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 riting
in the New
York Press, Alexander Cockburn offers a typically arch perspective
on events. His column walks a fine line: He litters it with snarky
digs at America ("We're passing from appalling human loss and
suffering, live in the front yard of the media capital of the world,
to the traditional parameters of imperial retribution") and
the Bush administration (or "the regime in power," in
Cockburn's felicitous phrase); yet he stays away from Sontag/Kingsolver
territory by cheerfully predicting a relatively quick and cost-free
American victory in Afghanistan.
"The bin
Laden video of raggedy fellows in a cave," he writes, "looked
to me more like a political obituary than a fearsome call to arms.
His dark day is done, and it surely won't be long, if the moment
hasn't already come, before he's either sitting up there with Allah
and the hour's, or writhing in the seventh circle of hell, depending
on which God you believe in." The seventh circle, the ever-so-literate
Cockburn notes, is reserved for "those who offer violence against
self (the suicide bombers), violence against neighbors, violence
against God ... As a seventh-circle man, bin Laden is scheduled
by Dante to be buried in burning sand forever, which ... is his
natural habitat anyway."
But then this
insouciant perspective on events collapses, suddenly, when Cockburn
turns to the matter of bioterrorism and produces this pricelessly
paranoid thought:
Ken McCarthy,
our CounterPunch man in Tallahassee, writes the following
thought-provoking note: FACTS: 1. The man who died of Anthrax
last week was a photo editor at The Sun, a tabloid. 2.
A fellow employee there has been recently diagnosed with Anthrax
as well. 3. Inhaled Anthrax, the type these men have contracted,
is exceedingly rare (only 18 cases in the US in the last 100 years)
4. Anthrax spores have been found in their workplace. The building
which houses The Sun, The Globe and The National
Enquirer has been closed as a result. 5. American Media Inc.,
the owner of The Sun etc., has connections to the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency. 5. Boca Raton, the home of The
Sun, is also the location of a plant owned by Product Ingredient
Technologies, a company with links to the Bush Sr. White House
that manufactured chemical-warfare agents that were exported to
Iraq with U.S. government approval in the late 1980s.
Thought-provoking
indeed — if you happen to be the sort who believes in CIA conspiracies
to use chemical-warfare agents left over from our Iraqi shipments
to kill off tabloid writers. Or maybe it's the nefarious corporate
bigwigs at Product Ingredient Technologies, trying out their latest
batch of anthrax on unsuspecting civilians. Or maybe it's
the Iraqis, using the materials that we gave them to kill off the
very people who shipped the chemical-warfare agents over
in the first place. Because as we all know, there's nothing Saddam
Hussein loves more than delicious irony — especially if the
irony is visible only to the likes of Alexander Cockburn.
No word on
whether Oliver
Stone will be hiring Cockburn as the screenwriter for his next
paranoia-laced project. Frankly, Kumbaya Watch thinks it would be
a match made in heaven. Or in hell, perhaps — specifically
the eighth circle, which, as Cockburn himself notes, was reserved
for those guilty of "complex and treacherous fraud."
Although calling
such tired and trivial conspiracy theories "complex" might
be giving them, and Cockburn, far more credit than they deserve.
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