Stories written by Gareth Porter
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian who specialises in U.S. national security policy. He is the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, published by Just World Books in February 2014. He writes regularly for IPS and has also published investigative articles on Salon.com, the Nation, the American Prospect, Truthout and The Raw Story. His blogs have been published on Huffington Post, Firedoglake, Counterpunch and many other websites. Porter was Saigon bureau chief of Dispatch News Service International in 1971 and later reported on trips to Southeast Asia for The Guardian, Asian Wall Street Journal and Pacific News Service. He is also the author of four books on the Vietnam War and the political system of Vietnam. Historian Andrew Bacevich called his latest book, ‘Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War’, published by University of California Press in 2005, "without a doubt, the most important contribution to the history of U.S. national security policy to appear in the past decade." He has taught Southeast Asian politics and international studies at American University, City College of New York and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. | Twitter |

POLITICS-US: Obama Pressured to Back Off Iraq Withdrawal

By Gareth Porter
The promotion of Robert M. Gates as President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of defence appears to be the key element in a broad campaign by military officials and their supporters in the political elite and the news media to pressure Obama into dropping his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in as little as 16 months.

POLITICS: U.S. Cutoff Threat Unlikely to Save Iraq Troop Pact

By Gareth Porter
The threat by the George W. Bush administration last week to withdraw all economic and military support from the Iraqi government if it does not accept the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement has raised the stakes in the political-diplomatic struggle over the issue.

POLITICS: Final Text of Iraq Pact Reveals a U.S. Debacle

By Gareth Porter
The final draft of the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces agreement on the U.S. military presence represents an even more crushing defeat for the policy of the George W. Bush administration than previously thought, the final text reveals.

US/AFGHANISTAN: Fears of Blowback Nixed Airstrikes in 2004

By Gareth Porter
The present U.S. policy in Afghanistan of using airstrikes to target local Taliban leaders was rejected by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan in early 2004 as certain to turn the broader population against the U.S. presence.

POLITICS: Afghan Peace Talks Widen US-UK Rift on War Policy

By Gareth Porter
The beginning of political talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban revealed by press accounts this week is likely to deepen the rift that has just erupted in public between the United States and its British ally over the U.S. commitment to an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

POLITICS-US: Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11

By Gareth Porter
New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11.

POLITICS-US: Vested Interests Drove New Pakistan Policy

By Gareth Porter
The George W. Bush administration's decision to launch commando raids and step up missiles strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda figures in the tribal areas of Pakistan followed what appears to have been the most contentious policy process over the use of force in Bush's eight-year presidency.

POLITICS-US: Intel Council Warned Against Raids in Pakistan

By Gareth Porter
The National Intelligence Council, the U.S. intelligence community's focal point for estimating future developments, warned the George W. Bush administration last month that a decision to launch commando raids by U.S. troops against al Qaeda-related targets in Pakistan's North-West Frontier region would carry a high risk of further destabilising the Pakistani military and government, according to sources familiar with the intelligence community's response to the issue.

POLITICS: Why Its Iraqi “Client” Blocked U.S. Long-Term Presence

By Gareth Porter
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signaled last week that that all U.S. troops - including those with non-combat functions - must be out of the country by the end of 2011 under the agreement he is negotiating with the George W. Bush administration.

POLITICS: Georgia War Rooted in U.S. Self-Deceit on NATO

By Gareth Porter
The U.S. policy of absorbing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, which was enthusiastically embraced by Barack Obama and his running mate Joseph Biden, has undoubtedly been given a major boost by the Russian military operation in Georgia.

POLITICS: Bush Covered up Musharraf Ties with Qaeda, Khan

By Gareth Porter
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation Monday brings to an end an extraordinarily close relationship between Musharraf and the George W. Bush administration, in which Musharraf was lavished with political and economic benefits from the United States despite policies that were in sharp conflict with U.S. security interests.

IRAQ: U.S. Officials Admit Worry over a ‘Difficult’ al-Maliki

By Gareth Porter
U.S. officials privately admit being concerned that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki has become "overconfident" about his government’s ability to manage without U.S. combat troops, according to an Iraq analyst who just returned from a trip to Iraq arranged by U.S. commander General David Petraeus.

POLITICS-US: How Tenet Betrayed the CIA on WMD in Iraq

By Gareth Porter
Journalist Ron Suskind’s revelation that Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief was a prewar intelligence source reporting to the British that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) adds yet another dimension to the systematic effort by then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet to quash any evidence - no matter how credible - that conflicted with the George W. Bush administration’s propaganda line that Saddam was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

POLITICS: Bush Forced al-Maliki to Back Down on Pullout in 2006

By Gareth Porter
Many official and unofficial proponents of a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq are dismissing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand for a U.S. timeline for withdrawal as political posturing, assuming that he will abandon it under pressure.

POLITICS: Bush, U.S. Military Pressure Iraqis on Withdrawal

By Gareth Porter
Instead of moving toward accommodating the demand of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for a timetable for U.S. military withdrawal, the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military leadership are continuing to pressure their erstwhile client regime to bow to the U.S. demand for a long-term military presence in the country.

POLITICS: Seismic Shift or Non-Decision by Bush on Iran?

By Gareth Porter
The U.S. decision to send the State Department's third-ranking official to sit in on the meeting between European Union foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili Saturday has been hailed as a major diplomatic breakthrough, but it is too soon to pop the champagne cork.

POLITICS-US: Pull-out Demand Signals Final Bush Defeat in Iraq

By Gareth Porter
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand for a timetable for complete U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, confirmed Tuesday by his national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, has signaled the almost certain defeat of the George W. Bush administration's aim of establishing a long-term military presence in the country.

IRAN: Did IAEA Revive Uranium Paper Issue Under Pressure?

By Gareth Porter
A 15-page paper on the process requirements for casting and machining of uranium metal into hemispherical forms - said to be useful only for making the core of a nuclear weapon - has been raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in recent months as evidence of an alleged Iranian intention to built nuclear weapons.

POLITICS: Official Says Iran Accepts P5+1 Talks Proposal

By Gareth Porter
A senior Iranian official reportedly told members of the Iranian parliament Monday that Iran has agreed to freeze its enrichment programme for six weeks and begin negotiations with the P5+1 group of states as early as next week, according to reports of that decision by the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) and by a Farsi-language website in Iran.

POLITICS-US: Hawks Belie Iran's "Existential Threat" to Israel

By Gareth Porter
New arguments by analysts close to Israeli thinking in favour of U.S. strikes against Iran cite evidence of Iranian military weakness in relation to the U.S. and Israel and even raise doubts that Iran is rushing to obtain such weapons at all.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Fear of US-Sunni Ties Undercut Security Talks

By Gareth Porter
The threat by the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki earlier this month to reject the U.S.-Iraq status of forces and strategic framework agreements was prompted in part by U.S. demands for access to bases that were unacceptable to a highly nationalistic Iraqi population.
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