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.

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."

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".

MIDEAST: Neocons Tie N. Korea to Israeli Strike on Syria

Nearly two weeks have passed since Israeli warplanes conducted a mysterious raid against an as yet unidentified target in northeast Syria. Details of the incident have been slow to come, as officials from both countries have remained tight-lipped.

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.

POLITICS-US: Ahmadinejad as Goldfinger

On the same day General David H. Petraeus delivered to Congress his much anticipated progress report on the U.S. military's "surge strategy" in Iraq, neoconservative ideologues associated with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) took aim at another one of the reputed foes of "freedom" - the Islamic Republic of Iran.

POLITICS-US: Neocons Put on a Surge-Stravaganza

With U.S. General David Petraeus's eagerly anticipated final report on Iraq due on Sep. 15, supporters of the troop surge are busily trying to set the stage for the report that they believe will refute their opponents.

POLITICS: Israel Warned US Not to Invade Iraq after 9/11

Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.

POLITICS-US: Hillary Clinton in the Right&#39s Crosshairs

While Democratic candidates are battling it out for their party's 2008 presidential nomination, conservative partisans have been gearing up to take down the frontrunner, Senator Hillary Clinton.

POLITICS-US: Candidates Hop Aboard the Iran Sanctions Bus

Last Thursday afternoon, in a tightly packed press room of the U.S. Capitol building, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi stood at the podium and smiled heartily as she pointed to two columns of U.S. postal boxes stacked behind her.

POLITICS: Pakistani al Qaeda a Real Threat – US Intelligence

The United States intelligence community’s latest assessment of al Qaeda and the threat it poses to the homeland appears to have both renewed questions about the wisdom of invading Iraq and returned the spotlight to an increasingly strife-ridden Pakistan.

POLITICS-US: Neo-Cons Try to Rally, Bully Republicans

In the face of a critical Senate debate on future U.S. strategy in Iraq, neo-conservatives and other hawks are trying to rally increasingly sceptical - and worried - Republicans behind continued support for President George W. Bush's five-month-old "surge" strategy.

POLITICS-US: Bush Presidency Enters Terminal Phase

There may be moments during their summit at his family's compound in Kennebunkport, Maine when U.S. President George W. Bush looks with envy on his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, whose popularity at home guarantees him vast influence even as he prepares to leave office just nine months from now.

POLITICS-US: Congress to Curb Bush Enthusiasm for Abbas

U.S. President George W. Bush threw his full support behind President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (PA) last week, declaring the Fatah leader "the president of all the Palestinians."

POLITICS-US: Neo-cons Spinning Hearts and Minds

As the George W. Bush administration struggles through its last two years in office, it appears that the agenda of neoconservative ideologues has finally lost its appeal among strategic parts of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus.

U.S.-IRAN: New Arms Claim Reveals Cheney-Military Rift

In a development that underlines the tensions between the anti-Iran agenda of the George W. Bush administration and the preoccupation of its military command in Afghanistan with militant Sunni activism, a State Department official publicly accused Iran for the first time of arming the Taliban forces last week, but the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan rejected that charge for the second time in less than two weeks.

POLITICS-US: A New General for God’s Army?

In recent appearances on two U.S. cable news networks, he was slinging and zinging - the well-rehearsed pitchman for the Biblical "End Times" was dead certain that "Iran is going to have to be attacked" before 2008.

US-IRAN: New War Rhetoric Undercuts Iraq Talks

U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman's call for cross-border raids into Iran appears to be the culmination of a two-week long campaign by proponents of war to put the military option centre-stage in the U.S. debate over Iran once more.

POLITICS-US: Gates Overhauls Rumsfeld’s Pentagon

Friday's announcement that Gen. Peter Pace will not be nominated for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces marks the latest in a series of moves by Pentagon chief Robert Gates to transform the leadership of the Pentagon and consign his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, to distant memory.

POLITICS-US: Cheney&#39s Iran-Arms-to-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed

A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials.

POLITICS-US: Aide’s Sentence Caps Star-Crossed Year for Cheney

Tuesday's sentencing to 30 months in prison of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby by a federal judge for lying to government investigators about his role in leaking the identity of a CIA operative marks the latest in a series of blows to Vice President Dick Cheney.