As the Iraq war becomes increasingly unpopular within the United States and President George W Bush records exceptionally low approval ratings, the administration needs to redouble its efforts to present
On 1 May, British troops assumed control of security operations in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan. More than 2,000 troops are now in the province after the transfer of authority
The United States military is preparing for the "long war" by shifting its tactics and expanding its ambitions.
The agreement on 22 April that Nouri (formerly Jawad) al-Maliki
Seymour Hersh's recent New Yorker article on the risk of war between the United States and Iran contained many insights into the current thinking of US political and
The announcement of Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on 11 April (closely following a comment by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani) that the country had successfully completed a process of
In the months before the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, most commentators expected that the developing crisis would end in some kind of diplomatic settlement, and that
The release of Norman Kember and two Canadian fellow-members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams group (James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden) from kidnappers in Baghdad after 119 days in captivity
There has been a subtle but significant change in the coverage of Iraq by the establishment press in the United States and Britain over the past year: the description of
An energetic charm offensive launched by the George W Bush administration in November-December 2005, involving a series of speeches by the president himself and supporting declarations from vice-president Dick Cheney,
The Bush administration's fervent attempts in recent weeks to promote good news from Iraq have proved increasingly difficult in the wake of the attack on the al-Askari mosque
The western media's coverage of the middle east in the past week has been dominated by Iraq and Iran. A week of violence in Iraq has followed the
Iraq's slow burn of the last six weeks has been occurring behind the backs of most of the western media. The bombing on 22 February of one of
