Tory stance on Europe looms over ’special relationship’

or all the photo opportunities and broad smiles that followed William Hague’s meeting with the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the new foreign secretary must know that he has his work cut to convince the US that Britain is still a reliable, major player on the world stage. Its position on Europe will have [...]

Vietnam doing fine, thank you, 35 years after the shooting stopped

Thirty-five years after the end of what they call the American War, the Vietnamese people are confident about their future in a globalised world, according to an AP-GfK poll released today.
The war ended on 30 April, 1975, with the fall South Vietnam’s capital Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), to communist troops from the [...]

Salmond wins Scottish leaders’ debate as Murphy pushed into corner

lex Salmond emerged as the narrow winner of the live Scotland election debate this morning – partly because he was the most assured and experienced performer and partly because of a concerted assault on Jim Murphy by the three other party spokesmen which left the Scottish Secretary struggling on a range of issues.
Mr Salmond’s [...]

Obama’s dilemma over Karzai and Afghanistan

Further to the ongoing debate of whether or not the United States should continue to back Afghanistan’s corrupt President Hamid Karzai (see Caledonian Mercury piece here) comes an article by David Corn on Mother Jones suggesting that the American neocons are in disarray over what the US should do next.
At first glance this shouldn’t bother [...]

Two top al-Qaeda leaders killed in Iraq

raqi security forces backed by US troops have killed two top leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq in separate operations.
Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who was the military leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in one of the operations southwest of Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
Muhajir replaced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi [...]

Analysis: Change is in the air – all over the world

World events over the past few months suggest that a major rethink of everyone’s position is under way; the chess pieces are on the floor again and it is still not clear whether we will emerge from this tumult enlightened or confused, richer or poorer, alive or dead. The Great Game [...]

Radical cleric Sadr adds to Iraqi PM’s election woes

Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki has complained of fraud in the 7 March election as he finds his State of Law party trailing a broad secular alliance led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi, but he also faces a challenge by a radical anti-American cleric.
Though Mr Allawi leads by a slender 9,000 votes, his Iraqiya alliance’s [...]

Elections may deepen Iraq’s ethnic divide

An electoral pattern is emerging in Iraq that has heightened concern that Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the second to be held since the 2003 invasion, will deepen rifts between ethnic groups.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition holds a slight lead over rival Shiites, but former prime minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya list, a cross-sectarian, secularist [...]

Questions over unity after US withdrawal overshadow Iraqi poll

hen Iraqis go the polls today they will be hoping to consolidate their fledgling democracy despite signs that the uneasy national unity pact between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds may not last beyond planned US withdrawal by 2011.
Gordon Brown was certainly upbeat about Iraqi prospects when he told the Chilcot Inquiry yesterday that it had taken [...]

Unanswered Kurdish questions hang over Iraq poll

estern officials are hopeful Iraqis will consolidate their fledgling democracy when they go to the polls on Sunday but unresolved issues in Kurdistan may come back to haunt the country – and the West – after US troops complete their withdrawal by the end of 2011.
The view that a successful turnout for this Sunday’s elections, [...]

Will the Iraqi Mandela please step forward?

It has been a long learning process for the United States since “awe” turned to “shock” in Iraq, and seven years on it is becoming clear that there is no such thing as a quick fix — countries that didn’t toe the US line in the first place aren’t necessarily going to toe it later [...]

US general links Chalabi to Iran

Ahmed Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile whom the Bush administration once hoped would replace Saddam Hussein under its “regime change” policy, has been openly branded an Iranian collaborator by the top commander of US forces in Iraq.
General Ray Odierno told an audience at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington that Chalabi and another [...]

Jack Straw: Iran ‘not bogeyman of Middle East’

Jack Straw distanced himself from Tony Blair yesterday when he told the Iraq Inquiry that it would be “simplistic” to think that Iran was the “bogeyman” of the Middle East.
The justice secretary, who was foreign secretary in 2003, told the inquiry in his second appearance that Iran had not invaded any country and he did [...]

Iran’s nuclear programme gives energy to US neocons

President Barack Obama seems to be responding at last to American neo-conservative calls for a tougher stance with Iran over its nuclear programme, though he may balk at “regime change”.
With the Obama administration nowhere near the stage where it might declare that “all options are on the table”, increased covert backing of ethnic groups in [...]

Reid blames Vietnam syndrome for lack of reconstruction in Iraq

John Reid, the former Secretary of State for Defence, had an interesting take on the Vietnam syndrome today when he suggested to the Chilcot Inquiry panel that the United States was unprepared to “rebuild” Iraq after the invasion because there were Vietnam War veterans among the US senior military command who wanted no part in [...]

Early leaders fade as aliens and Iraq vie for Oscars

ome wag is bound to dub the Academy Award nominations as The Ex-Files. With the forecast of pre-Oscar gong shows like the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, the Directors’ Guild Awards a more reliable guide than Michael Fish some trends are emerging.
The main one is that the previously hotly-tipped Precious and Up in [...]

Short ‘jeered at’ by Cabinet for questioning Iraq war

Former Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, gave evidence to Chilcot Inquiry
Alleges smear campaign against UN weapons inspector Hans Blix
Says she was ‘misled’ by Attorney General
‘Jeered at’ in Cabinet when she questioned war

Clare Short, the former Secretary of State for International Development, said today she had warned Tony Blair of the dangers of [...]

Army did not have enough time to prepare for Iraq war – Stirrup

ir Jock Stirrup’s evidence at the Chilcot Inquiry today was as professional as Tony Blair’s was devious.
Though we are no closer to knowing for sure who was to blame for the shortage of body armour and other equipment that led to unnecessary deaths in Iraq, the armed force’s chief’s assertion that Britain’s deeper involvement in [...]

First WMDs, then regime change, now 9/11: Blair’s story shifts again

For Tony Blair, reality is whatever he believes it to be, at whatever moment he chooses to believe it. One has to sift through a plethora of self-justifications, half-truths and finger-pointing to get to the truth, but it is there, if you look for it.
However, his performance at the Chilcot Inquiry today was that [...]

Bin Laden’s return stirs US questions over Gaza

sama bin Laden is apparently back from the dead, claiming responsibility for the failed Christmas Day plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight, and warning the US that it must stop supporting Israel or face more attacks.
Two interesting points arise from his reappearance. Firstly, bin Laden’s alleged statement comes two days after Britain raised [...]

Chemical Ali executed

THE MAN known as Chemical Ali, a top aide to Saddam Hussein, has been executed in Baghdad for ordering the gas attack on a Kurdish village in which 5,000 were killed, and for his role in other killings.
Ali Hassan al-Majid was sentenced to death by hanging last week, his eight death sentence since 2007. Two [...]

Iraq inquiry reveals collective ‘unconscious’

“Sometimes we do a thing in order to find a reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.” – Magnus Pym in John Le Carré’s A Perfect Spy
One by one those responsible for the fiasco that was the invasion of Iraq have been beguiling us with articulate, at times eloquent, tales of how [...]