Jim Lobe

Despite growing domestic opposition to his plans for escalating US military intervention in Iraq, US President George W. Bush is calling for a sharp increase in Washington’s economic and military commitment to Afghanistan. At a ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Brussels Friday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice announced that Bush … Continue reading “Washington Ups the Ante in Afghanistan”

Six months after last summer’s war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iran has become the George W. Bush administration’s “Public Enemy Number One," against which its Middle East strategy is increasingly focused, according to one of the US’s leading experts on the Gulf. That strategy, which aims at forging an informal tripartite alliance consisting of … Continue reading “Mideast Strategy Increasingly Targets Iran”

The people of Iran and the United States share many of the same hopes and fears about global problems but remain deeply distrustful of each other’s government, according to a major survey of public opinion in both countries released here Wednesday. As speculation mounts about a possible military confrontation between the two nations over US … Continue reading “US, Iranian Publics Not So Different”

In the first step toward what some believe could eventually lead to a constitutional crisis, a key Congressional committee approved a nonbinding resolution here Wednesday formally dissenting from President George W. Bush’s plan to send some 21,000 more troops to Iraq. The 12-9 vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which came less than 14 … Continue reading “Revolt Builds Against Bush’s Iraq Policy”

Despite two years of a concentrated effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her public diplomacy major-domo Karen Hughes to boost Washington’s global image, more people around the world have an unfavorable opinion of U.S. policies than at any time in recent memory, according to a new BBC poll released Monday. The survey, which … Continue reading “Bush Continues to Unite the World… Against Him”

With some two million of its citizens having fled to other countries and another 1.7 million internally displaced, Iraq has become one of the world’s biggest and fastest growing humanitarian crises for which the United States should take far more responsibility, according to human rights groups and other experts. The administration of President George W. … Continue reading “US Offers Scant Help to Fleeing Iraqi Refugees”

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) may have effectively closed up shop two years ago and its key neoconservative allies in the administration, such as Scooter Libby and Douglas Feith, may be long gone, but the group’s five-year-old Middle East strategy remains very much alive. This is not the "Wilsonian" strategy of transforming … Continue reading “Democracy Languishes, but Neocon Strategy Lives”

A bipartisan coalition of US lawmakers who favor an easing of the nearly 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba say the new Democrat-led Congress offers hope for progress this year. The coalition, which embraces Democratic liberals from the Northeast and the West Coast and conservatives from agricultural states in the Midwest and Mississippi Valley, say they … Continue reading “Foes of Cuba Embargo See Hope in New Congress”

President George W. Bush’s decision to escalate U.S. military intervention in Iraq and issue new threats against Syria and Iran appears to have left him politically more isolated than ever. Both Democrats and Republicans expressed regret that Bush appeared to reject the central recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG), particularly its call to … Continue reading “Bush Isolates Himself Further”

When President George W. Bush’s unveils his long-awaited new strategy on Iraq Wednesday night, he will be relying heavily on the counsel of one J.D. Crouch II, perhaps the most hardline – if most obscure – of his hawkish advisers. Over the past 15 years, the generally low-profile Crouch has taken any number of controversial … Continue reading “Hardliner’s Hardliner Led Bush’s Iraq Review”