POLITICS-U.S.: Polls Show Big Impact from Abuse Photos, Spell Bad News for Bush

The photographs of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers have had a major impact on public opinion in the United States, according to back-to-back national polls that also show continued erosion in support for President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

IRAQ: Balkans Soldiers Find Fortune in Baghdad

Fighting gets into your veins, said men who fought in former Yugoslavia. And so now that peace has come to their homeland, many have moved to Iraq.

POLITICS: U.N. Warned of Death Trap in Iraq

As the United Nations prepares to organise elections and help create a new interim government in Iraq starting in July, scepticism is growing about the wisdom of risking U.N. lives in a country swirling in violence and chaos..

POLITICS-U.S.: Chickenhawk Groupthink?

In a 1972 book, 'Victims of Groupthink: A Psychology Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes', Irving Janis identified the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as particularly compelling examples of how very smart people can collectively make very stupid decisions.

IRAQ: British Army ‘Killing Civilians’

The British army has been killing civilians in areas of southern Iraq that it controls, says a report by Amnesty International.

POLITICS-U.S.: Bush Circles Wagons, But Cavalry Has Joined the Indians

In the old Hollywood westerns, the white settlers circle the wagons to defend themselves against attacks by the Indians until the U.S. Cavalry can arrive to rescue them and chase off their assailants. But in Washington over the last few days it seems that the Cavalry has joined the Indians.

MIDEAST: Some Settlers Only Settle In Some More

On a barren hilltop in the Palestinian Jerusalem neighbourhood Abu Dis, a gap of several hundred metres interrupts the wall Israel is building in the city.

MIDEAST: Palestinians Who Help the Israelis Kill

Israel's assassination of top Palestinian military and political leaders could have been more difficult without the help of Palestinian informers. The issue of collaborators is becoming a daily debate within Palestinian society.

IRAQ: People’s Court Pronounces U.S. Guilty

A people's court has pronounced the United States government guilty of committing war crimes.

POLITICS-U.S.: Perhaps Not So Exceptional After All

To understand the impact in the United States of the photos of U.S. military personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners, it is necessary to recall what then-Secretary of State Elihu Root said in 1899, as the country first emerged as a global power in the Spanish-American War.

RIGHTS: Iraq Scandal Opens U.S. to Charges of Double Standards

According to a joke circulating in Washington political circles, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's notorious torture chamber in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad - once held up as a symbol of barbarity - was never shut down.

POLITICS-U.S.: Rummy on the Rocks

With the scandal over the abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody in Iraq still growing, the administration of President George W Bush appears to be shaken to its very core.

IRAQ: U.N. Rights Commission Shirks Chance to Redeem Itself

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which during its April sessions kept mum on the abuses committed in Iraq, will once again avoid the issue in late May when it is to receive a report on the Iraq situation, say sources close to the matter.

IRAQ: Race Against Time for Case in Britain

A group of lawyers is in a race against time to bring legal action against British authorities over the killing of Iraqi civilians.

POLITICS: U.S. in Retreat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan

Politically speaking, the U.S. government is engaged in a none-too-orderly retreat in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and also indirectly in South Waziristan in Pakistan.

POLITICS: Afghanistan Starting to Look Like Iraq, Say Experts

The growing instability in Afghanistan - a country under virtual military occupation by U.S. and other western forces - has been overshadowed by news of the escalating violence, torture and killings in U.S.-administered Iraq.

MIDEAST: Veil Drops Over an Attack

Questions continue to hover over an attack that left four people dead in the Syrian capital Damascus ten days ago.

MIDEAST: Only the Impasse Gets Stronger

The summer session of Israel's parliament started this week with the opposition gleefully lambasting the ruling Likud party that had rejected its own Prime Minister's plan for a withdrawal from the Gaza strip and parts of the West Bank.

POLITICS-U.S.: Ex-Diplomats Protest Bush’s Alignment with Sharon

Some 60 former U.S. diplomats and other government officials who served overseas have signed a letter to President George W Bush protesting his support for the Israeli government's position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

IRAQ: U.S. Troops Marching In Saddam’s Footsteps

Dozens of followers of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr sing songs of martyrdom as they carry the coffins of two of their slain comrades into the shrine of the revered Imam Ali in the Iraqi holy city, Najaf.

U.S.-IRAQ: From Fallujah to Photos, One Fiasco After Another

When in 1970 'Life' magazine published photos taken by Senator Tom Harkin, then a lowly congressional aide, of the infamous ''tiger cages'' in which suspected Viet Cong men, women and even children were kept secretly - and crippled - by the U.S.-run South Vietnamese prison system, it was another nail in the coffin of a conflict on which most of the U.S. public had already soured.