IRAQ: Anger Builds in Falluja Over Security Crackdown

The city that was mostly destroyed by the U.S. military operation Phantom Fury in November 2004 has been under curfew for over two weeks, with no signs of relief.

POLITICS-US: Bush’s Iraq-Korea Analogy Sparks New Debate

While President George W. Bush appears, however belatedly, to be embracing recommendations by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) to begin withdrawing U.S. combat troops by early 2008, he has implicitly rejected the ISG's call to renounce any intention to establish permanent military bases in Iraq.

POLITICS: U.S. Ramps Up Missile Tests in the Pacific

Earlier this year, when China blasted one of its satellites into thousands of little floating pieces, it was condemned by Washington as a provocative act.

POLITICS-US: Surge Dirge

Despite President George W. Bush's victory last week in his protracted battle with Congressional Democrats for unconditional funding for the Iraq war at least through September, his administration appears to have given up hope that it can maintain his "surge" strategy well into next year and even beyond.

POLITICS-US: Intel Agencies Warned of Post-War Risks

Two major studies prepared by the U.S. intelligence community and distributed to senior officials in every relevant agency two months before Washington's invasion of Iraq warned of many of the problems that have turned the U.S. occupation there into the worst foreign policy crisis since at least the Vietnam War.

HEALTH-US: For Some Vets, No Way Out of the War Zone

The widow of an Afghanistan war veteran who was shot and killed by the Maryland State Police is talking to a lawyer after a state attorney's report released this month found the troopers' behaviour was "flawed," "assaultive" and "militaristic".

POLITICS-US: Public, Republicans Disown Iraq War

Even as Congress moved to approve President George W. Bush's request for continued funding of the Iraq war through the end of this fiscal 2007, a major new poll released Thursday found that public disillusionment with the war has reached record highs.

U.S./CARIBBEAN: Anger Mounts Over Inaction on ’76 Bombing

When Caribbean foreign ministers meet with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Capitol Hill in mid-June, they are likely to urge Washington to deal with the man thought responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people off Barbados, most of them Caribbean nationals.

CANADA: Afghan Strategy Sharpens Ideological Divide

United Nations-style peacekeeping is getting a bad rap these days within Canada's military, 60 years after then Prime Minister Lester Pearson came up with the idea of mediating the Suez Crisis following the British-French-Israel attack on Egypt.

POLITICS-US: Better Oversight of Post-9/11 Military Aid Urged

Aided by Washington lobbyists, foreign countries regarded as strategic allies in the ‘war on terror' have received billions of dollars in new military and security assistance since 9/11, much of it with little Congressional or civilian oversight, according to the findings of a major investigative project by the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI).

POLITICS-US: Democrats Concede Deadline on Iraq Pullout

Congress gave in this week to the George W. Bush administration and finalised an emergency supplemental war spending bill that does not include a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

IRAQ: Sunni Resistance Receptive to Sadr Alliance

Nationalist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bid to unite Sunnis and Shiites on the basis of a common demand for withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces, reported last weekend by the Washington Post's Sudarsan Raghavan, seems likely to get a positive response from Sunni armed resistance.

U.S./IRAN: Scholars Bear Brunt of Anti-Diplomacy Backlash

With only a few days left until the United States and Iran are expected to hold much anticipated talks, several factors point to the potential for a real diplomatic breakthrough.

RIGHTS: Amnesty Report Decries “Politics of Fear”

The "politics of fear" are polarising the world and leading to an erosion of human rights, according to Amnesty International's annual report released Wednesday.

POLITICS: Major Poll Finds U.S. Muslims Mostly Mainstream

Despite deep dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy and President George W. Bush, U.S. Muslims tend to be better assimilated and more content with the larger society in which they live than their European counterparts, according to a major new survey released here Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre.

LEBANON: Violence Highlights Regional Polarisation

The violence in Lebanon's Nahr al-Bader Palestinian refugee camp that has killed more than 55 people in the past two days is focusing attention on a relatively unknown and shadowy Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam.

POLITICS-US: Latino Soldiers Who Refused Iraq Speak Out

A U.S. Army medic who refused to load his gun in Iraq and then escaped through a base window in Germany rather than be deployed a second time returned home to Los Angeles this week after serving six months in a U.S. military prison.

POLITICS-US: Surge Strategy Shows Weaknesses

More than three months into the implementation of U.S. President George W. Bush's "surge" strategy, scepticism over the likelihood of its success is still running high here.

RIGHTS: Bill Shields Pentagon Aid Boost from Oversight

Newly proposed legislation would expand existing Pentagon security and military aid programmes in Iraq and Afghanistan to "coalition partners" in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

POLITICS-US: Commander’s Veto Sank Threatening Gulf Buildup

Admiral William Fallon, then President George W. Bush's nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM, according to sources with access to his thinking.

HEALTH-US: Suicidal and Facing a Third Tour in Iraq

At the beginning of May, Corporal Cloy Richards tried to kill himself.