POLITICS-US: Washington on Tenterhooks Over Leak Case

Wrapping up a two-year investigation that a growing number of legal analysts expect to yield indictments of at least one, and possibly two, of the George W. Bush administration's most powerful men as early as this week, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has Washington on pins and needles.

RIGHTS: UN Warns of Dwindling Respect for Rule of Law

Iraq's special war crimes tribunal, and the "anti-terror" measures pursued by its occupying powers, the United States and Britain, are under fire from the United Nations for undermining international human rights standards.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Sunni Strategy Shifts Toward Voter Turnout

Despite last-minute maneuvering by Shiite and Kurdish leaders to offer the possibility of further changes in Iraq's draft constitution, and warnings by foreign jihadists against participation, all indications are that Sunnis will turn out in large numbers Saturday to cast ballots in the country's referendum.

IRAQ: Referendum Will Change Little

Iraqis will vote this weekend in a referendum that is billed as decisive for their political future, and by extension crucial for restoring order in their violence-wracked country. But the country's leaders and also the main mover behind the political process, the Bush administration, may find that the cycle of violence and political instability cannot be so easily broken.

POLITICS-US: Bush Seen Increasingly as a Failed President

Amid growing signs of disarray and malaise in the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush is seen increasingly by the public at large as a failure whose policies, particularly regarding the economy and the budget, have harmed more than helped the country, according to a major new poll released here Thursday.

LABOUR-IRAQ: The Pay May Be Lousy, But the Fish Head Soup Is Free

Jing Soliman left his family in the Philippines for what sounded like a sure thing - a job as a warehouse worker at Camp Anaconda in Iraq.

POLITICS-IRAQ: A Lose-Lose Referendum?

Five days before Saturday's referendum on Iraq's proposed constitution, the U.S. foreign policy elite appears both anxious and gloomy, increasingly worried that win or lose, the process will bring Iraq one step closer to civil war and, with it, the possible destabilisation of the wider region.

POLITICS-US: Condi May Be Bush’s Expediency Council

Just as the theocratic leadership in Iran is trying to rein in the aggressive nationalism of the new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears to be restraining aggressive nationalists in Washington who want to escalate rising tensions with Iran and Syria.

POLITICS-US: Bush Raises the Stakes in Terror War

Despite fading public - and Republican - confidence in his performance in Iraq and the wider "war on terror", U.S. President George W. Bush Thursday raised the stakes by warning that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would lead to a takeover by al Qaeda and the subversion of its pro-western neighbours.

RIGHTS-US: White House Losing Ground on Prisoner Treatment

Despite strong opposition from the Pentagon and the White House, the Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate is coming under growing pressure to set specific standards for the "humane" treatment of detainees taken in Iraq and elsewhere in the George W. Bush administration's "war on terror".

POLITICS-US: Think Tank Issues Two-Year Iraq Exit Plan

In an apparent bid to unify fractious Democrats behind a consensus plan on Iraq, a think tank with strong links to the administration of former President Bill Clinton has called for a two-year "strategic redeployment" of U.S. forces there that would ensure their almost total withdrawal by January 2008.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Voting Shenanigans Cloud Key Province

If the referendum on Iraq's draft constitution next month is conducted fairly, it now appears very likely that the document will be defeated by a two-thirds majority in the three Sunni-dominated provinces of Anbar, Salahadeen and Nineveh, plunging Iraq into a new political crisis.

POLITICS-US: Flush From Iraq, Contractors Snap Up Storm Work

The day Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Robert Boh watched the dramatic pictures of the unfolding disaster on television at his in-laws' house in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where his family had taken shelter.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Can the US Military Presence Avert Civil War?

The growing spectre of a full-scale civil war in Iraq - and the likelihood that such a conflict will draw in neighbouring states - has intensified a summer-long debate here over whether and how to withdraw U.S. troops.

RIGHTS-US: Calls Mount for Prisoner Abuse Commission

New allegations of prisoner torture in Iraq are likely to add urgency to pending legislation that would create a 9/11-type commission to investigate detainee treatment and ensure that the U.S. operates within the law on interrogations.

POLITICS-US: Thousands Rally Against “Economic Apartheid”

At least 100,000 people from different parts of the U.S. and the world converged on Washington Saturday to demand an immediate end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and what they termed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank's "war on the poor".

RIGHTS-US/IRAQ: Whistleblowers Describe Routine, Severe Abuse

As a military jury in Texas considers the fate of Lynndie England, the low-ranking reservist pictured in the notorious photos of the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003, two sergeants and a captain in one of the U.S. Army's most decorated combat units have come forward with accounts of routine, systematic and often severe beatings committed against detainees at a base near Fallujah from 2003 through 2004.

POLITICS-US: Uncertain Anniversary for Iraq War Champions

It was four years ago today that a little-known group called the "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC) published an open letter to President George W. Bush advising him on how precisely he should carry out his brand-new "war on terrorism".

POLITICS: UN Human Rights Body to Scrutinise U.S. Abuses

The U.N. Human Rights Committee, scheduled to meet in Geneva next month, has written to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) calling for any available evidence of human rights abuses by the United States - particularly in the aftermath of its global war on terrorism.

POLITICS-US: Sailing Toward Lame Duck Land on Katrina’s Waters

More than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, U.S. President George W. Bush is looking increasingly like a political "lame duck", struggling hard to stay afloat on a rising tide of pessimism and popular discontent.

RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Iraq War Critic Deported to US

The Australian government deported, Thursday, Scott Parkin, a soft-spoken peace and environmental activist, of the Texas-based Houston Global Awareness Collective, for participation in non-violence and civil disobedience workshops in this country.