POLITICS-US: Poll Finds Growing Anxiety About World Affairs

Five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the U.S. public has become increasingly anxious about world events and the role that their country is playing in them, according to the latest "Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy" survey released here Wednesday by a non-partisan group, Public Agenda, and Foreign Affairs journal.

POLITICS: Iraqi Endgame Approaching, Bush Ready or Not

If Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki were inclined to bet his life on President George W. Bush's latest assurances that there will be no timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he should probably give it a second thought.

POLITICS: US, China Head for Showdown Over N. Korea Sanctions

The United States and China, two veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, may be heading for a political showdown over the implementation of a resolution aimed at imposing tough economic and military sanctions on North Korea.

POLITICS-US: Democrats to Seize At Least Half of Congress

Less than four weeks before the Nov. 7 mid-term elections, most political professionals from both major parties believe the Democrats not only will end the 12-year Republican reign in the House of Representatives, but also have a roughly even chance of taking back the Senate which they lost in 2002.

POLITICS: The Baker Saviour?

For the many, many foreign policy experts who have reached an advanced state of despair over the ever-plunging image and influence of the United States after nearly six years of the presidency of George W. Bush, the name James Baker III has an almost talismanic quality.

IRAQ: Occupation May Have Killed 655,000

About 655,000 have died as a consequence of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the leading medical journal The Lancet reports.

POLITICS: U.S. Neo-Cons Call For Japanese Nukes, Regime Change

Encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, shipping food aid via submarines, and running secret sabotage operations inside North Korea's borders are among a raft of policy prescriptions pushed by prominent U.S. neo-conservatives in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test.

HEALTH-US: Iraq Brings Wounds That Deepen With Time

A new report in this month's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry finds that while a high percentage of soldiers returning from Iraq suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, many do not show symptoms right away.

POLITICS-US/CANADA: Could Arar Blunder Happen Again?

Washington's pre-emptive war, in which Muslims are picked up, labeled as Islamic terrorists and then sent to a foreign state where under torture they confess wrongly to membership in al Qaeda, is at the heart of what happened to an innocent Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, says Maureen Webb, an Ottawa lawyer and author of the forthcoming book, "Illusions of Security".

POLITICS-US: When Is a Terrorist “Mastermind” Not a Terrorist?

On the 30th anniversary of the first mid-air bombing of a civilian airliner in the Americas, the plot's suspected mastermind is hoping that a U.S. federal judge will soon release him from a Texas jail where he has been held on immigration-related charges for the last year and a half.

POLITICS-US/MIDEAST: “Strategic Consensus” Redux?

President George W. Bush and his peripatetic secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, may believe that they have broken with 60 years of U.S. policy in order to "transform" the Middle East, but to long-time regional observers, their latest initiatives look painfully familiar.

POLITICS-US: More Dissention in the Ranks

A U.S. soldier who went AWOL - absent without leave - over his opposition to the war in Iraq was incarcerated at the U.S. military's Mannheim prison in Germany Tuesday, pending an appeal in Washington this November..

POLITICS-US: War on Terror Returning to Its Cradle

Five years after the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was putting the final touches on a brilliant campaign plan to oust the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies from power, Afghanistan is back in the headlines here, and the news isn't good.

RIGHTS-US: Groups Unanimously Assail New Detention Law

By enacting new legislation this week governing the treatment and trial of suspects in Washington's "global war on terror", Congress has turned its back on both international law and the U.S. Constitution, according to the country's major human rights groups.

POLITICS-US: Hundreds Arrested in Week of Anti-War Actions

Demonstrations, marches, rallies, vigils and prayer meetings continue to take place in dozens of cities across the United States this week as part of a nationwide campaign aiming to force the administration of President George W. Bush and Congress to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

POLITICS: Iraqis Weary of Violence, U.S. Presence

Iraqis - especially the majority Shiites - are increasingly angry and frustrated about their situation and impatient for U.S. troops to leave, but most do not believe their country will fall apart, according to a major new poll released here Wednesday by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

POLITICS-US: Elite Project Proposes Bipartisan Grand Strategy

After two years of consultations with more than 400 members of the U.S. foreign policy elite, a project headed by two leading international relations academics is calling for the adoption of a new U.S. grand strategy designed to address multiple threats and strengthen Washington's commitment to a reformed and reinvigorated multilateral order.

FINANCE: U.S. Warned on War Spending and Deficits

One of the world's most exclusive business clubs warned the United States Tuesday that its open-ended national security and war expenditures, along with tax cuts that led to large budget deficits, could affect the country's status as a powerful economic force.

IRAQ: U.S. Writes Sunni Resistance Out of Anbar Story

Are the Sunni leaders in Iraq's Anbar province finally coming around to joining the U.S. counterinsurgency war?

POLITICS-US: I’m a Veteran, and I Support/Despise This War

The 2006 U.S. Congressional elections are heating up, along with a proliferation of television ads featuring U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

POLITICS-US: Iraq, Overstretched Army Bring Bush New Grief

With the U.S. intelligence community agreed that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have made this country less safe from terrorist threats, President George W. Bush appears now to be facing a growing revolt among top military commanders who say U.S. ground forces are stretched close to the breaking point.