Americans awoke this past Monday to learn that the much-anticipated "handover" of sovereignty to Iraqi officials, scheduled for later in the week, had already happened. If the Coalition Provisional Authority was trying to avoid a violent attack during the ceremony, the strategy seemed to have worked. But after weeks of ...

When the so-called handover of sovereignty from the Coalition Provisional Authority takes place in Iraq on Wednesday, the Iraqi Media Network will be one of the institutions that changes hands. Network officials say it will form the backbone of a new public broadcasting service in Iraq, but critics counter that ...

Last summer, the military paper Stars and Stripes conducted a survey of troop morale. Half of the soldiers surveyed said morale in their units was low, and they did not plan to re-enlist. Forty percent described their training as insufficient, and almost as many said their missions were not clearly ...

In a closed session with the 9/11 Commission, a former FBI translator named Sibel Edmonds reportedly made an explosive charge. She described documents that crossed her desk in the summer of 2001, detailing plans for an Al Qaeda attack on U.S. skyscrapers with hijacked airplanes. Her allegations were picked up ...

Last week, a team of Army Special Forces troops staged a simulated assault in front of the L.A. Convention Center. It wasn't a preparedness drill for a potential terrorist attack. The troops were promoting the latest version of "America's Army," a video game designed as an Army recruitment tool. When ...

Images of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US military have been circulating for a couple of weeks - now they are joined in the newspapers and on television, by images of the horrific beheading of an American civilian in Iraq. UPI Senior Editor Martin Walker spoke to Brooke about ...

Members of congress viewed yet more photos from Abu Ghraib this week and were undecided as to whether to release them to the public or not. Some said that no matter what decision they came to it was inevitable that the pictures would get out there anyway. Peter Howe, a ...

For more than two years now, U.S. officials have frequently lashed out at al-Jazeera, the most popular Arab language news network. It has been accused of anti-American bias, inflammatory rhetoric, and deliberate misrepresentation of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This week, Secretary of State Colin Powell formally complained about ...

As the 9/11 Commission interviews top government officials and public support for the war in Iraq continues to slide, many observers have started seeking apologies from America's leaders. But others think the media owe the nation an apology as well. Bob speaks with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who this ...

Arab anger about the occupation of Iraq has been nourished in recent weeks by images of death and destruction broadcast daily by the Arab media. Into that mix this week came the announcement by President Bush that Israel has the right to permanently annex parts of the West Bank, and ...

It's more precarious than it's ever been to report from the ground in Iraq, but the situation is especially grave for journalists native to the region. As of Friday, eleven journalists have died in Iraq this year, all of them either Iraqi or from other Arab countries. Brooke speaks with ...

It's been a year since the world watched the fall of Saddam's reign, but violence and resentment continue to rush into the power vacuum left behind. This week, American troops were on the defensive across Iraq, as Shia rebels took up the fight that had been limited to Sunni areas. ...

Spreading the message of American goodwill to an ever more hostile Middle East is no easy task. Before Radio Sawa, Al Hurra TV and Hi Magazine, the State Department recruited advertising executive Charlotte Beers to create a series of mini-documentaries on American Muslims. The mini-docs were booed off the air ...

The media were a strong and steady presence in the war against Saddam, partly because of a shift in military strategy. In previous wars the press had been kept at arm's length by the military, but its so-called "embedding" program allowed 800 reporters exclusive access to the action. In the ...

This week's one-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq offered news organizations the opportunity to reflect on their coverage of the lead-up to war. And just in time, Knight Ridder reporters turned up more evidence that the U.S. media was used by those who directly stood to gain from ...

Last March, journalists were gearing up to accompany U.S. troops into battle in Iraq. Eleven months thence, actors are gearing up to portray those journalists, albeit with a more satiric edge. In his new play "Embedded" - which opens on Tuesday in New York - actor and playwright Tim Robbins ...

Last month, TV audiences in Afghanistan witnessed something they haven't seen in more than a decade - female singers on their screens. Many Afghans are cheering the return of women to the airwaves, but Islamic groups, as well as the country's new Supreme Court, are outraged. Brooke talks to Washington ...

For most of Bush's presidency, and especially since 9-11, the majority of Americans have been eager to believe in the President, and in his stated reasons for invading Iraq. And after those reasons were shown to be largely groundless, most people have continued to cling to them. Bob speaks with ...

In the face of mounting evidence that Saddam's Iraq posed no imminent threat to the U.S., the Bush administration continues to insist that Operation Iraqi Freedom was justified. White House officials are reverting to linguistic obfuscation, emphasis on certain talking points and the omission of others, and of course, blaming ...

In Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the range of children's books reflected the world that young people were being raised to live in. But since the fall of Baghdad, titles like "Tanks in the Night" and "The Story of Nationalisation" are disappearing from bookstores. In their place, publishers are now offering the ...