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Thursday, September 02, 2010 21:06 GMT

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IPS Correspondent Gareth Porter talks to Democracy Now!

Despite Obama’s pledge, new evidence has emerged that combat brigades will remain in Iraq under a different name.

IPS Correspondent Gareth Porter talks to Real News.

The U.S. military establishment believed they could easily pressure President Obama to back down on his pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months. Having found Obama unconvinced by their argument, they have now launched a campaign in Washington to blame Obama’s withdrawal policy for any future instability in Iraq.

Obama Sits Down With IPS

OBAMA: "Subsidising Big Oil Makes No Sense"

Q&A: "I Appreciate This Unique Moment"

COLOMBIA
US Military Aid Contingent on Reversal of Rights Record
By Matthew Berger
WASHINGTON - As a new administration takes over in Bogotá, some groups are hoping for change in the human rights record of Colombia - and that the U.S. will use its clout in the country to ensure that change occurs.
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Environmentalists Push For Coal-ash Regulation
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - In what promises to be a contentious, high-profile series of debates, the forces of environmental protection will be lining up against those of the electric power industry over the future status of coal-ash.
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Secret ‘Kill Lists’ Fly in the Face of US and Int’l Law
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - Two of the nation’s most influential human rights organisations have filed a lawsuit challenging the government’s authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.
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Billion Dollar Audit Missed by Pentagon Watchdog
By Pratap Chatterjee*
WASHINGTON - Military auditors failed to complete an audit of the business systems of an Ohio- based company - Mission Essential Personnel - even though it had billed for one billion dollars worth of work largely in Afghanistan over the last four years.
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US-MIDEAST
Light At End of Tunnel Elusive, Despite Obama’s Efforts
Analysis by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will try this week to underline his progress in extricating the United States from the morass his predecessor's "global war on terror" in the Greater Middle East.
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US
New Banking Overhaul More Like An Under-Haul
By Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA - On July 21, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law the most sweeping financial industry regulatory reform since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But, experts point out that the bill does not address some of the real problems behind the structural instabilities of the U.S. economic system.
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FBI: No Probable Cause Required For Surveillance
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - The bitter controversy over the building of a Muslim community centre and mosque near the site of the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, is sparking new fears of government snooping on Islamic holy places - which it now claims it can do without a warrant.
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Media Didn’t Buy Petraeus Command’s Story of Low Taliban Morale
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - In an effort to introduce a story of "progress" into media coverage, Gen. David Petraeus’s command claimed last week that the Taliban is suffering from reduced morale in Marjah and elsewhere, despite evidence that the population of Marjah still believes the Taliban controls that district.
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Groups Praise U.S. Rights Report as Good First Step
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - In the first ever U.N.-mandated self-assessment of the United States' human rights record, the Barack Obama administration has reaffirmed its commitment to closing the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay and to fixing the country's "broken immigration system".
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Obama Resists Pressure for Red Line on Iran's Nuclear Capability
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's refusal in a White House briefing earlier this month to announce a "red line" in regard to the Iran nuclear programme represented another in a series of rebuffs of pressure from Defence Secretary Robert Gates for statement that the United States will not accept its existing stocks of low enriched uranium.
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AFGHANISTAN
Ouster of Contractors Throws U.S. Strategy in Doubt
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - Charging that U.S. private security contractors are "mafia- like groups" being financed by U.S. taxpayers to carry out "terrorist activities" with the support of the U.S. government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a four- month phaseout of all private security companies in his embattled country.
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Pakistani Officials Seek Funds, Debt Relief in Washington
By Matthew O. Berger
WASHINGTON - Pakistani officials continued their quest for help in light of the floods that have affected 20 million people in their country by meeting with officials at the International Monetary Fund here Monday.
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Obama Plays Down Plan for Post-2011 Iraq Troop Presence
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - When the Barack Obama administration unveiled its plan last week for an improvised State Department-controlled army of contractors to replace all U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of 2011, critics associated with the U.S. command attacked the transition plan, insisting that the United States must continue to assume that U.S. combat forces should and can remain in Iraq indefinitely.
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Israeli Generals and Intel Officials Oppose Attack on Iran
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - Pro-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg's article in "The Atlantic" magazine was evidently aimed at showing why the Barack Obama administration should worry that it risks an attack by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran in the coming months unless it takes a much more menacing line toward Iran's nuclear programme.
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White House Questions Suspension of Military Aid to Lebanon
By Eli Clifton*
WASHINGTON - Several powerful members of Congress have worked to suspend U.S. military aid to Lebanon's military after a deadly skirmish on the Lebanese-Israeli border last week which left two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and one Israeli officer dead.
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US
Immigration System a Broken Behemoth, Groups Say
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - One year after the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama announced that it intended to overhaul the country's heavily criticised immigration detention practices and create a "truly civil detention system", a new academic paper bolsters claims by human rights groups that real reform is still a long way off.
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ARTS
Walking in the Shoes of a Muslim in New York
By Hannah Rubenstein
NEW YORK - A woman waits on a subway platform, head bowed, pretending to ignore the insults. Perched on bar stools, a group of friends listen to racist jokes, suppressing giggles. Kneeling, a young war veteran tells his fiancée of his decision to return to combat. Two men wait expectantly at a job interview. An old man and a young graffiti artist sit together on a bench, discussing the power of language.
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Barack Obama's presidency is resonating with people around the world who hope for a new era of international cooperation and engagement with the tarnished superpower. But Obama has inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a tanking economy, and global crises like climate change. IPS reports on the implications of the Obama administration not just for U.S. citizens, but for the world.