Saturday, April 14, 2012
Patrick Cockburn
The ferocity of the attacks on George Galloway by the British commentariat is one of the most revealing outcomes of his victory in the Bradford West by-election. News presenters saw no problem in conducting interviews with the newly ...

Saturday, February 11, 2012
Patrick Cockburn
The US announcement that it plans to end the combat role of its troops in Afghanistan earlier than expected, and before the end of next year, is a crucial milestone in the international forces’ retreat from the country. Coming after ...

Friday, January 20, 2012
Patrick Cockburn
“Rumour” used to have a bad reputation. In Shakespeare’s plays it is assumed that “rumours” mean artful lies and the spreading of detailed but false accounts of victory and defeat. No journalist could credibly tell of massacre, ...

Thursday, January 05, 2012
Patrick Cockburn
Compared with many bombs in Iraq, it was not a big one. I had just arrived in the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad on November 28 when there was an explosion a few hundred yards away in front of the parliament building. I thought at first ...

Thursday, September 15, 2011
Patrick Cockburn
The United States is negotiating to keep several thousand troops in Iraq beyond the official withdrawal date at the end of the year, but its influence in the country is being eclipsed by Iran and Turkey. The US and Iraq are ...

Thursday, August 25, 2011
Patrick Cockburn
The civil war in Libya went on longer than expected, but the fall of Tripoli came faster than was forecast. As in Kabul in 2001 and Baghdad in 2003, there was no last-ditch stand by the defeated regime, whose supporters appear to ...

Thursday, July 28, 2011
Patrick Cockburn
Air strikes are becoming the main Western means of controlling the Middle East and South Asia without putting soldiers on the ground where they might suffer politically damaging casualties. Britain, France and the US have used only ...

Thursday, April 28, 2011
Patrick Cockburn
Publication of pictures showing Iraqi prisoners being abused and humiliated by American soldiers was one of the crucial turning points in the war in Iraq. It showed that the US takeover of the country was as brutal and ...

Saturday, April 02, 2011
Patrick Cockburn
President Bashar al-Assad accepted the resignation of the Syrian cabinet a couple of days ago in an attempt to defuse protests against his rule as hundreds of thousands of people attended pro-government rallies in most of the ...

Thursday, March 24, 2011
Patrick Cockburn
In the next few weeks Qaddafi is likely to lose power. The forces arrayed against him are too strong. The US, Britain and France are scarcely going to permit a stalemate whereby he clings on to Tripoli and parts of western Libya ...