The war to destroy the Saddam Hussein regime is about to start. Both its aims and operation will be quite different from the 1991 conflict because this time, the regime
The immediate US purpose is to destroy the Saddam regime. This, no less than the weapons used to fight it, guarantees that the Iraq war will have a heavy human
As the United States Air Force (USAF) builds up its deployments of aircraft in the Middle East, it has emerged that a huge new bomb has recently been developed that
At the end of January 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Bush administration was considering the possible use of nuclear weapons in Iraq (see an earlier column in
The huge anti-war marches and events around the world on the weekend of 15-16 February 2003 may be the most significant political demonstrations since the Cold War era. In their
The past week has seen intense activity and argument in Europe, the United States and the Gulf as the Iraq crisis intensifies. Much of the controversy has revolved around the
It is a year since I started writing these weekly columns for openDemocracy, just as the war in Afghanistan was starting. Since then, I have tried to analyse the changes
There has been an assumption, based on all the reports of troop movements and the increasingly insistent tone of President Bush, that war with Iraq is imminent. However, other sources
President Bushs State of the Union address comes as near to a declaration of war on Iraq as is possible without the guns beginning to fire. It rehearsed all
The idea that Britain might need an exit strategy from its commitment to the Bush administration over Iraq may seem fanciful in this week of all weeks when Tony Blair
Sixteen months after the attacks of 11 September, what is the status of al-Qaida and what are its prospects? Earlier articles in this series (7 November 2002 and 4 December
Towards the end of 2002 it became evident that the crisis with Iraq was composed of three core elements.
The first was a deep-seated commitment by the more hawkish elements
