On Monday UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned on his return from a visit to Damascus and Syrian refugee camps in neighbouring Jordan and Turkey that the situation was "extremely bad and getting worse".

BBC: Obama's UN General Assembly speech condemns extremism

As best-selling author Richard Miniter recently reported in the New York Post on his return from a visit to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, the Defense Department is bending over backwards to avoid any appearance of mistreatment of these unlawful enemy combatants.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Do the right thing

But even allowing for seasonal adjustments, Tony Blair must be wondering what he has done to earn the scorn dumped on him after his own return this week from a visit to India, Pakistan and, fleetingly, the Bagram airbase outside Kabul.

ECONOMIST: Britain has lost an empire but has at last found Tony Blair

This week one of them, Nicholas Burns, a senior State Department man, said he expected an agreement with India on the clearer separation of its civilian nuclear activities from its military ones, as well as new American legislation to exempt India from the existing anti-nuclear rules, to be in place by the time Mr Bush pays a return visit to India in early 2006.

ECONOMIST: Diplomacy and proliferation