CAIRO (IPS) - Egypt has presented a security initiative to support an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, but wants to avoid being drawn into a "security trap." The initiative calls for a bilateral ceasefire agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis, and the...
TEHRAN (IPS) - While foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi has rejected claims that Iran received highly classified U.S. intelligence from Ahmad Chalabi, other government officials and the hardline newspapers that support them have remained largely silent on the...
Recorded May 22, 2004 A "Philip Dru" interview with Lt. Col. (ret.) Karen Kwiatkowski. Kwiatkowski spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon, where she was privy to much neoconservative chicanery in the run-up to war. She writes for...
While Iraqi and American political players have been frenetically rearranging the chairs of interim government members on the Titanic that is occupied Iraq today, a massive car bomb explosion rumbles my hotel, miles from where it detonated outside of the Patriotic...
It had to happen, sooner or later, or else the irony would not be complete: news has emerged this week that oil has been discovered in Bosnia. Granted, the find is nowhere near as big as the Middle Eastern fields, but given the precious liquid's current paucity in the...
Rafah, Jenin, Khan Yunis, Zeitun: Foreign-sounding names of so distanced and disturbing a reality. All that we know of them is what the media have selectively determined to impart, if we are interested to hear the story. The Rafah refugee camp, a small strip of land...
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - The United States is seeking the approval of the new interim government in Baghdad for a joint UK-U.S. resolution that will legitimize the continuing military occupation of Iraq. Iraq's newly-anointed foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is due to...
In recent days administration officials have warned the nation about possible terrorist attacks, subjecting us once again to color-coded threat charts and puzzling admonitions to go about our lives as usual. The message is clear: grave danger surrounds us, but...
In case you have not noticed, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal has continued to justify its ardent support for the preemptive war against Iraq even though no weapons of mass destruction have been found and no links between Saddam and al-Qaeda have been...
In what has increasingly become an outsourced war, the Coalition Provisional Authority has just added half a billion dollars to the amount being spent on private security contractors. The role of such mercenaries has taken on new dimensions in Iraq. Heavily-armed...
