THE VITAL ILLUSION by Jean Baudrillard. The Wellek Library Lectures. Pub: New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Pp. 102. Hbk. Price: US$18.

The US invasion of Iraq has been widely described as the latest stage of a new American imperialism. It has also been described as intended to create a new regional order in the Middle East, often compared to the Sykes-Picot agreement after the first world war...

The sudden collapse of the Ba’athist regime in Iraq is not surprising, although most Muslims would have liked to see the US given a bloodier nose in the process. It can be attributed to two main factors...

​Speaking in Mashhad on March 23, the Rahbar of Islamic Iran, IMAM SAYYID ALI KHAMENEI, gave a detailed analysis of the reasons for America’s war on Iraq. Here we reprint an abridged extract from that speech.

Remember J. F. Kennedy, the American president who said to his people, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for your country." In the current situation, every American must reconsider this challenge...

A week after the US and Britain launched their invasion of Iraq on March 20, it is increasingly clear that all is not going smoothly in the campaign.

While Iraqis are being killed by American and British bombs in Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi towns, Arabs and Muslims across the world have stepped up their protests against the war.

When the US and British leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, decided to meet at Camp David on March 26, they probably imagined that the war would be close to over by then. They would not have expected to have to discuss Iraq’s unexpectedly stubborn resistance and the mounting casualties their own troops are suffering.

Iraq was supposed to be a walk-over: its oppressed people were going to greet American soldiers as "liberators," in the manner of the Kuwaitis in 1991, welcoming them with garlands. This was the rosy picture painted by Richard Perle, the superhawk in US president George W. Bush’s government who, together with fellow zionist Paul Wolfowitz...

Citing security concerns, Hamid Karzai, the US-installed and protected president of Afghanistan, cancelled his visit to Pakistan only an hour before he was supposed to leave Kabul on March 22. His Pakistani hosts were taken aback...

President Vladimir Putin was quick to claim overwhelming support for the referendum held in Chechnya on March 23 to give the impression that the ‘separatists’ have been defeated. He also wanted the Chechens to seem to approve a Kremlin-written constitution that reconfirms the republic as part of the Russian Federation...

Abdul-Majid Dar, area commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, the largest group fighting against the Indian occupation, was gunned down on March 23 while visiting his brother’s home in Sopore. His mother and sister were also seriously wounded.