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In a direct affront to the Bush administration, a Democratic senator spent an hour Wednesday with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus, emerging from the meeting to say Assad was willing to help control the Iraq-Syrian border.
An evangelical Christian group, under fire for a promotional video featuring active-duty military officers praising the organization, said Monday it was given permission by the Defense Department.
The co-chairmen of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., are taking their 96-page report before a Senate committee Thursday to face questions on their assessment of conditions inside Iraq as well as their recipe for stabilizing the country and beginning the withdrawal of American forces.
President Bush's policy in Iraq "is not working," a high-level commission said Wednesday in a blunt, bleak assessment that called for an urgent diplomatic attempt to stabilize the country and allow withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by early 2008.
Congress remains sharply divided over U.S. policy in Iraq, casting doubt on plans by leading senators to make a bipartisan recommendation to President Bush by January.
The top U.S. commander in the Middle East warned Congress Wednesday against setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, putting him at odds with resurgent Democrats pressing President Bush to start pulling out of the violence-torn country.
John Bolton's prospects for staying on as U.N. ambassador essentially died Thursday as Democrats and a pivotal Republican said they would continue to oppose his nomination.
The Halliburton subsidiary that provides food, shelter and other logistics to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan exploited federal regulations to hide details on its contract performance, according to a report released Friday.
A leading Republican lawmaker on defense issues has asked the Pentagon to bar CNN reporters from traveling with military units in Iraq because the network showed insurgent snipers shooting at U.S. troops.
Democrats have long complained about President Bush's Iraq war policies. They will get their chance to do something about it if they capture control of Congress in the Nov. 7 elections — but first, they have to agree on a detailed alternative.
Sen. Olympia Snowe joined a growing list of Republicans calling for a change of course in Iraq, a position that could undermine President Bush's election-year assertion that the nation shouldn't set a timetable for troops to come home.
Republicans succeeded this week in pushing through a key piece of President Bush's anti-terror agenda, passing along party lines legislation that would endorse the military program to detain and interrogate terrorists.
The Senate, siding with President Bush shortly after he personally lobbied lawmakers at the Capitol, rejected a move Thursday by a leading Republican to allow terrorism suspects to challenge their imprisonment in court.
Congress is on track to approve a White House plan for detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects — legislation Republicans likely will use on the campaign trail to assert that Democrats want to coddle terrorists.
A Republican deal on terrorism trials and interrogations would give President Bush wide latitude to interpret standards for prisoner treatment, even though it doesn't include a provision he wanted on the Geneva Conventions.
Republicans hope that an accord reached between the Bush administration and GOP senators on the treatment of terror-war detainees means the party can go on a campaign-season offensive on the issue of protecting the country.
The White House and maverick Senate Republicans have begun a fresh round of talks over how to handle the nation's most dangerous terrorism suspects, resuscitating GOP hopes for approving a key piece of the president's anti-terror agenda before the November elections.
Senate GOP leaders facing rebellion in their own ranks against President Bush's plan to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects will call for a vote on the proposal as early as next week.
A rebellious Senate committee defied President Bush on Thursday and approved terror-detainee legislation he has vowed to block, deepening Republican conflict over terrorism and national security in the middle of the election season.
The White House and three powerful GOP senators reached an impasse Wednesday over a Bush administration plan to allow tough CIA interrogations, underscoring election-season divisions among Republicans on the high profile issue of security.
To many of President Bush's allies, it is time to free intelligence officials from "legislative purgatory" and get the CIA back in the business of effective interrogations of suspected terrorists.
Three congressional Democrats asked President Bush on Wednesday to dismiss the head of the agency that oversees government broadcasts, who is accused of misusing government money, overbilling for his time and hiring a friend as a consultant.
Two top Pentagon commanders said Thursday that spiraling violence in Baghdad could propel Iraq into outright civil war, using a politically loaded term that the Bush administration has long avoided.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted Wednesday that his country is a front line in the war on terrorism and said those behind the rampant violence there are perverting the Islamic faith.
The Bush administration is working hard to end violence in the Mideast and criticism of its measured response is coming from people who want "egg-timer diplomacy," the chief White House spokesman said Friday.
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