POLITICS: Israel Warned US Not to Invade Iraq after 9/11

Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.

POLITICS-US: Bush Drops Another Crony

Civil liberties advocates and Democrats hailed Monday's resignation by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as a major victory, while most Republicans, for whom Gonzales's performance had increasingly become a source of embarrassment, kept their comments to a minimum.

POLITICS-US: A Quagmire of Napoleonic Proportions

President George W. Bush's most recent defence of his Iraq war policy was striking for its embrace of a historical parallel the administration has painstakingly tried to avoid for the last five years.

MEDIA-US: How Iraq War Backers Morphed Into “Critics”

Sep. 15 is the deadline for the George W. Bush administration to submit a report to Congress defending its Iraq "surge strategy", an escalation of more than 30,000 U.S. troops designed to increase security in the war-torn nation.

POLITICS-US/IRAQ: Still No Light at Tunnel&#39s End

While there have been some improvements in Iraq's security situation over the past seven months, the level of overall violence remains "high" with only modest improvements possible over the next six to 12 months, according to a new study by the U.S. intelligence community released here Thursday.

POLITICS-US: Bush Campaigns to Sustain Military "Surge"

Opening a new campaign to sustain his "surge" strategy in Iraq, President George W. Bush Wednesday compared Washington's ongoing struggle there to both World War II and the Vietnam War where, he said, Washington's withdrawal led to disaster for "millions of innocent citizens."

POLITICS-US: High-Level Support Ebbs for Surge

Washington's policy makers are growing dissatisfied with the George W. Bush administration's troop surge in Iraq and a majority agrees that the world is becoming more dangerous for the United States, according to a poll released Monday.

POLITICS: Terror Label for Guard Corp Entrenches US-Iran Enmity

The White House's decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation could deal a double blow to efforts to utilise diplomacy with Iran to stabilise Iraq.

HEALTH-US: Defence Contract Workers Fall Through Insurance Cracks

New statistics from the United States Department of Labour offer greater insight into the number of defence contractors killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, but questions remain about compensation for injured or dead contract workers and their families.

RIGHTS-CANADA: Mounties, CIA Implicated in Arar Torture Scandal

The Canadian government released on Aug. 9 previously redacted information regarding the Maher Arar torture scandal, in response to a Canadian court order. The government had argued that the information should be withheld due to "national security" concerns.

IRAQ: U.S. Tags Iran for Casualties from Its Own Attacks

When a top U.S. commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shiite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73 percent of all July attacks that had killed or wounded U.S. forces in Baghdad, he claimed it was because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to "intelligence reports" of a "surge" in Iranian assistance.

PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN: Kabul Peace Jirga Falls Short

In a sharp departure from Pakistan's repeated denials of providing sanctuary to the Taliban, President Pervez Musharraf for the first time acknowledged in his speech to the Kabul peace jirga that there is support for the Taliban in the tribal areas of his country.

POLITICS-US: Anbar "Turnaround" Undercuts War Rationale

In hailing what he has called an "almost breathtaking" turnaround in Anbar Province that has weakened al Qaeda as a triumph for his new military strategy in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has put a favourable spin on a development which actually challenges the central rationale for continued U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

POLITICS: UN Staff Oppose Proposed Iraq Resolution

The U.N. Staff Council, representing 25,000 staff members, unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday calling on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon not to deploy any additional staff members to Iraq and to remove those currently serving at the duty station in Baghdad.

BOOKS-MIDEAST: Beneath Superheated Rhetoric, Pragmatism Rules

The last few years have produced an enormous trove of literature about conflict and violence in the Middle East, no doubt because there appears to be so much of it.

POLITICS-US: Polls Find Broad Support for Greater Altruism

The U.S. public rejects the idea that the United States should revert to a more isolationist foreign policy, but expresses dissatisfaction with the current role of the U.S. in the world and the destabilising effect it is having, concludes a compilation of recent public opinion polls.

POLITICS: U.S. Arms Sales Preserve Israel&#39s Edge

When the United States sells state-of-the-art weapons systems to Arab nations, it invariably provides even more lethal and sophisticated arms to its steadfast ally, Israel, in order to help counter the firepower of its neighbours.

MIDEAST: Bush Revs Up Lemon of a Peace Policy

Political factions Fatah and Hamas must reconcile in order to pursue a sustainable peace in the Palestinian territories, and if and when a power-sharing agreement is brokered, the international community must be willing to accept it, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG).

FINANCE-US: As Iraq Costs Soar, Contractors Earn Record Profits

In a report to lawmakers earlier this week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that the war in Iraq could cost U.S. taxpayers over a trillion dollars when the long-term costs of caring for soldiers wounded in action, military and economic aid for the Iraqi government, and ongoing costs associated with the 190,000 troops stationed in Iraq are totaled up.

BOOKS: When the "Good Fight" Is Anything But

Few political debates have changed as rapidly over the last four years as the one surrounding humanitarian military intervention.

POLITICS: US Evangelicals at Odds on Embracing Israel

It was business as usual during Christians United for Israel's recent "Israel Summit," its highly-publicised second summer sojourn to Washington.