BOOKS-US: G.I. Joe&#39s Midlife Crisis

When George W. Bush made an instantly-famous speech last month that used the legacy of Vietnam to justify a continued U.S. presence in Iraq, it marked the completion of a rhetorical journey that few would have anticipated six years earlier.

POLITICS-US: Anti-Iran Hawks Win Partial Victory in Congress

Amid growing speculation about prospects for U.S. military action against Iran, neo-conservatives and other hawks won a significant - if somewhat incomplete - victory in rallying the Democratic-led Congress to its side.

POLITICS-US: Have Hawks Won a Round on Iraq Escalation?

The George W. Bush administration recently concluded that the increase in rocket attacks on coalition targets by Shiite forces over the summer was a deliberate move by Iran to escalate the war in order to put pressure on the United States to accept Iranian influence in Iraq, according to a senior U.S. government official.

FILM-US: How the “Gang of Four” Lost Iraq

Iraq, a quagmire? "No, that's someone else's business," former U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld brusquely told the White House press corps in the summer of 2003. "I don't do quagmires."

HEALTH-US: Brain Trauma the “Signature Injury” For Iraq Vets

On Mar. 19, 2004 Corporal Justin Bunce was on patrol in the Iraqi city of Husayba on the Syrian border when a bomb exploded in the wall of a cemetery.

MIGRATION: U.S. Doors Cracked to Iraqi Refugees

A full-blown humanitarian disaster looms in Iraq, warns a new report on the refugee crisis there by Amnesty International, and the international community is responding with little more than "global apathy".

POLITICS-US: Far Right Sells Iraq War to "Values Voters"

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, then U.S. President Richard Nixon appealed to the country's "Silent Majority" to oppose growing anti-Vietnam War sentiment in the United States.

IRAQ: Border Shelling Hits Villagers

Sixty-year-old Khadijah Hama Khan has had to flee home again. Nothing new. "All our life we have been on the run," she says.

MIDEAST-US: The Long Propaganda War

The George W. Bush administration is badly losing the so-called "war of ideas" in the Middle East, a group of foreign policy experts suggested here Wednesday, by failing to grasp that persuasion is just as important as the more heavy-handed tactics of its "war on terror".

Q&A: War in the Name of Peace

International law is seen by many to have been shunted aside by Western powers when launching their most significant military operations in the past decade.

U.S.-IRAQ: Blackwater Banned After Deadly Firefight

The Iraqi government announced Monday that it had revoked the license of one of the most prominent private U.S. security firms operating in Iraq, a decision that is expected to cause friction with U.S. occupying forces, which have increasingly come to rely on private contractors to meet their logistical and security needs.

POLITICS-US: Petraeus Helps Destroy Bush&#39s "Proxy War" Claim

In his prepared statement to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus claimed that Iran is using the Quds Force to turn Shiite militias into a "Hezbollah-like force" to "fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq".

Q&A: &#39War on Terror Served Iran&#39s Interests Best&#39

Eminent writer, historian and filmmaker Tariq Ali was born in Lahore in 1943. While a student at Oxford University, he became involved in the movement against the war in Vietnam. That was the beginning of a long career in the literary arts and in peace activism that has earned him iconic status.

US-IRAQ: Religious Violence Spiking, State Dept Says

Despite the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to enhance security in the country, the freedom of average Iraqis to practice their religions deteriorated sharply during the past year, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. State Department.

EDUCATION-IRAQ: Back to School, Back to Horror

As another school year begins in Iraq, parents approach it with dread, fearing for the safety of their children.

POLITICS-US/IRAQ: Sheikh&#39s Killing a Blow to Bush

In what was at least a symbolic blow to George W. Bush, a prominent Iraqi tribal sheikh and self-styled leader of the "Sunni Awakening" movement against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was assassinated just hours before the U.S. president was to make his latest appeal for public support for his Iraq strategy.

POLITICS-US: Rumsfeld Redeploys to Right-Wing Think Tank

While General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were giving the U.S. Congress an upbeat assessment of the situation on the ground in Iraq this week, one of the chief architects of the war was preparing to redeploy to a West Coast conservative think tank.

IRAQ: No Refuge Within or Outside the Country

U.S. occupation authorities and successive U.S.-backed Iraqi governments have done little to stem the flow of Iraqis fleeing their war-torn country since the beginning of the occupation.

POLITICS-US/IRAQ: No Exit

After two days of Congressional testimony by Washington's top two officials in Iraq, prospects for a substantial withdrawal of U.S. military forces there before the end of President George W. Bush's tenure at the White House look as remote as ever.

U.S.-IRAQ: Fallon Derided Petraeus, Opposed the Surge

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

MIDDLE EAST: Bridging the Shia-Sunni Divide With Free Trade

While Iran and the United States exchange aggressive statements, the Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have been busy building trade relations with Tehran and charting an economic course with a potential of mending ties in a tough neighbourhood.