MIDEAST: Backing for Israel Stymies Larger US Aims in Region

Washington's strong backing - hedged by occasional calls for restraint - for Israel's 10-day-old military campaign in Lebanon has won it very few friends in the Arab world, despite recent criticism of Hezbollah by pro-U.S. governments in the region, according to a range of regional and foreign policy experts.

POLITICS: UN Paralysed Over Israeli Attacks on Lebanon

As Israel continues to unleash its deadly firepower on a hapless Lebanon for a second week running, the United Nations remains paralysed and unable to take any action because of an indisputable fact of international politics: the unrestrained U.S. support for an intransigent Israel.

FINANCE-US: Cost of Terror War Hits 430 Billion

Washington's self-styled "global war on terror" has cost the country at least 430 billion dollars over the past five years in military and diplomatic efforts, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the watchdog arm of the U.S. Congress.

POLITICS-US: Bringing On “World War III”

If you thought that a global conflagration on the order of a World War was more the stuff of Biblical prophecy, science fiction and apocalyptic end-times novels, think again.

POLITICS-US: Mideast Conflict Boosts Chances of Iran-US Showdown

The week-old Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is likely to boost the chances of U.S. military action against Iran, according to a number of regional experts who see a broad consensus among the U.S. political elite that the ongoing hostilities are part of a broader offensive being waged by Tehran against Washington across the region.

POLITICS-US: Senate Seizes on Detainee Issue to Rein in Bush

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that President George W. Bush does not have the authority to try suspected terrorist detainees without statutory approval - and must adhere to the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions against torture - has opened a widening chasm among members of the president's own party.

POLITICS-US: Back to Sunni Authoritarians?

After posing as the champion of democratic reform and the long oppressed Shia minority in the Arab world, the administration of President George W. Bush appears to be scurrying back to Washington's traditional policy of strong support for the region's Sunni-dominated, pro-U.S. authoritarian governments.

MIDEAST: In U.S., Not All Casualties Are Equal

Numerous U.S. groups, intellectuals, politicians and media outlets are mobilising in the United States to back Israel in its ongoing assault on neighbouring Lebanon with one main idea to promote - that Israel is always the victim.

RIGHTS: Int’l Campaign Launched Against U.S. “Torture School”

Peace activists from the non-governmental School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) will tour Chile, Peru and Ecuador in August to persuade the governments of those countries not to send any more military personnel to the training centre in the U.S. state of Georgia.

POLITICS: Bush’s Double Game on an Iraq Withdrawal Timetable

Caught between the need to explore a possible diplomatic way out of an otherwise hopeless mess in Iraq and the domestic political need to keep the Democrats on the defensive, U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are playing a double game on the issue of timetable for withdrawal.

MIDEAST: In U.S., Not All Casualties Are Equal

Numerous U.S. groups, intellectuals, politicians and media outlets are mobilising in the United States to back Israel in its ongoing assault on neighbouring Lebanon with one main idea to promote - that Israel is always the victim.

POLITICS: Israel Violates Law on U.S. Weapons in Mideast

Israel is in violation of U.S. arms control laws for deploying U.S.-made fighter planes, combat helicopters and missiles to kill civilians and destroy Lebanon's infrastructure in the ongoing six-day devastation of that militarily-weak country.

POLITICS: Energised Neo-Cons Say Israel’s Fight Is Washington’s

Seeing a major opportunity to regain influence lost as a result of setbacks in Iraq, prominent neo-conservatives are calling for unconditional U.S. support for Israel's military offensives in Gaza and Lebanon and "regime change" in Syria and Iran, as well as possible U.S. attacks on Tehran's nuclear facilities in retaliation for its support of Hezbollah.

/REPEAT/POLITICS-US: Cowboy Diplomacy Is Not Dead Yet

"We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it."

MIDEAST: Israel Readies for Iran Showdown by Attacking Lebanon

As the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah persists, an Israeli strategy of enlarging the conflict seems to be crystallising.

POLITICS-MIDEAST: Bush Faces Major Choice Amid Escalation

The sudden opening Wednesday by Lebanon's Hezbollah militia of a second front in Israel's ongoing campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza presents the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush with an escalating crisis that, until now, it has preferred to ignore.

FINANCE: Washington Defends Banking Surveillance

A senior U.S. official has vehemently defended a recently uncovered U.S. programme that tracks suspected terrorist financing and which sparked controversy over privacy rights and freedom of the press, saying that the disclosure was harmful to his country's anti-terror efforts.

RIGHTS-US: Pentagon Switch on Geneva Elicits Hope, Scepticism

Tuesday's announcement by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush that detainees held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions has provoked both hope and scepticism from human rights activists.

POLITICS: No Evidence of Secret Enrichment by Iran

U.S. and European officials have been saying for years that Iran is using its publicly declared nuclear programme as a cover for a clandestine nuclear weapons programme, but has never produced concrete evidence to support that argument.

POLITICS-MIDEAST: Growing Calls for U.S. to Step In

Amid worsening violence between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli military in Gaza, calls are mounting here for the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to take a stronger role in ending the escalating conflict.

RIGHTS-IRAQ: 50,000 Dead, But Who’s Counting?

After famously telling reporters that they "don't do body counts", Pentagon officials now say that they have in fact been keeping a record of civilian casualties in Iraq for one year. And while that number remains classified, independent estimates suggest that at least 50,000 people have died in the country since the 2003 invasion.