RIGHTS-US: Senate Panel Probes Legality of Torture Memos

"An ethical train wreck" was the phrase used by one witness to describe the legal reasoning behind the Justice Department’s recently released memos justifying the use of waterboarding and other forms of "enhanced interrogation techniques".

U.S.-IRAQ: Massacre Puts War Trauma Under the Spotlight

A U.S. soldier shot five of his colleagues dead at a base in Baghdad, Iraq Monday. The Pentagon says at least two other people were hurt in the shootings and the gunman is in custody.

RIGHTS-US: Lawmakers Try to Block New Abuse Photos

Civil libertarians are condemning a call by two influential U.S. senators for the White House to block the impending release of photographs showing detainees being abused by U.S. military personnel at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at other U.S. detention facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere.

RIGHTS-IRAQ: U.N. Report Paints Grim Picture

Iraqi prisons are torturing detainees, locking people up for months without charges and, in most cases, allowing the perpetrators of these human rights abuses to escape justice, according to a new United Nations report.

RIGHTS: Recruiters of Child Soldiers Defy U.N. Pressure

The United Nations remains virtually helpless as an increasing number of armed groups - described as "non-state actors" - continue to exploit, abuse and deliberately harm children in battle zones in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

RIGHTS-US: Bracing for New Prisoner Abuse Photos

This Tuesday, Apr. 28, will mark five years since the world got its first look at the sickening photographs from Abu Ghraib on the U.S. television programme "60 Minutes."

RIGHTS-US: Senate Report Casts Grim Light on Bush Era

Pentagon interrogators continuously ramped up their abusive techniques against prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan in a vain attempt to establish a link between the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. on Sep. 11, 2001.

IRAQ: More Than Two Million Refugees Waiting to Come Home

The government of Iraq and the international community must establish safe conditions for the return of 2.6 million displaced Iraqis, says a new field report by the non-profit group Refugees International.

RIGHTS-US: Abu Ghraib Victims Can Sue Interrogators

In a ruling that could have widespread implications for government contractors overseas, a federal court has concluded that four former Abu Ghraib detainees, who were tortured and later released without charge, can sue the U.S. military contractor who was involved in conducting prisoner interrogations for the Pentagon in Iraq.

AUSTRALIA: Government Urged to Conduct Iraq War Probe

The U.K. government’s recent announcement that it will conduct an inquiry into Britain’s involvement in Iraq has led to calls here for Australia to review its own participation in the controversial war.

US: Counterinsurgency Back In Vogue?

As the U.S. prepares to reduce its military presence in Iraq while intensifying its war effort in Afghanistan, hawks within both the Republican and Democratic parties have come increasingly to believe that counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine offers a solution to the central security challenges Washington will face in the 21st century.

IRAQ: Virtual Therapy Treats Real Agony

"Oh, dear Lord, what I am going through," 'N', a 25-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad wrote several months ago. "Am I going to see my family again? Sometimes, I even see my own dead body, lying somewhere. And I imagine the pain my death would cause to the people I love the most."

US: Obama Team Debates Stance on Israeli Attack Threat

A recent statement by the chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. David Petraeus, that Israel may decide to attack Iranian nuclear sites has been followed by indications of a debate within the Barack Obama administration on whether Israel's repeated threats to carry out such a strike should be used to gain leverage in future negotiations with Tehran.

POLITICS-US: New Budget, Not Quite a Fundamental Shift

Secretary of Defence Robert Gates unveiled the U.S.’s much-anticipated new military budget Monday, which aims to reorient the armed forces toward irregular and counterinsurgency warfare while proposing cuts in several major weapons programs.

POLITICS: Al-Maliki Draws U.S. Troops into Crackdown on Sunnis

When U.S. troops and Apache helicopters joined Iraqi forces in putting down an uprising by Sunni "Sons of Iraq" militiamen in central Baghdad last weekend, it was a preview of the kind of combat the U.S. military is likely to see increasingly over the next three years unless a policy decision is made in Washington to avoid it.

POLITICS: Despite Obama’s Vow, Combat Brigades Will Stay in Iraq

Despite President Barack Obama’s statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina Feb. 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months," a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic U.S. Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after that date under a new non-combat label.

US-MIDEAST: Even Mixed Signals Mark a Policy Shift

The British government has announced it will hold talks with the political wing of Lebanon's Hizbullah. The Barack Obama administration sent two envoys to Syria to discuss steps to improve relations. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has invited Iran to take part in a conference on the future of Afghanistan.

IRAQ: Medical Care At Last, At a Price

Prompt medical care is at last on offer in Iraq, for those who can find the dollars for it.

U.S.: Military Dominance in Mideast Proven a Costly Myth

The arguments for maintaining a major U.S. combat force in Iraq at least through 2011, escalating U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and assuming a confrontational stance toward Iran appear to assume that the United States remains the dominant military power in the region.

IRAQ: Stumbling From One Conflict to Another?

When U.S. President Barack Obama announced his plan last week to pull out all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by September 2010, the news did not generate much enthusiasm among Iraqi Kurds.

POLITICS-US: Drawdown Plan May Leave Combat Brigades in Iraq

President Barack Obama has given military commanders a free hand to determine the size and composition of a residual force in Iraq up to 50,000 troops, apparently including the option of leaving one or more combat brigades or bringing them from the United States, after the August 2010 deadline for the ostensible withdrawal of all combat brigades now in Iraq.