Amid growing concern over the fate and conditions of inmates engaged in a lengthy hunger strike at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday said he would not permit UN investigators to interview detainees there.
In the wake of a United Nations investigation implicating a number of Syrian and Lebanese officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the Bush administration is calling for international sanctions, and leaking dark hints of war. But the United States is already unofficially at war with Syria. For the past six months, U.S. Army Rangers and the Special Operations Delta Force have been crossing the border into Syria , supposedly to Âinterdict terrorists coming into Iraq . Several Syrian soldiers have been killed.
It is doubtful that the Bush administration will be very successful advancing America’s image in the Islamic world as long as its representatives have such trouble telling the truth.
IndiaÂs vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) against Iran in September came as no surprise to anyone who has followed closely the recent course of IndiaÂs foreign policy. It is a safe guess that support for U.S. actions on Iran was one of the conditions of IndiaÂs nuclear deal with the United States, which was given the final seal of approval by President Bush during the July 2005 visit of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington.
The American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq has provided al-Qaida with a new lease on life, a second generation of recruits and fighters, and a powerful outlet to expand its ideological outreach activities to Muslims worldwide. Statements by al-Qaida top chiefs, including bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, and Seif al-Adl, portray the unfolding confrontation in Iraq as a Âgolden and unique opportunity for the global jihad movement to engage and defeat the United States and spread the conflict into neighboring Arab states in Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestine-Israeli theater. The global war is not going well for bin Laden, and Iraq enabled him to convince his jihadist followers that al-Qaida is still alive and kicking despite suffering crippling operational setbacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and elsewhere.
This is a tale about a vote, a strike, and a sleight of hand.
The United States now stands at a critical juncture in the evolution of its energy policy, particularly with respect to petroleum and natural gas consumption. The demand for energy in this country has been rising steadily over the past years as a result of continued economic growth and the vital role of air, ground, and sea transportation in all aspects of economic activity. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), total energy use in the United States grew by 16 percent between 1990 and 2002, and is projected to grow by another 35 percent between 2002 and 2025. At the same time, many other countries, both developed and developing, have also experienced an increased need for energy, pushing total world energy use from 348 quadrillion BTUs in 1990 to a projected 645 quadrillion BTUs in 2025, an increase of 85 percent.
Key Points
Iraqi negotiators reached a compromise on the constitution on Tuesday October 11, 2005 bringing the support of at least one major Sunni group before Saturday’s vote. But the supposed compromise merely kicks the can down the road, leaving the real questions at hand untouched.