Baghdad is a city ravaged by a decade of war and insurgent attacks, making the news for spates of violence. But for the city's 7 million inhabitants, it is where they work, go to the theatre, love and marry. FRANCE 24 takes a look at daily life in the capital.
The weapons of mass destruction that weren't, daily sectarian violence that endures and US public opinion that's lost its stomach for foreign intervention: François Picard's panel looks at how nonetheless the legacy of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq could still morph over time.
Ten years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the American troops may be gone but the country they left behind is reeling from the consequences of the war. To discuss this issue, Douglas Herbert speaks to James Dobbins, a former American diplomat who is now the Director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center.
Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., a highly decorated four-star general hailed for his leadership during the 1991 Gulf War, has died at his home in Tampa, Florida, at the age of 78, a US official said on Thursday.
The sentencing of Iraq’s Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi to death by hanging has enflamed tensions between the country’s Sunni and Shiite communities. The court accused the Sunni politician of ordering a string of bombings and assassinations following the fall of Saddam Hussein. He claims he is innocent and accuses the Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki of carrying out a vendetta against him.
In Egypt, the new president has carried out his boldest move yet. President Mohamed Morsi has forced the most senior man in the military, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, into retirement. Next, we look at life for Syrians in a Jordanian refugee camp. Finally, we talk to an Iraqi man who was forced to flee his house as a young boy during the Iraq-Iran war, but who is now determined to win it back for his young family.
France's papers report on the historic guilty verdict for former French President Jacques Chirac. His political career now gets a damaging footnote: a two-year suspended sentence. And the US withdrawal from Iraq also gets full coverage. That's the focus for this French press review, Friday 16th December 2011.
Muammar Gaddafi's death dominates all the papers, with reaction centring on the brutality of his last hours and whether - as with the Ceausescus in Romania and Saddam Hussein in Iraq - this will cast a shadow. That's the focus for this review of the French press, 21st October 2011.
The defector whose claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction provided one of the main justifications for the 2003 US-led invasion has admitted to lying about the programme to lure foreign help in toppling Saddam Hussein, the Guardian reports.
Armen Georgian meets Hans Blix, Chair of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and former head of the UN's weapons inspection team in Iraq. Dr Blix shares his thoughts on the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion, and talks about the current global threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
