Dictatorships seldom appear full-fledged but emerge piecemeal. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with one Roman legion he broke the tradition that protected the civilian government from victorious generals and launched the transformation of the Roman Republic...

Now that Iran has broken the seals it put two and a half years ago on an atomic research facility at Natanz, 250 km (155 mi.) south of Tehran, the threat of escalating conflict centered on the Western powers' effort to halt its nuclear activities looms large. The...

James Risen's State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, may hold bigger secrets than the disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. Risen's book also confirms the most damning element of...

Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is for all practical purposes dead. They might keep his body alive, but if the bleeding was as massive as it's been reported, then chances of his regaining his mental powers are nil. Sharon was a great, though controversial,...

LONDON - Western powers are already planning use of the military option in the face of Iran's insistence that it will go ahead with what it calls its nuclear research program, a leading expert says. ''The military option is being considered already, they are just not...

With the billions of dollars appropriated by the United States for Iraqi reconstruction almost spent, Japan, Australia and other nations in U.S. President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing" are likely to be asked to shoulder much of the burden for...

There is a "revelation" in James Risen’s latest book – State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration – that is perhaps more revealing than anyone intended. According to Risen, back in February 2000, the CIA finally found a job...

With Isam Rashid BAGHDAD - The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni organization that was created in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, was again targeted by the United States military last Sunday. The raid on its mosque served only to alienate Sunnis further. The...

If U.S. President George W. Bush is looking for good news, he should be talking less about Iraq and more about Afghanistan, according to the latest survey results from that country. Despite grinding poverty, a widening divide between rich and poor, and the continued...

2006 is sure to be the year of living dangerously – for the Bush administration and for the rest of us. In the wake of revelations of warrantless spying by the National Security Agency, we have already embarked on what looks distinctly like a constitutional...