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GENEVA - The United Nations (news - web sites) is failing to protect millions of people displaced by conflict in Sudan's Darfur region and violence in other hotspots around the world, a U.N. report said Friday. The world body's approach to the problem of people who have fled their homes but not crossed any international borders "is still largely ad hoc and driven more by the personalities and convictions of individuals on the ground than by an institutional, systemwide agenda," the report said. The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank,...

The Iraq War did not Force Gadaffi's HandThe Financial Times, March 9, 2004Martin S. Indyk, Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy Martin S. Indyk Embarrassed by the failure to find Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, President George W. Bush is trying to find another WMD-related justification for his pre-emptive war on Iraq. Bush administration spokesmen have been quick to portray Libya's December decision to abandon WMD programmes as the direct result of the US invasion of Iraq or, as Mr. Bush himself put it in his State of the Union address: "Nine months of intense negotiations succeeded with...

Kennedy: Bush lied Mass. senator issues stinging rebuke that accuses president of deceiving the public, compares his actions to those of Richard Nixon BY WASHINGTON BUREAU April 6, 2004 WASHINGTON - Shifting his ongoing criticism from Iraq to domestic issues, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) yesterday took President George W. Bush to task for what he called misleading the American public on everything from Medicare to education. "This president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon," Kennedy said in a speech at the Brookings Institute, a think tank in Washington. "He has broken the basic bond of trust...

Original point: The answer to this question is critical to understanding whether the Administration's foreign policy is undergoing a shift, brought on by our experience in Iraq that views our allies and the international community as partners in the War on Terror. For a failure to learn the lessons from our policy failure in Iraq will be disastrous in the War on Terror. So, this morning, I'd like to talk about the dangers of pursuing a policy of unilateralism and the need for allies in every aspect of our security. Critical to fighting this new 21st century war is a...

Cries of bias greet remapping ruling Partisan vote fuels debate over politics in court By Chuck Plunkett and Howard Pankratz Denver Post Staff Writers By breaking along party lines in its redistricting decision Monday, the Colorado Supreme Court provided a reminder of the clanging public debate over partisan judicial activism that started with the 2000 presidential contest. In rejecting a new GOP plan for how congressional districts are to be drawn in Colorado, the court's five Democratic members voted on the opposite side from its pair of Republicans. In doing so, the court opened itself to criticism from Republicans, and...

The Bush administration yesterday released a highly selective analysis on the cost to families of rolling back scheduled tax cuts, an early sign of the White House plan to brand Democrats as tax raisers throughout their race for the presidential nomination. In addition to using the issue to inject himself into the Democratic campaign, President Bush plans to make the extension and preservation of tax cuts a centerpiece of his general election campaign, senior Republican officials said.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A study by groups critical of the new tax law has found that 8 million mostly low-income taxpayers will not receive any benefit from it. The study also says there are 50 million households -- 36 percent of all households in the nation -- that will receive no benefit from the law, including people who do not earn enough to owe income tax.But the new study found 5 million taxpayers in the lowest tax bracket who get no benefit from the law and 2.5 million single parents with children who also pay taxes but get no breaks....

WASHINGTON — U.S. commanders like to boast that America has the best-trained, best-equipped and most disciplined military in the world. And in the march to and occupation of Baghdad, its skills have been on full display. But in the pre-dawn darkness and fog of Nasiriyah, at some Patriot missile batteries, on a highway with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and at other places as yet unknown, the Americans’ training and equipment have deserted or betrayed them. At least a dozen U.S. and British troops have been killed and many more wounded by "friendly fire." In one firefight between groups of...

As America prepares for a possible war in Iraq, most planning in the humanitarian area is focused on the delivery of food, medicine, and shelter to Iraqi civilians. But assaults, reprisals, massacres, and other human rights abuses perpetrated against the civilian population during or following a war should also cause concern, and they could undermine support for the U.S. operation. So could military operations with heavy ``collateral damage.'' A panel of experts will analyze and answer questions about how a U.S. military campaign can be waged in Iraq so as to provide maximum protection for civilians. Among the questions to...

Sometimes it pays to complain. When European officials denounced George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech, US commentators and officials dismissed the criticisms as another case of "euro-whining". Yet in the intervening weeks something odd has happened - the US has moderated its policies in several areas to accommodate European concerns. Just a month ago such an accommodation seemed unlikely. Then the Bush administration appeared to be on a collision course with its European allies. Its enthusiasm for forcibly removing Saddam Hussein from power sent shudders through European capitals. It stood solidly behind Israel even as escalating violence in the...