POLITICS: Blair’s Mideast Message Echoes Past Failure

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been touring the Middle East with one clear message - to make peace in the Middle East, Iran must be isolated.

POLITICS-US: The Urge to Surge

As official Washington breaks for the two-week Christmas-New Year's hiatus, it knows that the number one issue it will face on its return in early January is the White House's apparent "urge to surge" as many as 50,000 new troops into Iraq for up to two years in a last-ditch effort to claim what President George W. Bush insists on calling "victory".

POLITICS-IRAQ: Crisis Group Seeks ‘Clean Break’ in US Strategy

Warning that Iraq faces ''complete disintegration into failed-state chaos,'' the International Crisis Group (ICG) is calling on the United States to make a ''clean break'' in its strategy for both Iraq and the wider Middle East region.

POLITICS-US: Neo-Cons Wanted Israel to Attack Syria

Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria during last summer's Lebanon war, according to a newly published interview with a prominent neo-conservative whose spouse is a top Middle East adviser in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

POLITICS-US: ISG Report Faces Uncertain Future

One day after its official release, the package of 79 recommendations on U.S. Iraq and Middle East policy released Wednesday by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) faced a very uncertain future.

POLITICS-US: Neo-Cons Move to Preempt Baker Report

To have read the neo-conservative press here over the past month, one would think that former Secretary of State James Baker poses the biggest threat to the United States and Israel since Saddam Hussein.

POLITICS-US: Rice&#39s Iran Strategy Fizzles, Cheney Waits in Wings

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's months-long diplomatic effort to get five other powers to agree to a tough United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions against Iran now seems certain to fail, because of Russian and Chinese resistance.

POLITICS-US: Bush Seems Determined to Stay the Course

Despite a growing and virtually universal consensus both here and abroad that the United States must engage Syria and Iran if it hopes to stabilise Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush appears determined to ignore Baghdad's two key neighbours as long as possible.

POLITICS-US: Iran Is Key to Course Change on Iraq

Two political earthquakes hit the United States this week. On Tuesday, the Democrats took control of Congress, and the following day, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was replaced by Robert Gates, a member of the senior Bush's foreign policy team.

POLITICS: US Foreign Policy Set to Change Dramatically

The abrupt replacement of Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld, by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Robert Gates, combined with the Democratic sweep in Tuesday's mid-term elections, appears to signal major changes in United States foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.

POLITICS-US: Neo-Con Nadir?

Less than a week from mid-term elections that are expected to bring at least one house of Congress under Democratic control, neo-conservatives, whose foreign policy ideas dominated most of the first half of the administration of George W. Bush, are having a hard time.

IRAQ/U.S.: A Consensus Develops: Leave the Course

While Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's continued tenure in office has been the subject of a surge of speculation over the past week, it may be George W. Bush's continued reign - at least over Iraq policy -¬ that appears most endangered at the moment.

POLITICS: Iraqi Endgame Approaching, Bush Ready or Not

If Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki were inclined to bet his life on President George W. Bush's latest assurances that there will be no timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he should probably give it a second thought.

POLITICS: U.S. Neo-Cons Call For Japanese Nukes, Regime Change

Encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, shipping food aid via submarines, and running secret sabotage operations inside North Korea's borders are among a raft of policy prescriptions pushed by prominent U.S. neo-conservatives in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test.

POLITICS-US/MIDEAST: “Strategic Consensus” Redux?

President George W. Bush and his peripatetic secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, may believe that they have broken with 60 years of U.S. policy in order to "transform" the Middle East, but to long-time regional observers, their latest initiatives look painfully familiar.

POLITICS-US: Top CIA Expert Slams Bush Anti-Terror Actions

The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) recently retired top expert on radical Islamists has strongly denounced the conduct of U.S. President George W. Bush's "global war on terrorism" and the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq, which he said is "contributing to the violence".

POLITICS-US/IRAN: War, Diplomacy on Parallel Tracks

If you're feeling increasingly confused about whether the administration of President George W. Bush is determined to go to war with Iran or whether it is instead truly committed to a diplomatic process with its European allies to reach some kind of modus vivendi, you're not alone.

POLITICS-US: Neo-Con Favourite Declares World War III

Two years before the 2008 presidential election, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, is trying desperately to grab the national spotlight by declaring he'd be a lot tougher than the George W. Bush in prosecuting what he calls "World War III".

POLITICS-US: Time Runs Out on Bolton Nomination

What looked like a virtually sure thing just one month ago - Senate confirmation of the Bush administration's controversial ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton - is suddenly looking unexpectedly shaky.

POLITICS-US: Intel Estimate on Iran Blocks Neo-Con Plans

In the struggle over U.S. policy toward Iran, neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration spoiling for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites have been seeking to convince the public that the United States must strike before an Iranian nuclear weapons capability becomes inevitable.

MEDIA-US: “Fascism” Frame Set Up by Right-Wing Press

The aggressive new campaign by the administration of President George W. Bush to depict U.S. foes in the Middle East as "fascists" and its domestic critics as "appeasers" owes a great deal to steadily intensifying efforts by the right-wing press over the past several months to draw the same comparison.