GOP Struggles To Define Its Message for 2006 Elections  —  Republican efforts to craft a policy and political agenda to carry the party into the midterm elections have stumbled repeatedly as GOP leaders face widespread disaffection and disagreement within the ranks.

On Anniversary, Bush and Cheney See Iraq Success  —  WASHINGTON, March 19 — On the third anniversary of a war that they once expected to be over by now, President Bush and senior officials argued Sunday that their strategy was working despite escalating violence in Iraq …

Deaths fall for U.S., rise for Iraqis  —  BAGHDAD — U.S. military deaths during the past month have dropped to an average of about one a day, approaching the lowest level since the insurgency began two years ago, according to a USA TODAY analysis of U.S. military data.

Spinning Operation Swarmer  — Email to a friend - Print this page - Text size: A A  —  The latest criticism of the war in Iraq has become so politically manipulative, so disingenuous, so over-the-top that it is undermining a critical cause that we cannot, for a variety of global security reasons, afford to lose.

How to spot a baby conservative  —  Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints?  Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.  —  At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids …

Rumsfeld's Iraq-Germany analogy disputed  —  Former top officials disagree with comparison  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former top officials in two presidential administrations — one Democratic, one Republican — disagreed Sunday with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's characterization …

Global Warming is a Terrible Danger for Humanity  —  James Hansen is the country's premier Global Climate change scientist.  Since the 1970s he has been at the forefront of the studying global climate change and has provided his expert opinion to every administration since then.

Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn  —  BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom …

David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean  —  A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an "Israel lobby" is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke.

Women at war with the mullahs  —  What drives a woman to risk a fatwa by attacking Islam.  Christopher Goodwin reports  —  It would be hard to imagine a place more remote from the violence and turmoil of the Middle East than this quiet cul-de-sac in the southern suburbs of Los Angeles.

Sayed and de Man at Yale  —  The campus that ran off a Nazi propagandist today welcomes one from the Taliban.  —  Three weeks after the New York Times revealed that former Taliban official Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi is attending classes at Yale, many at the university still have little to say about the controversy.

Bush Approval Steady at 37%  —  Bush has averaged 38% over last four Gallup Polls  —  PRINCETON, NJ — There has been little change in George W. Bush's job approval rating in the last week.  The March 13-16 Gallup Poll pegs his approval at 37%.  This rating is virtually unchanged …

'Iraq was awash in cash.  We played football with bricks of $100 bills'  —  At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country.  With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone?

OBL Sought 'Joint Operations' with Saddam  —  An Iraqi intelligence document released last week indicates that Osama bin Laden sought to conduct "joint operations" with Saddam Hussein's regime six years before the 9/11 attacks - and was given the green light by the Iraqi dictator.

Swiss documentary on Afghanistan: Pakistani, Saudi engineers helped destroy Buddhas  —  WASHINGTON: The Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban with the help of Pakistani and Saudi engineers.  —  According to an account published here on Saturday, a local Afghan told …

A Contractor's Purchase on Power  —  Mitchell Wade's Cultivation of 'Duke' Cunningham Was Just One Part of His Tactical Assault for MZM  —  The consulting work that MZM Inc. received from a Pentagon agency in 2003 was for only $40,000, but to company owner Mitchell J. Wade, the face value was just the beginning.

DISARRAY THIS  —  The Democrats are in disarray.  Everybody says so.  In the Times, Adam Nagourney, the paper's chief political correspondent, indicts them for sending "scattershot messages," having no "overarching theme," and lacking "a strategy for governing."