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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - An Islamist group has given El Salvador 20 days to pull out troops from Iraq or it would strike inside the Central American country and against its forces in Iraq, according to an Internet statement posted Monday. Advertisement
"We give you 20 days to withdraw from Iraq. This is the last chance after which there will not be any more statements, only bloodshed," said Mohammed Atta Brigades - al Qaeda of Jihad.
"The aim of this deadline is to give you a (…)

Around 2000 Iraqi civilian "volunteers" have formed a human shield around Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf as US-led forces beseige the city.
The volunteers cheered al-Sadr in the marble-floored courtyard of the Imam Ali mosque on Monday in an impressive show of force.
Al-Sadr is holed up inside one of Shia Islam’s most sacred shrines before an expected American-led offensive.
Travelling to Najaf from across Iraq, the al-Sadr volunteers are swelling the ranks of his supporters and (…)

Fierce clashes raged in Baghdad’s mainly Shi’ite suburb today with militiamen destroying a U.S. tank, witnesses said.
U.S. forces had sealed Sadr City, a slum of two million people on the edge of the capital, earlier today after days of skirmishes that coincided with a radical Shi’ite uprising in at least eight cities in central and southern Iraq.
The witnesses said Mehdi Army militiamen loyal to firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr hit a tank with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) and set it (…)

By Uri Avnery
Once upon a time, an assistant to Levy Eshkol, our [Israeli] late prime minister, rushed up to him and cried: "Levy, a disaster! A drought has set in!"
"Where?" the prime minister asked anxiously, "in Texas?"
"No, here in Israel!" the man replied.
"Then there’s nothing to worry about," Eshkol said dismissively.
Right from the beginning, the State of Israel has been critically affected by events in the United States. "If America sneezes, Israel catches cold," is the (…)

by Richard Reeves Bush’s foreign policy SAG HARBOR, New York Senator John Kerry has not been successful so far in articulating answers to questions about whether and how the United States should go to war. But he will be guided by this draft of military application policy:
"The United States should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest. If the decision is made to commit its forces to combat abroad, it must be done with (…)

by Humberto Márquez
CARACAS - Although the opposition complained of fraud, the international election observer missions monitoring the recall referendum in Venezuela agreed Monday that President Hugo Chávez had won, and said they found no signs of fraud.
Nobel Peace laureate and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary-General César Gaviria said in a joint news briefing in Caracas that Chávez survived Sunday’s referendum.
"Our information (…)

By Ghali Hassan
Whether in the US, Britain or in Australia, the common "enemy" is the same kind of human who must be despised and excluded. Today it is the "Arabs"; at other times it is the Vietnamese. Negative images of the "others" are fuel for Western colonial war machine.
The US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq is not dissimilar from other invasions and occupations of defenceless nations by colonial powers. They all have one thing in common; invasions and occupations are based on lies (…)

An Iraqi group claims to have taken an intelligence officer captive, saying their action is in response to the attacks on Najaf.
A statement sent with the video was signed by the Brigades for the Defence of the Holy Sites. The video showed only the captive with two of his captors.
The pictures were aired by Aljazeera on Monday, but there was no accompanying audio. Neither Baghdad nor Washington have commented on the possible identity of the captive.
Just hours earlier, an Iraqi (…)

Bush’s CIA nominee has alarmed civil libertarians with a plan that would authorize the agency to arrest U.S. citizens. Plus, the real threat to the Olympic games
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Rep. Porter Goss, President Bush’s nominee to head the CIA, recently introduced legislation that would give the president new authority to direct CIA agents to conduct law-enforcement operations inside the United States-including arresting American citizens.
The legislation, introduced by (…)

by Eric Lichtblau
WASHINGTON The FBI has been questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National Convention in New York.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they (…)