contributions

by Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Officials from Iraq’s new government were left embarrassed last night after mistakenly announcing the capture of Saddam Hussein’s deputy, the most senior figure from the regime still on the run.
A defence ministry spokesman announced that US troops and Iraqi National Guard forces had arrested Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri in a violent gunbattle outside the central city of Tikrit.
Wael Abdul-Latif, a minister of state in the new government, told Reuters it was 75% (…)

James Poniewozik on President Bush’s speech and a martial night at the Republican convention
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
It had long been expected that President Bush’s re-election strategy would hinge on his convincing us we needed him to protect us from terrorism. So it was a surprise this week when the Republicans revealed the real message of their 2004 convention: We need President Bush to protect us from Zell Miller. The Democratic senator-turned-Democratic scourge laid into John Kerry (…)

Les Payne
The gathering of the Republicans in New York was as much a circus of the well-heeled as it was a big tent for the trapeze artists of the flip-flop.
The zigzag was set by the keynote speaker, a politician who, a dozen years ago, delivered the keynote address - for the Democrats. Zell Miller is as fond of the flip-flop as he is of his dirt roots in Georgia. He steadfastly promises to die a Democrat, a promise some hope would hasten after the GOP keynote.
The irony of the Miller (…)

Toll more than 330 and still rising. Putin admits: ’We made mistakes’
By Andrew Osborn
The death toll in the worst terror outrage since 11 September rose well above 300 yesterday as President Vladimir Putin called the Russian school siege part of "a full-scale war" on the nation by international terrorists, and made a rare admission of weakness.
Mr Putin made a national TV address as hundreds of distraught people in the Caucasus town of Beslan pleaded with the authorities for (…)

By Max Boot
The eyes of the political world were on New York Thursday as President Bush delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. But, with foreign policy occupying center stage in a presidential election for the first time since 1972, the outcome of the election may hinge less on what the president does in New York than on what our enemies do in Kabul and Baghdad. Mr. Bush is running as the man who liberated Afghanistan and Iraq. But despite (…)

Dick Cheney, backseat driver par excellence
IN MOST presidential re-election campaigns people don’t spare a second thought for the vice-presidential candidate. Nobody voted to re-elect Ronald Reagan because he had George Bush senior on the ticket, or Bill Clinton because he had Al Gore. But this year Americans ought to spare more than a second thought for the man who stepped onto the stage in Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night.
Dick Cheney growled out a speech that was reminiscent (…)

By Francis Elliott
Who were the hostage-takers? What did they want? Who helped them?
The Russian security services have lost little time in providing answers: Chechen rebels and Arab fighters, probably from Yemen and Sudan, demanding independence for Chechnya in an operation part-financed by al-Qa’ida. Security officials say experts have "surmised" from the facial structures of the killed terrorists that nine were Arab and one black.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) is also alleging (…)

By Trevor Royle
For Vladimir Putin, the end of the school siege at Beslan in North Ossetia could prove to be a defining moment in his presidency. It will now be very difficult for him to wriggle free of the accusation that he has the blood of innocent children on his hands.
As the debriefings and investigations continue, the Russian president will argue that the violence was prompted by the Chechen terrorists who provided the trigger by shooting at escaping children, leaving the Russian (…)

by Paul Joseph Watson
The murky events of the school siege in which hundreds of children were killed are raising disturbing questions as to which entities were actually behind the co-ordination of the attack. Subsequent developments will bring a clearer picture but many indicators point to this event being a staged psy-op.
Most prominent terror incidents over the past twenty years have been state sponsored. That is not to say that the incident in North Ossetia hasn’t been a harrowing (…)

By Sarah Schweitzer
NEW YORK — White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday that President Bush views America as a ’’10-year-old child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a parent.
Card’s remark, criticized later by Democrat John F. Kerry’s campaign as ’’condescending," came in a speech to Republican delegates from Maine and Massachusetts that was threaded with references to Bush’s role as protector of the country. Republicans have sounded that theme repeatedly at the (…)