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.
August 1-15, 2004
August 15, 2004
US Atrocity in Najaf
"The looming massacre underscores an irrefutable political fact: the entire charade of installing a 'sovereign' interim government was a smokescreen behind which Washington prepared a bloodbath against the Iraqi resistance. For all the cynical claims in the US media that the puppet regime under Prime Minister Allawi represented a 'transition to democracy,' its real function all along was to provide an indigenous face for a homicidal onslaught that Washington had wanted to carry out last spring, but felt obliged to delay for political reasons."
The Ghost of Orwell is Upon us by Manuel Valenzuela
"We are told that new bogeymen now breathe away our air of freedom. Blindly we believe that these evildoers hate our democracy, liberties and ways of living, and so we must wage war, destroying countries, cities, buildings, families and innocents, sacrificing our children and husbands, our wallets and wages, our own freedoms and liberties. In order to battle that dark-skinned phantom which has been conditioned into our frightful minds we are willing to contribute to the erosion both to our way of living and the future freedom of our progeny."
Why the Constitution Isn’t the Bible by James Leroy Wilson
Regarding Conspiracy in Philadelphia: The Origins of the U.S. Constitution by Gary North
(link to .pdf format file)
"If the ethics and the faith of the vast majority of the people favor liberty and decentralization, they will get it and enjoy it regardless of what a Constitution says. But if they want to control other people in other places through the National State, they will get that also, regardless of the paper restraints on the government. And if the people are indifferent, the government will recognize that as well."
Tread softly in Sudan by Eric Margolis
"The Darfur disaster is not -- as oversimplified by western media -- a case of murderous government-backed Arab militias, called "Janjaweed," slaughtering helpless blacks. Nor can Khartoum end the strife at will: Its writ in Darfur is barely existent. Darfur is not a case of ethnic-religious terrorism as in Kosovo and Bosnia. The real story is far more complex."
Bush in Iowa
August 14, 2004
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire - a review by Karen Kwiatkowski
The Trouble in Najaf by Mike Whitney
Reinventing the War Party - The neocons go into opposition by Justin Raimondo
August 12, 2004
Endgame in Najaf? by Juan Cole
"Some readers have written to ask if I think the Bush administration is deliberately provoking Iran, in hopes of widening the war and getting a pretext to attack Tehran. I don't know what in the world they are thinking. All I know is that they are acting in a hamfisted manner that is endangering the United States in the medium term for no good reason."
Lawful Resistance to Occupation in Najaf By Marjorie Cohn
"When the media does mention the fighting in Iraq, we hear about the Iraqi "insurgents." There are certainly terrorists operating in Iraq, thanks to Bush's war, which has drawn them there like a magnet. Those who target civilians - be they suicide bombers, or cluster bombers - are terrorists."
Nader Writes to the Anti-Defamation League on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Birth Certificates and the Law by Carl Watner
"The birth certificate is an attack on every person’s right to exist anywhere in the universe. Without a government birth certificate, one encounters difficulty in leaving and returning to one’s country of origin. A person without a birth certificate will ultimately be seized by government authorities for violating their laws concerning personal identification. A parent by complying with State laws governing birth certificates is trying to play God with his infant’s life, by putting the child on the altar of the State. The birth certificate labels the infant as a member of a national group whose members are subject to paying taxes and to the military draft."
August 10, 2004
Mysterious September 11 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill by Michel Chossudovsky
"On the morning of September 11, the three lawmakers Bob Graham, Porter Goss and Jon Kyl (who were part of the Congressional delegation to Pakistan) were having breakfast on Capitol Hill with General Ahmad, the alleged "money-man" behind the 9-11 hijackers."
9-11 AND THE SMOKING GUN by Pepe Escobar
"On the morning of September 11, Mahmoud was having a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with Graham and Goss."
Google Search: Goss + breakfast + 9/11
The Unasked Question by Joesph Sobran
"The country is now having severe second thoughts about the war, but one risk was hardly taken into account: the risk of killing innocent people, including Iraqi soldiers whose only crime was trying vainly to defend their country from an unprovoked invasion. We still hear a great deal about American casualties, but almost nothing about American guilt. An unjustified war is mass murder. That obvious truth has carried very little weight in the whole debate over this war. Our government has slaughtered countless people. Those who still resist are called rebels and even terrorists, no different from the fanatics of 9/11."
Not Scared Yet? Try Connecting These Dots by Ray McGovern
"Are the recent warnings and heightened alerts legitimate or contrived? Is this yet another case of "intelligence" being conjured up to serve the political purposes of President Bush and his top advisers? The record of the past three years gives rise to the suspicion that this is precisely what is afoot."
Is Tom Ridge On Freedom Crack?
"To recap: The Bush administration issues a string of suspiciously timed terror warnings. It finally gets called out after raising the threat level without being fully honest about why it is doing so. Then, in defending itself from charges of politicizing the alerts, it commits the biggest bonehead move in the fight against al Qaeda since allowing bin Laden to cut through the Khyber Pass. Until they make some high-level personnel changes, maybe it's time for the Dept. of Homeland Security to stop trying to help out so much."
What October Surprise? by Tom Engelhardt
"In fact, if you think about it a moment, the Bush administration has proven far less competent since it tossed the Iraqi dice than either its top officials or most of its opponents ever conceived possible."
August 9, 2004
Fear & Loathing in America by Hunter S. Thompson (Sept. 12, 2001)
"The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy."
When war drums roll by Hunter S. Thompson (Sept. 18, 2001)
"The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. The time has come for loyal Americans to Sacrifice. ... Sacrifice. ... Sacrifice. That is the new buzz-word in Washington. But what it means is not entirely clear.
Winston Churchill said "The first casualty of War is always Truth." Churchill also said "In wartime, the Truth is so precious that it should always be surrounded by a bodyguard of Lies."
That wisdom will not be much comfort to babies born last week. The first news they get in this world will be News subjected to Military Censorship. That is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately-planted "Dis-information." That is routine behavior in Wartime -- for all countries and all combatants -- and it makes life difficult for people who value real news. Count on it."
Order Without Law: Where Will Anarchists Keep the Madmen? by John D. Sneed
"The function of the anarchist is not to dictate an economic system; it is to destroy the State in order to allow all economic systems to compete on a voluntary basis."
Or would you rather cling to the notion that other people are your property?
Police State USA by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
"Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long."
August 8, 2004
The Meaning of Nagasaki by Anthony Gregory
"Three days after killing a hundred thousand innocents with a uranium bomb, the US government introduced the plutonium bomb to the world. Nagasaki was as much a science experiment as anything else."
The Writing on the Latrine Walls by William Rivers Pitt
"The goals codified in 'Rebuilding America's Defenses,' the manifesto, can be boiled down to a few sentences: The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for reasons that had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. The building of several permanent military bases in Iraq, the purpose of which are to telegraph force throughout the region. The takeover by Western petroleum corporations of Iraq's nationalized oil industry. The ultimate destabilization and overthrow of a variety of regimes in the Middle East, friend and foe alike, by military or economic means, or both."
How Will Bush Be Remembered? by Anthony Gregory
Iraq On the Verge of Implosion by Charley Reese
"If we don't get out of Iraq soon - and I'm talking months, not years - we're going to be as intensely hated by the Iraqis as the Israelis are by the Palestinians - for the same reason. Nobody likes an occupier. Sovereignty, of course, is defined by power, not by a piece of paper, and the Iraqis know the true situation."
Bush's policy endangers U.S. security
"these new nuclear weapons are in reality first-use weapons, the administration has revised its nuclear strategy. In its December 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, the administration made clear that it would be prepared to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, including launching preemptive attacks with nuclear weapons against nations that were close to acquiring nuclear arsenals."
August 7, 2004
The sting and the spin: will a small house in Willesden unlock the secrets of al-Qa'ida?
by Francis Elliott, David Randall and Andrew Johnson in London, and Justin Huggler in Islamabad
"Eleven men are being interrogated in Paddington Green police station. One of them may be al-Qa'ida's 'UK general'. Is this a genuine intelligence breakthrough or another murky chapter in the war on terror?"
Bush Zones Go National by Jim Hightower
"The Bushites are using federal, state and local police to conduct an undeclared war against dissent, literally incarcerating Americans who publicly express their disagreements with him and his policies. The ACLU and others have now sued Bush's Secret Service for its ongoing pattern of repressing legitimate, made-in-America protest, citing cases in Arizona, California, Virginia, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas--and coming soon to a theater near you!"
August 6, 2004
GROWING A POLICE STATE: ONE TERROR ALERT AT A TIME by Dorothy Anne Seese
"There's a way to grow a police state with full approval of the citizens. In fact, the people will ask for this protection."
Finding the least bad answer in Iraq by Paul Krugman
"One thing is clear: Calls to "stay the course" are fatuous. The course America is on leads downhill. American soldiers keep winning battles, but America is losing the war: The U.S. military is under severe strain; America is creating more terrorists than it is killing; America's reputation, including its moral authority, is damaged each month this goes on."
9/11 Report Misses One Crucial Point: Mideastern Policy by Philip Weiss
Paul Krugman, Witness to the Great Unraveling of America
An interview with Buzzflash.com
August 5, 2004
These Are Their Ends by Patrick Doherty
"The commissions and the chaos have put the lie to the Bush administration's shifting rationales for war. What the media are not asking, however, is if these aren't the reasons, what are? TomPaine.com's Associate Editor Patrick Doherty says there are three interconnected reasons: oil, Israel, and military transformation."
There’s an Ill Wind Blowing From Washington by Nicholas Von Hoffman
"As a little of the starch and swagger has gone out of Donald Rumsfeld and his neocon-Likudnik collaborators, we are getting half-admissions that their planning misfired and they failed to send enough troops to Iraq, perhaps because they didn’t have enough troops to send. More soldiers are needed, according to nearly everybody who knows about staffing wars, but scaring them up is a problem."
Smart Politicians, Stupid Decisions, and Civilians by Gary North
"This is the grim reality of 4th generation warfare. You and I will be paying taxes for the rest of our lives in order to finance our 3rd generation forces, even after they depart from the battlefield. Debts must be repaid, one way or the other, or else there will be a default, one way or the other. The losers in either case will be civilians."
American Outlaws by H. Arthur Scott Trask
"The war may have ended in which these two antagonistic but authentic embodiments of the American mind and character were arrayed against one another, but the battle goes on. Fletcher pleads with Republican Senator James Lane of Kansas, who is in charge of the postwar occupation: "Let Wales be. Let me be. I’m finished with you." But letting people be is exactly what Lane and Terrill cannot do, just as their descendants cannot leave coca-growing Columbia peasants alone - or anyone else in the world, for that matter."
August 4, 2004
Terrorists Rule the Roost by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"Regardless of how you look at it, it becomes clear that these people we call "terrorists" are not being kept at bay; far from it. They are running the country. They determine our civic life. They shape our private life. They decide how public resources are spent. They may dictate who gets to be the next president. It should be obvious that the government doesn't object. Not at all. The government benefits, by getting ever more reason for ever more money and power."
THE LIBERAL CASE AGAINST JOHN KERRY by Matt Taibbi
"After listening to John Kerry's acceptance address last week, I did a little experiment. I decided to remove everything that was bullshit and see what was left."
AMERICA'S LAST WAR by Ted Rall
"At least a half-million conscripts would be needed for a fight that would likely drag on for years. Hundreds of billions of dollars would be spent on hardware and weaponry, not to mention lining the pockets of Administration-connected war profiteers. War against Iran could easily push us into the abyss of economic and moral bankruptcy."
Do People Want to Hurt us Because We're on the Offensive? by Juan Cole
"The respondents in the poll did not dislike the US because of values like freedom and democracy. Middle Easterners have even more faith in democracy than do Americans. They dislike the US because of its policies. According to the recent Zogby poll, they had three main concerns: The US-supported persecution of the Palestinians, the US occupation of Iraq, and US plans to dominate and humiliate Arabs in general. It is policies that they hate, and want changed, not US values."
Fabricating Terror by William Rivers Pitt
What Would Groucho Say? by Mike Rogers
August 3, 2004
Time to Define Terror by Ronald Bruce St. John
"Employing terrorism as a catchall term for a potpourri of movements and organizations, Washington was in a position to label just about anyone opposed to its policies as a terrorist organization."
August 2, 2004
Attack dogs by Tom Engelhardt
Some Thoughts on the History of Invasions by Gary Leupp
The Forgotten Amendment by Paul Hein
"When Hiibel was arrested and put in handcuffs, was he informed that he had the right to remain silent? If so, then the Fifth certainly enters the picture. "You have the right to remain silent" is pretty absolute. The interesting question is: when did the accused acquire that right? If rights are inherent in our very nature, then he always had it. To tell a person that he has the right to remain silent from the point of that pronouncement onward, when being taken into custody for being silent just prior to the pronouncement of his right to do so, is bizarre."
20 Months and 585 Pages Wasted - Your Government at Work for You! by Karen Kwiatkowski
Can He Float Your Boat? by Maureen Dowd
'Mommy, why are we going to war?'
(from February 2003)
'Cause the sorry chump in the White House was unwilling to confront his declared enemy personally and publicly.
Are We Really Force Fed? by P. Gardner Goldsmith
August 1, 2004
All Bush Has to Sell, Is Fear Itself by Anthony Wade
Can’t Bush and Blair See Iraq Is About to Explode? by Robert Fisk
An Open Letter to the 9/11 Panel by Sibel Edmonds
"Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I, as a witness to the commission, made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues I am not aware of were also omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations."
Are you freer than four years ago? by Steve Greenhut
"In my view, the only reason to support a candidate is if he will increase our freedoms - the right to live our lives as we please, free from government interference and confiscation. Yet both major candidates for president would be loath to ask voters that question."
