RIGHTS-US: The Torture Loophole

Senate Democrats plan to closely question the nominee for the next U.S. attorney general about his views on torture following revelations that the Justice Department issued secret directives legally justifying harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

U.S.-IRAQ: Pentagon Gives Blackwater New Contract

A U.S.-based private security firm received a contract worth up to 92 million dollars from the Department of Defence amid hard questions about its involvement in two separate violent incidents in Iraq.

POLITICS: The Man Behind the Iran Curtain

He called for more "research" into the unequivocal facts of the Holocaust, said Iranian women were among the freest in the world, and declared that homosexuality did not exist in his country.

BOOKS-US: G.I. Joe&#39s Midlife Crisis

When George W. Bush made an instantly-famous speech last month that used the legacy of Vietnam to justify a continued U.S. presence in Iraq, it marked the completion of a rhetorical journey that few would have anticipated six years earlier.

DEVELOPMENT: Afghanistan in Dire Straits

Against the backdrop of an escalating military conflict, Afghanistan is facing a rash of new problems, including increased poverty, widespread corruption, a breakdown in the rule of law and a paralysed judiciary, according to a new report released here.

POLITICS-US: Anti-Iran Hawks Win Partial Victory in Congress

Amid growing speculation about prospects for U.S. military action against Iran, neo-conservatives and other hawks won a significant - if somewhat incomplete - victory in rallying the Democratic-led Congress to its side.

POLITICS: Iranian President in Nuclear Theatrics

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad completed his three-day political theatrics in New York, drawing large crowds and angry demonstrators, he left the United Nations with a defiant warning: Iran will not be cowed by any new sanctions either by the United States or the European Union.

POLITICS-US: Have Hawks Won a Round on Iraq Escalation?

The George W. Bush administration recently concluded that the increase in rocket attacks on coalition targets by Shiite forces over the summer was a deliberate move by Iran to escalate the war in order to put pressure on the United States to accept Iranian influence in Iraq, according to a senior U.S. government official.

FILM-US: How the “Gang of Four” Lost Iraq

Iraq, a quagmire? "No, that's someone else's business," former U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld brusquely told the White House press corps in the summer of 2003. "I don't do quagmires."

HEALTH-US: Brain Trauma the “Signature Injury” For Iraq Vets

On Mar. 19, 2004 Corporal Justin Bunce was on patrol in the Iraqi city of Husayba on the Syrian border when a bomb exploded in the wall of a cemetery.

Q&A: "I&#39ve Peeked Behind That Curtain and It&#39s an Unholy Mess"

Mike German is a former agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who in the 1990s infiltrated white supremacist terrorist groups engaged in violent activities, including a racially-motivated Los Angeles organisation that set off bombs to intimidate and harm people of colour, and a militant neo-Nazi group in Washington state.

MIGRATION: U.S. Doors Cracked to Iraqi Refugees

A full-blown humanitarian disaster looms in Iraq, warns a new report on the refugee crisis there by Amnesty International, and the international community is responding with little more than "global apathy".

US-MIDEAST: Bush Peace Confab a Swan Dive or Belly Flop?

This past summer, President George W. Bush extended a hand where he never has before, calling for a Middle East conference to find a solution to the long-moribund Palestinian-Israeli peace process. This time, says U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, her boss expects results.

POLITICS-US: Far Right Sells Iraq War to "Values Voters"

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, then U.S. President Richard Nixon appealed to the country's "Silent Majority" to oppose growing anti-Vietnam War sentiment in the United States.

MIDEAST-US: The Long Propaganda War

The George W. Bush administration is badly losing the so-called "war of ideas" in the Middle East, a group of foreign policy experts suggested here Wednesday, by failing to grasp that persuasion is just as important as the more heavy-handed tactics of its "war on terror".

RIGHTS-US: Republicans Block Habeas for Gitmo Detainees

Despite the support of a solid majority of the U.S. Senate, a measure designed to restore the right of foreign terrorist suspects to challenge their detention in federal court was blocked here Wednesday on a procedural manoeuvre.

POLITICS-US: Bush Opts for “Confirmable” Attorney-General

The nomination Monday by President George W. Bush of retired federal judge Michael B. Mukasey for the top spot at the U.S. Justice Department is a departure from business as usual for the administration.

MEDIA-US: Cockroach Cartoon Crossed the Line, Iranians Say

As the war of words between Western nations led by United States and Iran's hardliner government over its nuclear programme has escalated in the last few weeks, a cartoon published on the editorial page of the Columbus Dispatch on Sep. 4 has created a furor amongst Iranians worldwide.

MIDEAST: Neocons Tie N. Korea to Israeli Strike on Syria

Nearly two weeks have passed since Israeli warplanes conducted a mysterious raid against an as yet unidentified target in northeast Syria. Details of the incident have been slow to come, as officials from both countries have remained tight-lipped.

U.S.-IRAQ: Blackwater Banned After Deadly Firefight

The Iraqi government announced Monday that it had revoked the license of one of the most prominent private U.S. security firms operating in Iraq, a decision that is expected to cause friction with U.S. occupying forces, which have increasingly come to rely on private contractors to meet their logistical and security needs.

POLITICS-US: Petraeus Helps Destroy Bush&#39s "Proxy War" Claim

In his prepared statement to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus claimed that Iran is using the Quds Force to turn Shiite militias into a "Hezbollah-like force" to "fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq".