BOOKS-US/IRAQ: Outrage in a Time of Apathy

Unlike most U.S. journalists who went to Iraq to cover a war, Dahr Jamail went to try to stop it.

MIDEAST-US: New Scholars Group Seen as Close to White House

A small group of Middle East and African studies scholars in the United States has announced the creation of a new professional association to change the direction of scholarship in the field.

RIGHTS-US: Case Crumbles Against Officer Who Refused Iraq

First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq, won what his backers are calling a "huge victory" in court Thursday.

POLITICS-US: New Crises Sap Bush’s War on Terror

Just as the White House claims that it has finally turned the corner in what it defines as the "central front" in the war on terror - Iraq - it has found itself desperately trying to contain new crises in the war's "periphery" stretching east to Pakistan, west to Turkey, and south to the Horn of Africa.

POLITICS-US: State Dept Drafts the Not So Willing for Iraq

As a shortage of experienced diplomats in Iraq has led the U.S. State Department to announce that it will force Foreign Service officers to serve in Baghdad against their will, the leader of the U.S. diplomatic service is charging that critics, "including people who urged the 2003 invasion", are now seeking to blame the department for their own failures.

POLITICS-US: Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

POLITICS-US: Bell Tolls for Bush’s “Freedom Agenda”

If George W. Bush's "freedom agenda" is to be his presidential legacy, then his six-year "global war on terror" has been his own worst enemy.

POLITICS-US: West Coast City Formally Rejects Iran Attack

The eight-member city council of Oakland, home to nearly half a million people, unanimously passed a symbolic resolution opposing any U.S. attack against Iran Tuesday, in a bid to pressure lawmakers in Congress to reestablish their constitutional authority over U.S foreign policy and war policy and funding.

RIGHTS-US: Gov’t Pillories Avant-Garde Academics

A week after 20-year-old charges were dropped against the last two defendants in the longest-running federal prosecution in U.S. history - the so-called "L.A. Eight" - another case threatens to take its place.

Q&A: "When I Leave My House, I&#39m Not Sure I&#39ll Make It Back"

Malalai Joya was four years old when her family fled Afghanistan in 1982 to the refugee camps of Iran and later Pakistan.

RIGHTS-US: Torture Queries Fail to Stop Bush’s Justice Pick

Despite his refusal to declare water-boarding illegal, President George W. Bush's choice to be his next attorney-general overcame a significant hurdle here Tuesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly endorsed his nomination.

PAKISTAN: Emergency Rule Draws Fire, But No Sanctions

The U.S.-backed Pakistani ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule in his country is being widely condemned by human rights organisations and democratic nations across the world, although immediate aid cuts appear unlikely.

PERU-IRAQ: A Year in Hell for 1,000 Dollars a Month

Former Peruvian noncommissioned army officer Norman Alfonso Solano is happy because he has once again been recruited to work as a private security guard in one of the most dangerous places in the world: Iraq.

US-PAKISTAN: Bush Bets the Farm on Musharraf

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday declared emergency rule, fired the county's chief justice and suspended the constitution, effectively giving him absolute power in a country many U.S. experts warn is spinning out of control.

POLITICS-MIDEAST: Air Strikes First, Questions Later

More than two months after Israeli warplanes conducted a mysterious raid in northeast Syria, there is a growing consensus among U.S. government and independent analysts that the suspicious target was a nuclear facility.

US-IRAN: Republican Maverick Calls for Unconditional Talks

Amid growing contention among Democratic presidential contenders about U.S. policy toward Iran, a senior Republican lawmaker has appealed to President George W. Bush to pursue "direct, unconditional, and comprehensive talks" with Tehran.

US-IRAN: Tamping the Flames of War

L. Bruce Laingen was working as a senior U.S. Foreign Service officer in Tehran in 1979 when student protestors - caught up in the fervour of Iran's Islamic Revolution - seized the U.S. embassy and irrevocably changed the course of relations between the two nations.

POLITICS: U.N. Spurns Cuba Embargo for 17th Year

The United Nations General Assembly Tuesday snubbed the United States for its hostility towards Cuba, amid fresh calls for an end to the 45-year economic and financial embargo imposed on the socialist island.

POLITICS-US: For Neocons, Iran War Aim Is Still Regime Change

Vice President Dick Cheney and his neoconservative allies in the George W. Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it.

POLITICS-US: Protests Target War Funding

Tens of thousands of people across the United States staged demonstrations over the weekend to protest the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and the White House's reported plans to attack Iran.

POLITICS-US: Welcome to "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"

Right-wing pundit David Horowitz was in rare form during a tightly controlled "public speech" at the George Washington University on Thursday night, decrying the U.S. academic Left as a hateful "lynch mob" who act as apologists for the impending threat of the "Islamo- fascist" jihad.