With the US presidential elections due to be held in November, and painfully aware of the fact that the terrorist attack on Madrid in March was timed for maximum political impact in Spain's elections, the Bush regime is desperate for something they can present as progress in Iraq as soon as possible...
America has undoubtedly suffered a humiliating defeat in Iraq, even if no US soldier has yet actually left the country. It is enough that America has become the most hated country in the world today...
The US attack on Fallujah last month, in which at least 1,000 people have been killed, thousands more injured and an estimated 60,000 – out of a population of some 300,000 – forced to flee their homes, appears to have been carried out in a similar spirit...
US president George Bush had hoped that by April 2004 American casualties in Iraq would be so low that he could present this success as his personal triumph in transforming Iraq from a tyranny into a democracy...
Considering the fact that divisions inherent in Iraqi society are supposed to be the greatest problem facing Iraq as it seeks a new future following the American occupation, there seemed to be remarkable consensus among Iraqis of most communities following the signing of the American-dictated interim constitution on March 8, 2004...
After the pre-Christmas respite afforded by the conveniently-timed capture of Saddam, the US occupation of Iraq became more troubled again last month. Paul O’Neill, former US treasury secretary, gave the highest-level confirmation to date that Bush and his clique had been planning an invasion of Iraq from their first days in office...
The US’s apparent capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on December 13 has enabled the Bush administration to end the year on a rather higher note than they can have expected, particularly after November had proved to be the worst month yet of the US occupation of Iraq...
Two of the world’s three top warmongers – US president George Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair (the third being Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon) – have been caught in a web of lies they spun to justify an illegal war against Iraq.
As evidence emerges of manipulation of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass-destruction (WMDs) by the governments of the US and Britain, demands for proof that Baghdad did indeed possess such weapons are being replaced by calls for the abandonment of an unsustainable stand.
On April 11, the day after American forces proclaimed the capture of Baghdad and the fall of Saddam Hussain’s regime, Ayatullah al-Uzma Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the Rahbar of the Islamic State of Iran, presented a detailed and broad-ranging analysis of the background and implications of the US’s war on Iraq as the first part of his jum’a khutbah in Tehran. Here we publish an abridged translation of this khutbah.
A week after the US and Britain launched their invasion of Iraq on March 20, it is increasingly clear that all is not going smoothly in the campaign.
DR PERWEZ SHAFI, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought in Pakistan, examines the regional and geo-strategic thinking behind the US’s plans to attack Iraq, in the context of both its drive for oil and its commitment to zionism
George W. Bush finally published the resolution he would like the UN Security Council to pass to justify a military attack on Iraq on October 1. The resolution, also supported by Bush’s loyal servant Blair, is clearly designed to provoke an Iraqi rejection, thereby providing the pretext for a US invasion.
The UN and Iraq look set for yet another confrontation: there is mounting concern in Washington about the growing perils facing American pilots flying over Iraq as Baghdad continues to improve its air defences. Baghdad has expelled eight UN staffers in recent weeks, accusing them of “violating their standard operating procedures” and passing security-related information to “enemy states.”
It’s déja vu yet again in the Persian Gulf, with US and British air raids against Iraq throughout most of August. Since August 7, after a three-week break in their bombing, US and British warplanes have returned to pound targets in northern and southern Iraq at the previous rate of three or four raids a week.
On June 4, when members of the United Nations security council failed to reach agreement on a new sanctions plan proposed by the US and Britain, they decided to extend by one month, instead of the usual six months, the programme under which Iraq can sell oil to raise funds to buy food and to pay “reparations” to western governments.
After less than a month in office, US president George W. Bush left no doubt about his combative attitude to Iraq: like father, like son. George W.’s approach is one of gunboat diplomacy based on the unbridled use of force without scruple.
The name ‘Gulf War’, used to define the conflict which began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the subsequent American destruction of Iraq, is deeply unsatisfactory.
Arab governments and their media claimed last month to have helped Iraq on the road to international rehabilitation by allowing it to chair the Arab League foreign ministers’ conference held in Cairo on September 11 - 12.
The routine bombing of Iraq by the US and Britain, and the UN sanctions kept in place by their vetoes, have taken a heavy toll of Iraqi lives, destroyed the country’s once-thriving economy, and reduced its people to poverty.
