The Plug Nickel Times is proud to bring you archived website links to select opinion articles. All links are offsite unless otherwise noted- followed links should open in another browser window. Links can become dated or otherwise fail to function, for this reason we quote the title of an article. This may allow you to find an alternate copy of the article through a news index or search engine. Some sites we link to may require a registration process to view an article- this website may be useful to you in those instances. Comments, corrections and submissions are welcome- an email link is at the bottom of the page.
July 16-31, 2004
July 31, 2004
Surreal Political Theater By Jennifer Van Bergen and Tom Stephens
Colin Powell and My Grandmother: Watching it Unfold by Sam Bahour
"If U.S. interests in the Middle East continue to be hijacked and jeopardized by a rapacious Israeli state, then maybe not only the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are occupied territories. Maybe we need a peacekeeping force immediately sent to Capitol Hill. In the meantime, Palestinians' eyes will be fixed on Washington and we will 'just have to watch it unfold.'"
July 30, 2004
The Orwellian Language of Big Government by Mark Schmidt
"Language is at the root of political consciousness. We can only know what we understand, and our understanding is limited by the words and phrases used to frame an issue. The constant repetition of imprecise, politically correct language is sure to have a cumulative effect upon a target audience -- eventually we begin to accept what we are told. Indeed, the main goal of political correctness, like Orwell's Newspeak, is to diminish the choice of words and thereby reduce the range of thought."
"The Orwellian language of big government turns citizens into subjects. It lulls us into cheerfully accepting ever-increasing taxes while encouraging our dependence on an entrenched and growing bureaucracy overseen by career politicians. Unlike our ancestors who wanted to be left alone, we can imagine nothing worse than not having access to the benevolent hand of the managerial state..."
Why Sudan? by Karen Kwiatkowski
"Sudan is a place where, as in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other countries, bad things have happened, and continue to happen on a daily basis. However, we may more easily understand the specific question of Sudan by referring to what we already know."
The Case Against George W. Bush by By Ron Reagan
"The son of the fortieth president of the United States takes a hard look at the son of the forty-first and does not like what he sees"
Networks prefer puff over policy by Paul Krugman
"In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The failure of television news to inform the public about the policy proposals of this year's presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a journalistic betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush to invade Iraq."
July 29, 2004
'I'll tell you everything if you give me a muffin'
"When he's not writing poetry or weeding the prison garden, Saddam Hussein is being interrogated about Iraq's WMD programmes. Brian Sack eavesdrops as the former dictator keeps the United States' elite inquisitors at bay"
Clueless in Baghdad by Fred Reed
"I remember that the White House believed that the Iraqis would welcome our invasion by strewing flowers in our path, such would be their delight with American values, etc. It slackens the jaw. Does no one in the hermetic bubble on Pennsylvania Avenue understand that other peoples have their ways of doing things? That not everybody wants to be American?"
July 28, 2004
Cheney Watch by Juan Cole
"So let's get this straight. The US has 138,000 troops stuck in Iraq, which was no danger to the US homeland. They are mainly fighting local clansmen who had never before had any beef with the US, prior to the American invasion of their country."
"All his emphasis has been on dealing with governments, like that of Iraq, which can be defeated militarily, and the defeat of which unlocks national resources for American companies to exploit."
Hey, so he's not a 'people' person...
(Maybe we could give him back to whatever he belongs to...?)
AN ALTERNATIVE 9/11 REPORT by Sam Smith
"Usually in a hostage situation - and we are the hostage in this situation - there is considerable curiosity as to the hostage-takers' demands. In this case, however, the media and politicians have blithely ignored the issue almost entirely. Thus many have forgotten what Al-Queda's early anger was about including, most prominently, the Israeli-Palestine situation, the American presence in Saudi Arabia, and the brutal sanctions against Iraq that had cost somewhere in the neighborhood of one million lives."
Whether it's Bush or Kerry, Israel wins by Linda S. Heard
Narc Party: This is your convention on drugs by Matt Taibbi
"We're going to have a president with sense again," he said. "This current guy is a disaster. Right now, all domestic law enforcement goes through Ashcroft and Ridge. It's all about terrorism now. I mean, the War on Drugs isn't even a priority!"
Don't you dare cancel football by Hunter S. Thompson
"Where is Richard Nixon, now that we need him? He was crooked in every way and his hands were covered with blood -- but he was a rabid, high-rolling football fan with a sly taste for gin; and on some nights, he could be good company."
Ann Coulter Turns the Same Trick, Over and Over by Imraan Siddiqi
July 27, 2004
Arguing with Cheney by Juan Cole
"Cheney knows that Baathist Iraq posed no threat to the US. He is simply lying. I was always careful not to accuse him of lying before the war because who knows what is in someone else's mind? Maybe he believed his own bullshit. But there is no longer any doubt that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, no active nuclear weapons program, no ability to deliver anything lethal to the US homeland, and no operational cooperation with al-Qaeda. These things are not matters of opinion. They are indisputable. Ipso facto, if an intelligent person continues to allege them, he is prevaricating."
Review Panels No Fix for Guantanamo
"The tribunals are seriously flawed, Human Rights Watch said. They are not set up to be impartial, they will place severe limits on detainees’ ability to make their claims, and they are predicated on the Pentagon’s erroneous belief that all enemy combatants at Guantanamo can still be held under the laws of war."
Lightning Rod
"The TIA team wanted to follow the data outside government - for example, into airline reservation systems, banking records or telephone logs. They wanted to find out whether total information awareness about terrorists in the United States would require watching the daily transactions of innocent people. If so, they wondered, could they do so without fundamentally redefining privacy? A reasonable line of inquiry, Poindexter thought. Perfect for DARPA's big thinkers."
The Grand Army Of The Republic
July 26, 2004
Where are the bodies of evidence? by Phillip Adams
"While the Coalition searches for the Butcher of Baghdad's mass graves, it becomes legitimate to ask how many people were butchered by the coalition of the willing. As with Gulf War I in 1991, official figures have been withheld. There has been a ballpark figure of 10,000 dead civilians, but how many Iraqi conscripts died as the Western troops rolled in? All to rid the world of one man."
IRAN: THE NEXT BIG LIE by Eric Margolis
Nibbled to Death for Your Own Good by Bob Wallace
Revenge! I Want Revenge! by Bob Wallace
"I'm tired of explaining to deluded, naive 18-year-olds that no, I am not a coward or a traitor, and no, you aren't defending your country if you go into the military; you're defending the interests of whomever has control of the federal government. You'll die for them, not the country."
The Dysfunctional Society by Butler Shaffer
July 25, 2004
Sovereignty: "If they want it that bad, they can have it" by Tom Engelhardt
"Believe it or not, not so long ago Iraq had a military quite capable of fighting aggressive wars of all sorts and it was trained by... gasp... Iraqis."
The war of words: terror' and 'terrorism' by Geoffrey Nunberg
"Terrorism may itself be a vague term, as critics have argued. But terror is still more amorphous and elastic, and alters the understanding not just of the enemy but of the war against it."
Bush puts us in a room of fun-house mirrors by Orville Schell
"A probing press is logically viewed as a spoiler under such conditions, stepping between the administration and those whose only true salvation lies in becoming part of a nation of true believers."
The Committee on the Present Confusion by Patrick J. Buchanan
The closest it comes to educating us about the enemy we face is this line: "Victory over terror inspired by radical Islamists - fought in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere - will also be a long struggle."
July 23, 2004
Blaming No One: The 9/11 Whitewash by Mike Whitney
9/11 Report Builds Case for Expanding the War by Gary Leupp
Hands Off Sudan! by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
"We must realize the implications of urging the President to commit the United States to intervene in an ongoing civil war in a foreign land thousands of miles away."
Ending the 'Irresponsible Peace' - The Fall of Pacifist Japan by Michael Penn
Fortress Big Apple by Nick Turse
The Homosexual Agenda
July 22, 2004
Neocons attempt a comeback by Justin Raimondo
Serving the Prince of War
Iraq attack: President got the right axis but wrong evil by Maureen Dowd
A View From the Porch by Vaughn Croteau
July 21, 2004
Binary Bush by Will Durst
"These and other tough decisions are on the minds of voters and I challenge the President to express out loud his hard choices."
Iran in Bush's Sights by Juan Cole
"So then you come to me and say that in 2000 and 2001, Iran was actively helping al-Qaeda and was trying to ally with it. And I say, that sounds to me like complete gibberish and I would only accept it if you show me excellent documentary proof."
Exactly How Has Bush’s War Made Us Safer? by Jacob G. Hornberger
Neoconservatives - never apologize, never explain by Kevin Horrigan
July 19, 2004
Outside View: Feith's warped world by Greg Guma
"According to London's Guardian newspaper, the OSP's job was to provide key people in the administration with "alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq." In particular, holdouts like Powell needed to be persuaded. To do that, the OSP obtained cooked intelligence from its own unit and a similar Israeli cell. There was also a close relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney's office. In the end, the public heard what Feith's unit wanted them to hear."
CIA DID NOT FAIL - THE U.S. WAS DECEIVED INTO THE IRAQ WAR by Eric Margolis
The Logical Fallacies
July 17, 2004
Regime change in Iran now in Bush's sights by Jenifer Johnston
The Vote for Gulf War II by Gordon Prather
"As we now know - thanks to the Select Committee - the highly classified October NIE was a crock of wheat smut. Furthermore, we now realize that every Congressperson privy to that NIE ought to have known that by March 2003."
Why the media failed Americans By Orville Schell
"For three-plus years we have been governed by people who don't view news, in the traditional sense, as playing any constructive role in our system of governance. At the moment, they are momentarily in retreat, driven back from the front lines of faith-based truth by their own faith-based blunders. But make no mistake, their frightening experiment will continue if Americans allow it."
Terrorism and the Election: Trial Balloons and Spin by Norman Solomon
Padilla, Hamdi, and Rasul: Charge Them or Release Them by Jacob G. Hornberger
PROPAGANDA IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
"Most people associate propaganda with advertising, with partisan opinion heard on talk shows, or with a zealous Sunday morning radio preacher. Indeed, all of these are forms of propaganda, but for the most part they are the least harmful kind because the audience recognizes them as such."
July 16, 2004
Honoring Jefferson by Joseph Sobran
"The "self-evident truths" of his Declaration of Independence -- that all men are created equal, that their Creator has endowed them with unalienable rights, that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed -- were meant to be challenges, not platitudes."
Computers vs. the Peter Principle by Gary North
"The spread of computer technology is having its civilization-changing effects because it empowers barely functional people to perform adequately most of the time. Computerized systems restrict these employees’ ability to demonstrate their true level of incompetence."
The Not-So-Wild Wild West by Bob Wallace
