According to Patrick Smith, the editor of Africa Confidential, the war on terror is fast becoming a cold war for the 21st century, with the US finding proxy allies to fight proxy enemies in faraway places.

Of course, Bush himself doesn't see it that way. He doubtless hoped that a neat, self-contained air strike in Africa could remind Americans of the bit of the war on terror they like - hunting down the baddies - just before they hear some news they don't.

For tonight, President Bush will go on television and tell his fellow Americans that he is preparing to send upwards of 20,000 more troops into the graveyard that is Iraq.

His people are calling it a surge. Anyone on nodding terms with the English language would call it escalation.   more »

Our visual culture, Damian Hirst, Jake and Dinos Chapman; our playwrights, Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill; and our writers, including the excellent Michel Houllebecq, present a picture of a nihilistic west disappearing into a whirlpool of narcissism, sentimentality and moral emptiness.

They are saying we have sold our souls for the freedom to shop and screw as and when we wish.

Furthermore, don't we claim to be enlightened, liberal and democratic while unleashing a whirlwind of disaster and death on the Muslim world, day after day?

If we find the idea of sacrifice difficult - why would anyone want to blow themselves up for a cause? - our self-disgust points to an absence, perhaps to a need for authority.   more »

At noon, just as Nancy "impeachment-off-the-table" Pelosi was being sworn in, hundreds gathered near the Capital beneath a banner that read: "Impeach George Bush for War Crimes."

Several dozen people crouched in the bright orange jumpsuits that are the signature of Guantanamo detainees with black hoods over their heads.

They were a living portrayal of some of the Bush Regimes' crimes against humanity: the illegal detention and torture that this regime has institutionalized and that this Congress won't even speak about.

People of all ages had traveled from Illinois, Georgia, Michigan, New York and elsewhere, some abandoning at the last minute their plans to see their congresspeople get sworn in - choosing instead to protest for impeachment.   more »

The new footage shows a shrouded body lying on a trolley - possibly in a morgue or hospital - as several people walk past, though only their legs are shown.

The person carrying the camera then lifts the sheet to reveal Saddam Hussein's head.

It is twisted at an angle of 90 degrees to his shoulders and clearly visible on his throat, just beneath the jaw line, is a vivid, circular wound about three centimetres wide - injuries which could have been caused by hanging.

His cheek is slightly flecked with blood and looks bruised, and there is blood on the shroud.

Several voices, apparently those of the people making the video, can be heard during the 27-second clip.   more »

Bush is acting like a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain in the White House. He defies the will of his own people and has assumed powers of surveillance and secrecy that used to be found in the Kremlin.’"

The American people are forced to consume a daily diet of triumphalist slogans doled out by the media and fattened by fawning praise of the president from a chorus of highly paid commentators."

He is portrayed as a pious crusader leading Christians into battle against the infidels. Evoking the glory of God and divine guidance, Bush claims to be leading his people to new glory."

The reality looks very different. The U.S. is nearly bankrupt, saddled with an unprecedented debt. It is bogged down in an unwinnable Civil War that Bush continues to throw lives and billions of dollars into.   more »

The United States' decision to bomb Islamists holed up in a corner of Somalia near the border with Kenya is a high-risk tactic which could ignite an Iraqi-style insurgency across a swathe of East Africa, analysts and regional experts say.

Buoyed by the success that its allies - Ethiopia and the UN-backed transitional Government - have had in driving the Islamists out of the capital in recent weeks, Washington clearly feels that it has an opportunity to wipe out what it sees as a persistent threat to Western interests in the region. The Americans have gone for the jugular.

The danger is that the high loss of life reported and the likelihood that many non-al Qaeda sympathisers have been killed, including more moderate leaders of the defeated Union of Islamic Courts, could see the operation backfire spectacularly and unite Somalis against its new US-supported government.   more »