US Democrats steered the Senate through an all-night session to dramatise opposition to the Iraq war but conceded they were unlikely to gain the votes needed to advance troop withdrawal legislation blocked by Republicans.

Two top Republicans dismissed President George Bush’s pleas for patience on Iraq and proposed legislation demanding a new strategy by mid-October to restrict the mission of US troops.

Democrats in the US House of Representatives are expected to vote next week on a stripped-down resolution condemning President George Bush’s decision to send more forces to Iraq, but declaring support for the troops, according to party aides.

US officials say there is no immediate plan to strike targets in Iran, but would not rule out military action.

Thousands of weapons the United States has provided Iraqi security forces cannot be accounted for, a new report to Congress says.

WITH the White House bracing for guerrilla warfare on the home front politically if Republicans lose control of Congress, President George W Bush is seeking to shift the debate away from Iraq and scandal and boost his reputation for economic competence.

Republicans in the US hope that an accord reached between the Bush administration and rebellious Republican senators on the treatment of terror-war detainees means the party can go on a campaign-season offensive on the issue of protecting the country.

The deaths of as many as two dozen Iraqi civilians and an ensuing cover-up threaten to do more harm to US efforts in Iraq than even the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a prominent congressman and war critic says.

BUSH administration officials, trying to calm a political furore over allowing a United Arab Emirates company to take over six US seaports, told Congress yesterday they spent three months reviewing the deal and said all concerns about security were satisfied.

A US military investigation has found evidence of degrading and abusive treatment by interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, which is being used as a prison for terrorist suspects.

A report will contain “a good deal of new information” backing up the Bush administration’s contention that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass destruction, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner said yesterday.

The CIA is today expected to face heavy criticism by the US Senate for its flawed analysis of the alleged threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Gulf War.

The US Senate Armed Services Committee said today it would hold a public hearing into the allegations of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib “at the first opportunity”.

The American plane maker Boeing’s unconventional deal to supply air refuelling tankers for the US Air Force has been postponed by the Pentagon while a probe is carried out into the company’s conduct.

An adviser to the CIA has hinted that US and coalition staff were close to a breakthrough in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The United States will seek to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein even if he lets UN weapons inspectors resume their work, a US official has said.

A team of British scientists has launched an investigation into why peanuts put some people in peril.