threats for Iran Dave Lindorff Get Back to Where We Once Belonged Bill Christison Bush's Itinerary: First Stop Syria, Next Stop Iran Joshua Frank Laura's Justice?: Meet Edith Brown Clement   July 18, 2005 Joshua Frank An Interview with Ward Churchill M. Shahid Alam A Muslim Problem: Did Thomas Friedman Flunk History? Jude Wanniski Memo to Patrick Fitzgerald Ron Jacobs A Weekend to Stop the War Mike Whitney The Straight Line Between Falluja and King's Cross Station William MacDougall From "Bring It On" to "London Can Take It" Seth Sandronsky Temporary Recovery: New Frontiers in Labor Flexibility Richard Lichtman The Consolations of George Lakoff Paul Craig Roberts Can Congressional Republicans End Bush's Wars? Website of the Weekend Novels of the Neo-Cons   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             Subscribe Online

September 7, 2005 What Victor Davis Hanson Does to History Bard of the Booboisie By WERTHER* Let us stipulate straightaway: Victor Davis Hanson is the worst historian since Parson Weems. To picture anything remotely as bad as his pseudo-historical novels and propaganda tracts, one would have to imagine an account of the fiscal policies of the Bush administration authored by Paris Hilton. Mr. Hanson, Cal State Fresno's contribution to human letters, is the favorite historian of the administration, the Naval War College, and other groves of disinterested research. His academic niche is to drag the Peloponnesian War into every contemporary foreign policy controversy and thereby justify whatever course of action our magistrates have taken. One suspects that if the neo-cons at the American Enterprise Institute were suddenly seized by the notion to invade Patagonia, Mr. Hanson would be quoting Pericles in support. Once we strip away all the classical Greek fustian, it becomes clear that the name of his game is to take every erroneous conventional wisdom, cliche, faulty generalization, and common-man imbecility, and elevate them to a catechism. In this process, he showcases a technique beloved of pseudo-conservatives stuck at the Sean Hannity level of debate: he swallows whatever quasi-historical balderdash serves the interest of those in power, announces it with an air of surprised discovery, and then congratulates himself on his boldness in telling truth to power. This is a surprising and rather hypocritical pose by someone who reportedly sups at the table of Vice President Cheney. For Mr. Hanson is one of a long and undistinguished line of personalities stretching back into the abysm of time: the tribal bard, the court historian, the academic recipient of the Lenin Prize. Compared to him, politically connected scribes such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., resemble Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Like a Hellcat aviator at the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, one hardly knows where to fire first, so target-rich is the Hanson opus. But let us take, exempli gratia, a recent contribution to human understanding in the pseudo-conservatives' flagship publication, National Review. Mr. Hanson's philippic, "Remembering World War II: Revisionists Get It Wrong," [1] is an extended and unsourced whine obviously written from a deep sense of grievance that America's contribution to World War II is somehow underappreciated, if not deliberately slighted. One blinks in disbelief at such a statement. World War II is the subject of an avalanche of more books and films than any other historical subject, most of them if anything overstating, mainly by implication, the precise American contribution to Allied victory. Has Mr. Hanson never heard, that far from being unheralded, General Patton was the laudatory subject of an Oscar-winning film that is a staple of Turner Classic Movies? Did the overwhelmingly favorable public response to Saving Private Ryan bounce off his consciousness like so many Swedish peas off a steel helmet? [2]. Was there no notice of the recent dedication of the World War II Memorial in Reader's Digest or other publications appropriate to Mr. Hanson's Rotarian tastes? The History Channel is All World War II, All The Time - largely from the American perspective; Mr. Hanson is apparently too busy watching Fox News to notice. Perhaps Hollywood, otherwise a perennial target of America's moralizing jihadists, is not to blame so much as that bugbear of pseudo-conservative rage, the Liberal Education Establishment. Mr. Hanson believes that chalky pedagogues are inserting poison into innocent American youths' crania in the same manner that Claudius dispatched Hamlet's father. Only, rather than killing them, these pied pipers of Trotskyite academia endeavor to turn them into Old Glory-burning zombies. We have before us at this moment our daughter's high school history textbook. Contra Hanson, there is no mention of the internment of Japanese-American civilians. Mr. Hanson's strange obsession with this subject invites speculation. Does his complaint about the alleged academic emphasis on this episode mean he would have opposed internment, or that it was merely a regrettable but necessary expedient best left unmentioned? Naturally, he cannot restrain himself from commenting, as if we didn't know, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Earl Warren were the instigators of the internment. Does that make it illicit? If Wendell Wilkie had been elected president and duly ordered internment would it have been unexceptionable? Or does Mr. Hanson's reasoning run along the lines of, "we were fully justified to imprison American citizens without due process as a wartime measure, and people shouldn't bring it up, but my political enemies ordered it, so I can have it both ways." Perhaps Mr. Hanson can resolve this conundrum of who was loyal by paying a visit to the office of the senior Senator of Hawaii: Japanese-American, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and infantry soldier who left a limb on the killing fields of World War II fighting for his country. [3] On the other hand, the textbook contains a long extract from Reichsführer S.S. Heinrich Himmler's 4 October 1943 speech in Posen outlining the intent of the German government to undertake its Final Solution. Hanson, by contrast, suggests that the Liberal obsession with World War II revisionism and the alleged faults of the United States have resulted in the diminution of appreciation for the Axis' killing of innocent civilians. Really? The number of books, articles, films, commemorations, and newly-opened museums having the holocaust as its subject is a veritable deluge. [4] Somehow, this fact has escaped Mr. Hanson's curiosity. And one doubts, again contra Mr. Hanson, that there are many editorials in American newspapers decrying the bombing of Hamburg. The sole example we can find is a piece by the British (not American) author Niall Ferguson, which is more ambivalent than denunciatory. [5] Having disposed of Mr. Hanson's assorted red herrings and straw men, the gravamen of his argument is bosh. Seven-eighths of all Wehrmacht combat-division-months (i.e., one division spending one month in combat) during World War II occurred on the Russian Front.[6] It was the Red Army, as Churchill admitted, which "tore the guts out of the German Army." Without diminishing the courage of the assault troops of D-Day, the successful operation in Normandy would have been impossible in 1944 without Stalingrad and Kursk. Can human imagination encompass the fact that there were 27 million Russian deaths in World War II? That fact was a demographic catastrophe from which Russia has never recovered. Yes, Stalin was a swine, and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was an act of treachery. But that does not entitle comfortable court historians to simulate outrage at how the American role in World War II has allegedly been belittled by (uncited) Marxist scribblers. Equally, the memoirs of German veterans of the Russian Front generally regarded a posting to the West as virtual salvation compared to the relentless meat grinder of the East. Their testimony has more credibility regarding the Russian contribution to World War II than the jeremiad of a shallow intellect. For supporting evidence (nowhere seen in Hanson's diatribe), we cite Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett. These establishment military historians, whose musings ordinarily would not ruffle the serenity of Bohemian Grove or the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, aver that the Soviets' little-known Operation Bagration of June 1944 was an operational triumph that the Western allies did not replicate. [7] Yes, the Red Army was horribly profligate with human life. But was the United States so daintily economical with its own sons because of its wise policies and whiz-bang technology, as Mr. Hanson says? Read Belton Y. Cooper's Death Traps, or Paul Fussell's Wartime. Both books are tours de force about the wartime experience, and both defy summary in the space allotted here. And both gentlemen were junior officers in the killing time of 1944-45, a qualification conspicuously absent from the resumes of many a publicity agent who would send other mens' sons into mortal combat. As for Mr. Hansen's other distortions and examples of suggestio falsi, the History Channel has already reprised for the umpteeth time that the capture of Iwo Jima potentially saved the lives of more B-29 aircrews than were lost in the amphibious assault, contrary to the asseverations of the Cal State Fresno Thucydides. Are putatively failed strategy and tactics at Iwo really a subject of current Left-wing historiography that Mr. Hanson feels impelled to refute? That may be true, but one is entitled to entertain a healthy skepticism. To tap the last nail into the Mr. Hanson's reputational sarcophagus, we cite a little-known but seminal work which demonstrates that victory in the Second World War was largely a matter of geology. In Oil And War: How The Deadly Struggle For Oil in World War II Meant Victory Or Defeat, co-authors Robert Goralski and Russell W. Freeburg argue that World War II was not only won by the allies through possession of oil, it was, to an extent far greater than received history admits, about oil. Mustering a huge, oil-hungry army, the Germans' oil production was always less than a tenth of that of the United States. Japan was in even worse straits, and Italy could not even send its fleet to sea for much of the war for lack of fuel. Pearl Harbor, however large it looms in American iconography, was an important but basically a subsidiary operation to help secure the main thrust towards the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies and Burma. The Germans' Fall Blau of 1942 was largely an oil offensive to reach the fields beyond the Caucasus. Many German operations in North Africa were predicated on capturing British stocks of oil. Given that 95.9 percent of oil refining capacity lay outside Axis control [8], victory in a war characterized by corps-sized tank thrusts and thousand-bomber raids was a very long shot for the Axis. Mr. Hanson, however, argues without evidence that the inherent virtue of the ordinary American was what turned the tide for the Allies. While by no means discounting the tremendous heroism of the GI, other factors may loom even larger in the correlation of forces: the Allies' huge industrial capacity, a sea of oil, and the self-sacrifice of the Russian Muzhik. Turning from Mr. Hanson's preposterous history to his political agenda, it appears that his labored apologia to United States government policy 60 years ago serves as a defense of United States government policy now, anno 2005. [9] Don't let those ungrateful foreigners criticize us, he seems to say, after all, didn't we win World War II? Aren't all our wars just? What are all those Krauts and Frogs bitching about? How convenient when the invasion of Iraq (which Mr. Hanson fervently supports) has manifestly faltered and requires rhetorical support from an alleged man of learning, a species otherwise nowhere in evidence in the administration's camp. How convenient, given that the Bush administration sought to rain on Russia's 9 May 2005 victory parade and excoriate Yalta, in a manner not seen in official circles since the gin-fueled diatribes of Senator Joseph McCarthy. [10] We briefly pass over Mr. Hanson's other non-sequiturs and illogicalities: his seeming dismissal of the Chinese contribution (the implication that the PRC's butchering its citizens after the war somehow negates the Chinese role in winning it) ignores the fact that the bulk of the Japanese Army was tied up in China throughout the war. Likewise, most American advisors stated it was Mao's guerrillas, not Henry Luce's darling, Chiang Kai-shek, who put up the stoutest resistance to the Japanese. We pass over these matters with no more than an embarrassed cough, and lurch into what really peeves Mr. Hanson. Here is the summation of his bill of indictment: " . . . the beneficiaries of those who sacrificed now ankle-bite their dead betters. Even more strangely, they have somehow convinced us that in their politically-correct hindsight, they could have done much better in World War II. "Yet from every indication of their own behavior over the last 30 years, we suspect that the generation who came of age in the 1960s would have not just have done far worse but failed entirely." [italics in original] The reader seeks specificity. To whom is he referring, when he talks of the generation which came of age in the 1960s? The 57,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, who had little say in the matter, but who suited up and went into combat as bravely as the World War II generation? Or is he writing them off as failures? Or perhaps Vice President Richard B. Cheney, dining companion of Mr. Hanson and owner of four Vietnam War deferments? The author fails to explain. This essay has barely covered Mr. Hanson's historical fatuity. His errors in interpreting his purported specialty, ancient Greece, are so legion as require an extended treatise. Suffice it to say that he does not praise the Greeks for philosophy, geometry, or literature remotely as much as he whoops it up for their war-making, conveniently ignoring the manifold disasters of the Peloponnesian War. A revealing Freudian slip is his approving and oxymoronic reference to Greece as an "imperial democracy,"[11] no doubt reflecting how his administration benefactors would conceive of our own form of government. A leitmotiv of pseudo-conservatives is the allegation that public education has gone to hell in a handbasket. As Victor Davis Hanson demonstrates, they may be right. Postscript Before this piece went to press, a correspondent apprised me of yet another Mr. Hanson effusion in the National Review, this one an incoherent gallimaufry of attacks on every political point of view that does not favor the present crusade for civilization in Iraq. In this diatribe, Mr. Hanson affects to denounce his opponents for possessing the "Paranoid Style."[12] This unattributed reference to a work by the late Richard Hofstadter lays bare Mr. Hanson's intellectual shallowness. For Hofstadter's use of the phrase was intended to delineate precisely the kind of mentality that Mr. Hanson and his neoconservative confreres embody: the self-righteous, "ignorance-is-strength" 100-percent Americano who relentlessly conjures threats abroad, sniffs out subversion at home, and, in general, acts like a hybrid of Billy Sunday and General Jack D. Ripper. But this summary barely conveys Mr. Hanson's tirade. Exhibiting the paranoid style himself (and concentrating particularly on writers who had the impudence to expose his errors), Hanson sees a tacit Hitler-Stalin pact within an assortment of leftists, paleo-conservatives, racists, and anarchists. It does not help his case that he does not cite a single living paleo-con, instead misidentifying the libertarian Lew Rockwell as a paleo. Further confusing matters, Mr. Hanson refers to the Democratic Socialists of America (affiliate of the Socialist International) as a "national socialist organization." Goatee'd nerd in the coffee shop, meet your soul-mate Reinhard Heydrich! Likewise, Mr. Hanson misidentifies the publication of online columnist Gary Brecher. It is Exile, not Encore. Having thankfully assumed we had lurched to the end of this bill of indictment, our hopes were cruelly dashed. The concrete-like slab of The Washington Post Sunday edition thunked on our doorstep only a few hours ago, and with it the latest effluent from the Sage of Fresno himself as a featured op-ed: "Why We Need to Stay in Iraq." [13] Note the sheer chickenhawk effrontery of that "we," and the almost ghoulish tastelessness of whooping it up for endless foreign deployments as the dead of New Orleans remain uncounted. * Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia based defense analyst. Notes [1] http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200505130808.asp [2] It is ironic that the most recent controversy surrounding the film was the effort to bowdlerize it for television screening ­ not by some moth-eaten Leftist professors at Brown or Oberlin, but by the Bible-toting gorgons of the American Family Association. And the objection was less about the graphic violence than their horrified discovery that men in combat use profanity. Mencken, thou shoudst be living at this hour. [3] The Hon. Daniel K. Inouye. [4] Again, the only discouraging word about the movie Schindler's List came from The Hon. Tom Coburn, R, Oklahoma, a clean-living Senator duly chosen and sworn, rather than some putative Left-winger. Apparently the good burghers of the Tornado Belt regard the sight of disrobed, elderly prisoners being led to a gas chamber as disturbing, but not for humanitarian reasons. Instead, their objection lies in the deep-seated sexual prurience of those who would speak in behalf of the national morality. [5] Mr. Ferguson is admittedly an eccentric. He has at excruciating length decried British participation in World War I as a pointless butchery which destroyed the country's solvency; but, somewhat irrationally, he initially supported the United States governments's lunge for empire in the Middle East in 2003. He appears lately to have recanted this opinion with a muffled cough behind the hand. "VE Day ­ A Soiled Victory," The Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2005, [6] Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You, by James F. Dunnigan, 1996. [7] A War To Be Won: Fighting The Second World War, by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, 2000, p. 483. [8] Goralski and Freeburg, p. 338. [9] His outpouring of flatly inaccurate predictions about the U.S. occupation in Iraq, replete with inaccurate analogies involving World War II, the Civil War, and classical Greece, is published in the National Review: "Critical Mass," 12 December 2003, [10] A curious irony: Senator McCarthy also defended Waffen-SS Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper, convicted of ordering the massacre of more than 80 U.S. soldiers at Malmedy, Belgium. In addition, Colonel Peiper's unit in Russia was known as the blowtorch battalion for its habit of incinerating Russian villages along with their inhabitants. Senator McCarthy's otherwise inexplicable act of defending an American-killing convicted war criminal on behalf of his crusade against the Bolsheviks may be resolved thus: Catholic prelates in post-war Germany had mounted a campaign for the relief of incarcerated war criminals; a public official in the Upper Midwest, which contained many German Catholics, might be attentive to their arguments. Colonel Peiper was ultimately paroled. [11] "Critical Mass." [12] http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200508260909.asp [13] http://www.washingtonpost.com/

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