POLITICS: Balancing the Iraq Equation

A humanitarian aid worker's death in Iraq last week is spurring calls for a public accounting of civilian casualties by the United States government and more attention to the issue by the U.S. media.

POLITICS-U.S.: An Army of the Unwilling

At the end of last month, the U.S. Selective Service System issued a report assuring President George W. Bush that it would be ready to implement a draft within 75 days. While stirring up a storm of speculation, this report may actually be the least compelling harbinger of a draft.

RIGHTS: Religious Profiling Sparks Federal Lawsuit

Three influential civil rights groups charged Wednesday that border control tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security discriminate against U.S. citizens solely on the basis of their religion and ethnicity, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

POLITICS-US: Houston, We Have An Image Problem…

In March 2003, Dr. John Brown resigned from the U.S. State Department after 20 years as a senior Foreign Service officer, telling then Secretary of State Colin Powell he could not "in good conscience" support President George W. Bush's war plans against Iraq.

RIGHTS-US: Detainees? What Detainees?

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military's most senior leaders, want Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve new guidelines that will formalise the George W. Bush administration's policy of imprisoning so-called enemy combatants without the protections of the Geneva Conventions and enable the Pentagon to legally hold "ghost detainees", a human rights group is charging.

POLITICS-US: GI Joe vs. Zein, the Last Pharaoh

As Pres. George W. Bush's confidante Karen Hughes prepares for her confirmation hearings later this spring as the nominee for under-secretary of state for public diplomacy, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is weighing in with sharp criticism of Washington's track record on boosting its image abroad.

POLITICS: For Reluctant GI’s, Canada Remains the Great White Hope

So far, only a trickle of U.S. soldiers are heading north to Canada to avoid serving in the U.S. military campaign in Iraq.

POLITICS: New Iraqi Gov’t to Confront Future with U.S. Military

One of the first orders of business for the new Iraqi government under Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Islamist Ibrahim Jaafari will be to strike a deal with the United States military over the terms and conditions of the 150,000-troop-strong U.S. military presence.

RIGHTS-US: Cooler Heads Review Patriot Act in Congress

Disclosure of a 75 percent increase in secret wiretaps and "sneak and peek" searches since 2000 is likely to provide ammunition for civil liberties groups determined to modify the USA Patriot Act when Congress begins two months of debate on the law Tuesday.

RIGHTS-US: Famed Fighter Against Japanese Internment Dies at 86

The Japanese-American who waited 40 years for justice is dead.

RIGHTS: U.S. Soldiers Told to "Beat the F**k Out of" Detainees

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is charging that U.S. Army documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq was much more widespread than the government has admitted..

RIGHTS-US: Fresh Skirmishes in the Information Wars

Civil libertarians and opposition political leaders are stepping up their efforts to pull back the "veil of secrecy" they claim has characterised the George W. Bush administration.

RIGHTS: "Ghost Prisoner" Resurfaces in Guantanamo

A major advocacy group charges that a Yemeni businessman captured in Egypt was handed over to U.S. authorities and "disappeared" for more than a year and a half before being sent to the Pentagon's Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba..

POLITICS-US: Bob Barr and Friends Strike Back At Patriot Act

In a political environment more fractious than Washington has seen in over a decade, there are still signs that left and right can find common ground.

POLITICS-AMERICAS: Washington Focuses on Southern "Axis of Evil"

While U.S. President George W. Bush played nice to a deeply frustrated Mexican President Vicente Fox at the North American Summit in Texas Wednesday, U.S. media attention was focused more on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's efforts to sound the alarm against Latin American troublemakers in his swing through the region this week.

EDUCATION-US: Gov’t Woos Tiny Pool of Arabic Students

An acute shortage of Arabic speakers is in danger of crippling U.S. efforts to counter terrorist threats, communicate with prisoners, and build bridges to the Muslim world.

POLITICS-US: Pentagon Reaffirms Globocop Role

March has been a bad month for the world's multilateralists who, encouraged by several early appointments to the State Department and a successful presidential tour of Europe, had hoped that George W. Bush would temper his unilateralist instincts in his second term.

POLITICS: Anger and Grief Mark Second Anniversary of Iraq War

Joining others around the world, tens of thousands of people in cities across the United States took to the streets Saturday calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from that country.

POLITICS: Artificial Intelligence?

Private military contractors like the Virginia-based Anteon, which has grown tenfold in the last decade, are becoming ever more integral to the nation's programmes for intelligence sharing, intelligence training and video game warfare simulators.

RIGHTS: Tom Ridge’s October Surprise

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is trying once again to discover who was rounded up by the Department of Homeland Security in the weeks preceding the November 2004 presidential election "to assure the Arab-American and Muslim communities that they are not being impacted on a disproportionate basis."

POLITICS-US: Propaganda War Gets a New General

The nomination of one of President George W. Bush's closest advisors to lead U.S. public diplomacy efforts has been met with both hope and scepticism by some leaders in the U.S. foreign policy community.