POLITICS: Washington Cool on New Israel-Syria Talks

Amid regional fears of a summer war between Israel and Syria, the two countries may in fact be inching closer to a deal. Not even President George W. Bush's recent disclosures to Congress, intended to prove Syrian-North Korean nuclear cooperation, appear able to dent the resolve for peace, or at the very least, a reduction in tensions.

POLITICS-US: Pentagon Targeted Iran for Regime Change after 9/11

Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.

US/IRAQ: “Divide and Rule” Strategy Called Shortsighted

Five years since U.S. president George W. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, critics say the administration has yet to show a credible way to actually "accomplish" the mission that could see a peaceful Iraq and a return home of U.S. troops.

RIGHTS-US: Vets Await Verdict in Class Action Lawsuit

Arturo Gonzalez delivered his closing arguments inside a packed courtroom on the 17th floor of the Federal Building in downtown San Francisco.

RIGHTS-US: “Bioterror” Case Falls Apart

After a four-year legal battle, a U.S. federal judge has dismissed all charges against an avant-garde artist who public officials condemned as a bio-terrorist in a case critics are calling "a persecution, not a prosecution".

POLITICS-US: Economy High in Public’s Foreign Policy Worries

The price of oil and other international economic issues are rapidly taking centre stage among the dominant foreign policy concerns of the U.S. public, which has also become increasingly sceptical about the effectiveness of military action to further Washington's interests abroad, according to a major new survey released Wednesday by the influential Foreign Affairs journal.

US/IRAN: Changing of the Guard Key to Talks

A week after Senator Hillary Clinton's harsh remarks that if hardliners in Tehran were to launch an attack on Israel, it would result in the "total obliteration" of Iran, a Republican member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Peter Hoekstra, suggested on CNN that "engaging in a full-court diplomatic press with Iran is a good thing to begin the process" of reaching out to Tehran.

POLITICS-US: Hawks Resurgent?

Are the latest accusations and tough language leveled against Iran, Syria, and North Korea evidence of a resurgence by the remaining hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush hoping for a final confrontation against one or more members of the revised "axis of evil" before his term ends next January?

RIGHTS-US: Groups Wrangle with CIA over “Ghost Prisoners”

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has refused to release more than 7,000 documents related to its programmes of secret detentions, renditions, and torture, and is asking a federal judge to dismiss a Freedom of Information lawsuit demanding disclosure.

POLITICS-US: Courts May Get More Latitude on “State Secrets”

The U.S. Congress moved a step closer Thursday to reining in the legal practice that the government has used to block lawsuits by whistleblowers and victims of "extraordinary rendition", as well as actions that would embarrass the George W. Bush administration.

US/PAKISTAN: New Gov’t Needs Aid, Leeway to Address Terror Front

With the intelligence community and Congressional investigators warning that the greatest threat to the United States is developing in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, appeals for the George W. Bush administration to reassess its "global war on terror" and Pakistan's place in it are growing.

POLITICS-US: Petraeus Promotion Frees Cheney to Threaten Iran

The nomination of Gen. David Petraeus to be the new head of the Central Command not only ensures that he will be available to defend the George W. Bush administration's policies toward Iran and Iraq at least through the end of Bush's term and possibly even beyond.

MIDEAST: Israel Sees Iran Threat Recede

In the clearest indication yet that Israel now believes Iran's nuclear aspirations will be curbed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that efforts being undertaken by the international community will ensure that Tehran does not acquire nuclear capability.

RIGHTS-US: Vets’ Lawsuit Opens Door on Suicides, Poor Care

The United States government does such a bad job of caring for wounded war veterans, advocates told a federal judge here Monday, that 18 veterans commit suicide every week.

EUROPE: U.S. Seeks the Peaceful Way for Military Base

NATO countries have given cautious support to U.S. plans to extend its missile defence system to Eastern Europe, just as Washington is working hard to fulfil Russia's conditions to agree to its construction.

RIGHTS-US: Trials of Muslim Charities Likened to a Witch-hunt

The U.S. government's anti-terrorist financing programmes are based on the "guilt by association" tactics of the McCarthy era and have had a widespread negative impact on U.S. charities, critics say.

POLITICS: Can the U.S. and Iran Share the Middle East?

By negotiating a Shiite truce, Tehran embarrassed Washington last week and arguably proved itself to be a more potent stabiliser of southern Iraq.

IRAQ: Chaos Hardening Sectarian Fiefdoms

There are an estimated 2.7 million Iraqis who have been displaced within their own country. No house; no food; no security. Who do they turn to for help? The international community's humanitarian organisations? The occupying United States government? The central Iraqi government based in Baghdad?

POLITICS: Petraeus Hid Maliki Resistance to US Troops in Basra

In testimony before Congressional committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus portrayed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's late March offensive in Basra as a poorly planned effort that departed from what U.S. officials had expected.

POLITICS-US: Army “Rewards” Outspoken Antiwar Soldier

One of the leading voices of dissent inside the U.S. Army has been promoted.

POLITICS: Attitudes Toward U.S. Worsen in Arab World

Despite renewed U.S. efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement this year, popular views of the United States in the Arab world have actually worsened since 2006, according to a major new survey of public opinion in six Arab states.