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CounterPunch
February
10, 2003
Bastard
by M. SHAHID ALAM
"Today you don't have to feel
like a bastard to be one."
Michael Neumann
About Saddam they are never wrong,
The Oil Meisters. He is a bastard,
Given how he gassed his own people
While they were eating, opening a window
Or just walking dully along; how
He sleeps his heavy-lidded sleep
While his henchmen round up victims
For slow suffocation in the back
Alleys of Takrit. He is a bastard,
Given how he kills to stay in power; how
He's been starving children who
Did not especially want it to happen; how
He's been stealing elections; how
He's been grooming his sons for
Succession. He is a bastard,
Given how he's grown rich, while
The working poor get poorer,
Their children dying sick in one-night
Cheap hotels. He is a bastard,
Given how he's been building
Weapons of mass destruction,
Each so truly awesome, they never
Come up for inspection. He is a bastard,
Given how he hides in bunkers,
And has outfoxed, outlasted all of us.
© M. Shahid Alam
M. Shahid Alam
teaches economics at Northeastern University. His recent book,
Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave
(2000). He can be reached at: m.alam@neu.edu
Today's Features
Linda Heard
Powell
at the UN: Spiel, Stunts and Special Effects
Anthony Gancarski
Peggy
Noonan, Space Case
The Columbia and the Manufacture of Tragedy
Robert Fisk
You Wanted
to Believe Him: Powell Does Beckett
Robert Jensen
Powell
at the UN:
Smoking Guns and Big Guns
William Hughes
Colin
Powell's Big Flop
Ali Abunimah
Dissecting Powell's Speech:
Hearsay and Old Allegations
Phyllis Bennis
Powell vs. Blix
The Case for War Remains Unmade
Rahul Mahajan
Responding
to Colin Powell
Is This All You've Got?
Paul de Rooij
Where Are the Incubators, Gen. Powell?
Website of the Day
Iraq:
the War Game
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February
1 / 2, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Railroading
Rosenthal; PeeWee and the Sex and the Sex Police
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Star Whores: Astronomers &
Apaches on Mt. Graham
Dian
Hardison
Former NASA Engineer: "I Fucking Warned Them"
Jerry Kroth
Jung & the Shuttle: Symbol &
the Sychronicity with the Columbia Disaster
Dave
Lindorff
Bush
& HItler: The Strategy of Fear
Behzad Yaghmaian
Report from Istanbul: the Peace
Movement in Turkey
Alan
Maass
Emptying Death Row
Forrest Hilton
The Weight of Forgetting: the Bolivian
Blockades in Context
Kurt
Nimmo
Inventing Crimes: FBI/CIA Entrapment
Matt Taibbi
Iraqt-Up: At Peace Rallies, Hundreds
of Thousands Go Missing
Jeremy
Scahill
Live
from Baghdad: FoxNews: Paying Saddam
Don Atapattu
Songs of Protest
Brian
J. Foley
An Immodest Proposal
Lawrence McGuire
Poker at Camp David
Adam
Engel
Just
Do It: Outrunning the President
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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