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It took two weeks of intensified government repression against protesters in Iran before Barack Obama, the US president, moved from cautious commentary to describing the crackdown as "violent and unjust". The acknowledged elephant in the room preventing a more robust US response to the Iranian crisis is the Anglo-American-organised coup in 1953, which overthrew Mohammed Mossadeqh, the nationalist prime minister, and brought the 33-year-old Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, back to the country as unchallenged ruler. The coup was motivated by Mossadeqh's and the Iranian parliament's decision to nationalise the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951, and by the fear that...

1. The Obama administration is demanding additional Israeli concessions beyond Oslo. 2. Current settlement activity no longer diminishes Palestinian territory. 3. The Gaza disengagement proves that a settler presence does not undermine future territorial compromise. 4. Does the Obama administration reject defensible borders and settlement blocs and expect Israel to return to the 1967 borders?

here are voices in the Obama Administration who believe that the Kremlin is able and willing to exert pressure on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. However, perceived geopolitical and economic benefits in the unstable Persian Gulf, in which American influence is on the wane, outweigh Russia's concerns about a nuclear-armed Iran. The Kremlin sees Iran not as a threat but as a partner or an ad-hoc ally to challenge U.S. influence. Today, both Russia and Iran favor a strategy of "multipolarity," both in the Middle East and worldwide. This strategy seeks to dilute American power, revise current...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama said Monday he is considering whether to overturn a Pentagon policy that bans the media from taking pictures of the flag-draped coffins of U.S. troops returning from the battlefield.A leading military families group says the policy, enforced without exception during the administration of former President George W. Bush, should let survivors of the dead decide whether photographers can record their return.

The international community is deploying a new mission to Kosova [Kosovo] with a more acceptable name than the previous one. But, the powers of the new mission remain the same as the old one's. EULEX will have the power to replace the president, prime minister, and other more junior officials. It will have the power to appoint key officials, annul laws, and arrest us - each and everyone of us - indefinitely and without justification. These are the "executive powers" of EULEX, which have been described as "softer," "less severe," and "more humane" than those that UNMIK [UN Interim Administration...

One of the natural and negative consequences of political assassinations is that they personalize the general and simplify the complex. Policies formed in the aftermath of assassinations are rarely wise and tend to focus on secondary - personal - issues while ignoring larger strategic ones. It is fairly clear that this is what is happening in the international reaction to last Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadawi and her teenage son have now taken charge of her political party in the interest of maintaining her "legacy." Backed by the Bush administration, they...

Washington (AFP): Four top former US foreign policy officials, including ex-secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, called for a world free of nuclear weapons in an opinion piece Thursday. The article, which appears in the Wall Street Journal, is also signed by former secretary of defense William Perry and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It brings no joy to issue a public rebuttal against a valued colleague, but there are moments that demand no less. The occasion is the publication of an essay titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," written by two professors, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, the academic dean and my colleague at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In essence, their 82-page piece argues that U.S. policy in the Middle East has been hijacked by a pro-Israel "Lobby." "The core of the Lobby," they say, "is comprised of American Jews who make a significant effort...

A Chinese military official says Beijing will use nuclear weapons against the U.S. if the Americans attack the Asian nation in a fight over Taiwan. "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Zhu Chenghu, a major general in the People's Liberation Army, said at an official briefing, according to the Financial Times. Speaking at a function organized for foreign journalists, the official noted the definition of China's territory includes warships and aircraft. "If the Americans are determined to interfere [then]...

With the East Asia Security Act of 2005 (H.R. 3100), Congress has the opportunity to give the President valuable leverage to form a strategic consensus on arms sales to China. EASA mandates that any person, firm, or country that provides military arms, equipment, or technology to China or dual-use items to the Chinese military, security forces, police, or other repressive agencies face heightened scrutiny of its arms relationship with China and, if warranted, be denied access to U.S. weapons technology. By giving teeth to U.S. diplomats’ warnings to Europeans who would end the EU’s embargo on arms sales to China,...

It pays to take a look at the books George W. Bush hands out to his staffers. Last year Bush's book was Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, which argues that countries that do not protect individual rights cannot be reliable partners for peace. You could hear Sharansky's arguments in Bush's extraordinary second inaugural speech in which he promised to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East and around the world. Bush's critics like to mock him as the sort of person who never read books. But he does, and...

Nagging questions about the Iraq war remain unanswered. Both advocates and opponents have failed to address a range of issues even when they seemingly could be used to bolster their respective positions. Until and unless we obtain answers to some of the questions presented here it will be difficult to fully trust the judgment of either side in this debate. Administration advocates for regime change in Iraq have failed to make their best case. Their response to the charge of no WMD found in Iraq is weak, and consequently has allowed the opponents to further charge that the Bush administration...

Back in July, the Justice Department held a bells-‘n-whistles press conference to announce a major case: a 42-count indictment, charging seven men and an ostensible charity with underwriting Hamas to the tune of nearly $60 million. Hamas, a ruthless terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel and responsible for numerous gruesome attacks that have claimed the lives of hundreds of victims — including Americans — has been formally designated as a terrorist organization under various U.S. laws for many years. In announcing the indictment, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft could not have been more straightforward: “To those who exploit good...

Will the 21st century be another "American Century" or will it be the first "Asian Century"? A peaceful - for now - struggle has been joined. For the past few weeks Americans have been focused on news from the Vatican. And for the past few years the bulk of "foreign news" has concerned the Middle East. But in the Far East three huge fuses are burning. First, the prime minister of China, Wen Jiabao, traveled to India and declared that the two countries would be the "two pagodas" of economic might in the coming hundred years - the "Asian Century,"...

In the middle of fighting the global war on terror, America has forgotten about their "strategic competitor" to the East. The Chinese have noticed.THE POST-9/11 WORLD has been a mixed bag for the Chinese. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the deployment of forces to Central Asia renewed fears of American encirclement and upset a decade of careful diplomacy. Beijing's efforts to negotiate security and stability along its continental border--a prelude to greater activity in maritime Asia--seemed all for naught. But then came the invasion and, more significantly, the occupation, of Iraq. The U.S. military, which had seemed entirely invincible,...

TODAY'S TOPIC: HATING AMERICA Our Country Is Under Attack! The weapons of choice are hateful words and images aimed at distorting American policy. Host John Gibson shines a bright light on the haters themselves in "Hating America." Tune in Sunday at 9pm / midnight ET. The America Haters — Is bitterness against the U.S. getting worse? Read what John Gibson has to say in an exclusive commentary, plus read an excerpt from the "Big Story" host's book. Take a sneak peek at this Sunday's special. John interviews a Canadian journalist who says elements of the U.S. government were "complicit" in...

Secretary of State Colin Powell stepped in it once again – this time instructing the Taiwanese that their goal in life should be “reunification” with a murderous, police state. For nearly four years, Powell has been the weak link in Bush’s foreign policy. Of all the administration’s top officials, he was the last to come on board in support of military intervention in Iraq. Powell perfectly reflects the State Department mindset. In almost any situation, he favors appeasement over confrontation -- sacrificing U.S. allies (Israel, Taiwan) to win brownie points with thugs (Arab regimes, the People’s Republic of China). But...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- When I reported in this column Sept. 20 that there is ''strong feeling'' in the ''Bush administration policymaking apparatus'' that ''U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year,'' Republican politicians -- most recently Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman -- disagreed. But Don Rumsfeld has not contradicted me. Nobody from the administration has officially rejected my column. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, in his usual teasing of words, says pretty much what I did. While politicians such as Mehlman talk about ''victory'' in Iraq and President Bush implies it, war planners such as Rumsfeld do not. These realists recognize...

why on earth would Kerry tell the Council on Foreign Relations in December that, if elected, he would abandon the president's war on terror, begin a dialogue with terrorist regimes and apologize for the "years of mistakes by the Bush administration"? In an article in the March issue of Insight magazine, author Kenneth R. Timmerman described the meeting: "Kerry promised to spend the first 100 days of his administration traveling the world to denounce his predecessor, apologize for his ‘radically wrong' policy, and seek ‘cooperation and compromise` with friend and foe alike." Timmerman cited a seven-page e-mail, "confirmed as authentic...

US President George W. Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Thursday expressed support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, describing it as an initiative that could lead to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Speaking at the US Institute of Peace a day after the Likud Party convention voted to block Labor from joining the government and helping implement settlement dismantlement, Rice urged Israel once again to "take steps to improve the lives of the Palestinian people and to remove the daily humiliations that harden the hearts of future generations." She urged Israel to "live up to their...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington no longer sees evidence of Libyan links to militants and wants to remove the once-pariah nation from its list of terrorism sponsors as soon as possible, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday. Removal from the blacklist would eliminate one of the final barriers to Libya's full acceptance into the international community after Washington rewarded it this year for giving up arms programs by easing sanctions and improving ties. While Powell told Reuters the United States would examine for several more months whether Libya had broken all ties with militants, he wanted a plan that...

The United States has sharply warned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to keep his promise not to harm Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Sharon said in an interview with Israeli public television, that he believed he was no longer under any obligation to abide by his pledge to US President George W. Bush and that Arafat 'no longer has immunity' from an Israeli attack. "I promised President George W Bush three years ago not to attack Arafat, but I am no longer bound by that promise, and (Arafat) no longer has immunity," Sharon said. The comment, however, drew a sharp rebuke...

SECRETARY POWELL: Foreign Minister Muasher and I have just had a very successful conversation about issues of mutual interest. As you would of course expect, we discussed the situation in the Middle East, and I briefed the Foreign Minister on the President's continued commitment to his vision of June 2002, the roadmap, and the desire to see a Palestinian state created that will live side by side in peace with Israel, and that final status issues associated with the creation of that state must be mutually agreed upon by the parties. We discussed the issue of the President's meeting with...

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell assured Europeans Tuesday that the Bush administration was determined to launch a Palestinian state and that any decision on Israeli population centers remaining on the West Bank would require Palestinian approval. Still, Powell lined up with President George Bush's assurances last week to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that "the realities that exist in the area" should be taken into account in a peace accord. Powell made the statements after a meeting with Javier Solana, the senior European Union's top foreign policy official. The White House on Tuesday played down any hint of friction with...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The Bush administration has assured Arab states that Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank would not harm Palestinian demands for the return of refugees to their homes in what became the Jewish state. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his aides have been briefing Arab leaders on the U.S. endorsement of the Israeli withdrawal plan. U.S. officials said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed withdrawal provides the Palestinians with a state as well as thousands of Israeli homes. "The Palestinians will take those settlements openly," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State...

New Delhi, March 16 Acknowledging that the outsourcing of jobs is the ‘‘reality of the global environment in the 21st century,’’ US Secretary of State Colin Powell and External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha today sought to put a lid on the controversy that has recently threatened to take some of the ‘‘feel good’’ factor out of the bilateral relationship. At a joint press conference this afternoon, after an expanded discussion on a gamut of issues, Sinha also sought to reassure his visiting counterpart that India had begun to open its market through the reform decade and was determined to follow...

Croatia's prime minister gave a firm show of support Feb. 8 to the U.S. policy of preemption. During a joint press conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who made a brief stop in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader voiced his agreement with "preventive action." Sanader said the war among former Yugoslav nations in the early 1990s could have been prevented if the international community had had "the will to undertake preventive actions to preempt (Serbian President Slobodan) Milosevic's aggression and aggressive policies." Tens of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars in...

Al Queada's Next Terror Target: The American Way of Life By: Richard Brzakala With the announcement of an increased security alert, it would apear that America's focus has been primarily on airlines and airport security in the hopes of staving off another 9/11 type attack. One would hope that ALL of the "intelligence chatter" and leads that are coming in to the Homeland Office from "reliable sources" are not part of a larger misinformation campaign hatched by Al Queada operatives and designed to serve as a red-herring.

US envoy David Satterfield, a senior State Department official, urged Israel and the Palestinians on Saturday to take "concrete steps" to get stalled peace talks back on track, amid signs that Washington is growing increasingly impatient with the lack of progress. He made his appeal after a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia. "We very much hope that concrete steps can be taken by all sides on all the issues necessary to see progress restored," he said. Satterfield came to the region after attending a conference in Rome of the international donor nations that support the Palestinian Authority. The...

WASHINGTON (AP)--President Bush warned Israel anew on Friday not to take actions that would make it harder to create a Palestinian state. ``It's in Israel's interest there be a Palestinian state,'' Bush told reporters at the White House. ``It's in the poor suffering Palestinian people's interest there be a Palestinian state.'' Also Friday, Israel Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said after a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell that he and Powell agree that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should begin immediately without preconditions. Shalom added that he hoped Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed...

U.S. Secretary of State Powell tells Shalom that U.S. objects to Israel taking unilateral steps (Haaretz)

State Department spokesman confirms Colin Powell met Wednesday with Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is meeting in Washington with the Israeli and Palestinian authors of an unofficial Middle East peace plan. The Israeli government opposed the meeting, and calls the plan harmful to Israel's interests. President Bush calls the private initiative "productive," and says the United States "appreciates people discussing peace." The initiative, known as the Geneva Accord, is the work of former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. They say the plan would complement the internationally-backed "road map" to Middle East peace. Unlike the "road map," the document unveiled Monday...

The U.S.-backed road map for peace is not dead, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday. "What we need is commitment from the Palestinian leadership to stop terrorism ... the more we talk about peace, the better," he told a news conference in Marrakesh. "The road map is not dead," he said, referring to the plan to end three years of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. On Tuesday in Tunis, Powell said he had a right to meet anyone with ideas on Middle East peace - despite Israeli criticism that it would be a mistake to meet the...

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell criticized Israel's actions in the territories during a Tuesday meeting with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom at a summit of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels. Powell said that the U.S. understands the security needs that have led to the building of the separation fence, but nevertheless disagrees with the barrier's route. Shalom responded that the fence is a necessary condition to the advancement of the diplomatic process with the Palestinians, in that the barrier will deprive terror organizations of the ability to hold the diplomatic process hostage to their demands. Powell also brought up...

The Geneva Accord peace plan got a significant boost Friday, with a letter of support from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, organizers said. Washington's backing of the Geneva Accord could be seen as a veiled rebuke to the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who has attacked the plan as subversive. Powell's letter was addressed to the leaders of the initiative, former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, the two told a news conference. "Dear Yossi and Yasser," the letter read, according to a Beilin aide. "The president remains committed a two...

Armitage informs Senate of U.S. policy toward Iran The United States intends to pursue a "flexible, dynamic and multifaceted" policy toward Iran in order to encourage the Iranian people's desire for greater freedom while countering negative policies of their government, such as pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism, said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Armitage told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee October 28 that Iran "is a country in the midst of a tremendous transformation, and I believe American policy can affect the direction Iran will take." In his prepared remarks, Armitage said the Iranian...

Two ramifications of the West Bank separation fence - its disruption of daily Palestinian life and its seeming determination of the borders of a future Palestinian state - are "troublesome" for the United States, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "It's one thing to put up a security fence, a barrier that is clearly on your property - the dividing line, so to speak - in order to protect yourself, and that would be understood," Powell said in a CNN interview. "But as the fence goes deeply into Palestinian areas and starts to put more and more Palestinians...

The attack on a convoy carrying U.S. officials in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday that killed three Americans, is unlikely to have any major impact on U.S. involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been at a low ebb ever since the fall of the government of former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in early September. Since Abbas' resignation, the Americans have been paying mainly lip-service to the road map and have applied some pressure on Israel regarding the West Bank security fence. But President George Bush and those around him are mainly preoccupied with Iraq and with reelection. The...

SALT LAKE CITY - While President Bush has been focused on troublesome problems in far-off Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, he is paying new attention to Cuba, which could cause election-year problems in his own backyard. Bush's new interest in Cuba comes at a time when there is evidence of a policy split between Fidel Castro and his hard-line supporters on the one hand, and, on the other, a group of well-placed officials and military men who favor a softer line at home and a warmer relationship with the US. The maneuverings are subtle and extremely cautious, because overt...

WASHINGTON An American-Israeli couple filed a lawsuit against US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday, claiming the State Department has failed to direct the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to designate Israel as the country of birth on passports of American children born in Jerusalem, in accordance with US law. Ari Zivotofsky and Naomi Siegman Zivotofsky, residents of Beit Shemesh, filed the lawsuit through their attorneys, Nathan and Alyza Lewin, in the US District Court in Washington on behalf of their son, Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, who was born October 17, 2002 at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. Section 214...

PLAN: 1.    Bush announces that he wants the Iraqis' to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.  He is prepared to give the Iraq's new government an open line of credit to pay for the occupation and the reconstruction of their country.2.    The line of credit will be funded by immediate sales of oil from the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve into the U.S. market.  In other words we'll loan Iraq our oil reserves to rebuild their country.  The secondary impact of this move would be an immediate decrease in the price of world oil which would stimulate the U.S. stock market,...

COMMENTARY As the battle for Baghdad comes to a close in Iraq, a battle for the soul of the American republic has begun in Washington. This is a battle of ideas being waged by people with an imperial concept of American power, or "flag conservatives", with a diverse coalition of other groups. The flag conservatives have taken the view that America needs to fight a long war of self defense until the last one of the cold-blooded killers of September 11 has been hunted down and killed and until all regimes in the "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran and...

Please excuse me if I make an error...this is my first post here. I'm ecstatic to have found y'all. The coverage of the protests got me so mad that I've spent the last two weeks trying to find websites of like-minded folks... I had some trouble at the get go, so wound up making my own -- http://www.geocities.com/regime_change_in_iraq I'll look forward to reading further through the site, and watching the news links. Thanks, all!

Saddam Hussein has to go. When the United States says so, it takes a fool to bet against it. Wasn't former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega taken care of similarly years ago, and that was when no oil was involved. Now how does one expect Saddam to survive when there are billions of petrodollars at stake? On the surface, it's about weapons of mass destruction. Scrape the surface, it's the oil. Dig a little deeper and then you confront the prime reason for the next Gulf War. For too long America has lived with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)...

US 'was partly to blame' for terror attacks' By Stacy Humes-Schulz in Washington Published: September 4 2002 0:17 | Last Updated: September 4 2002 0:17 A majority of Europeans think that US foreign policy is partially to blame for the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. A survey of American and European attitudes towards foreign relations found that 55 per cent of respondents from six European countries agreed that US policy had contributed to the attacks. The poll also found widespread public support within the US for an invasion of Iraq, with 75 per cent of American...

Cuba’s President Fidel Castro slammed on Wednesday the "savage" policy of the United States towards Iraq, which has found itself under the looming specter of a US military campaign, INA news agency reported, according to AFP. In a telegram of congratulations to his Iraqi counterpart Saddam Hussein on the 34th anniversary of the July 17, 1968 coup that brought the Baath Party to power, Castro blasted the "savage policy of the United States towards the friendly Iraqi people." The Cuban Communist leader assured Saddam Hussein of his "solidarity" and his desire to develop relations between Havana and Baghdad, two countries...

VIENNA -- Austria's prominent far-right politician Joerg Haider attacked U.S. foreign policy on Monday, accusing President George Bush of using the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington as a pretext for attacking anyone he designated as an enemy, AFP reported. "September 11 is not a license to bomb everyone in the world that the American chief policeman George Bush has pronounced guilty," Haider told reporters. He said U.S. foreign policy had "failed". The controversial far-righter rapped Washington for rejecting the UN treaty setting up the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying it was not playing by international rules. "That...

Are you having a difficult time in understanding the Bush administration's Middle East policy? You are not alone, my friend. Many people across the political spectrum just don't get it either. They see it as inconsistent, flip/flop, disjointed, etc. Well, I see it for the God-given brilliance that it is. Allow me to explain. Bush is walking a tightrope between our true desire to support Israel and the absolute necessity to appear objective to the Arab nations and Muslims, in general. Contrary to his public statements, Bush does not believe Islam is a religion of peace. While he sees the...

In his last phone call to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urging Israel to withdraw "without delay," US President George W. Bush reportedly said he was making the request as Israel's best friend in the world. It is certainly true that Israel has no better friend than the United States, and no more kindred a spirit in fighting terrorism than George Bush. Friends, however, do not ask friends to sentence their people to the certainty of further terrorist attacks. Since Bush's surprise call on Israel to withdraw three days ago, the White House has taken a position that simply does not...