Ehsan Ahrari: The vision of American power in the Middle East is dramatically different from the way Americans see it. Cindy Williams: The War in iraq promises to strain future budgets William Dowell: Now that the war is ending, what do we really want to achieve in Iraq?

New York University

ANTI-AMERICANISM IS BACK IN STYLE
Boston University professors Margaret and Melvin DeFleur have updated their study of attitudes about America in different countries of the world. Click here to see the an interactive guide.

Click here for the full report as a pdf file

The US State Department's Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism

U.S. SUCCESS PROVIDES A MODEL FOR FUTURE WARFARE
The flexibility and rapid reaction of U.S. forces provided a critical advantage, and at least for the moment has silenced critics.
(John Cusman and Thom Shanker, New York Times, April 10, 2003)

NUMBER OF IRAQI DEAD UNKNOWABLE
Thousands died, but no one kept count.
(John Broder, New York Times, April 10, 2003)

KURDS OCCUPY KIRKUK
(BBC, April 10, 2003)

BAGHDAD ON A KNIFE EDGE
The U.S. hit and run attacks into Baghdad impressed foreign reporters as much as the city’s terrified inhabitants. Paul Wood provides an eye witness account on the BBC. "…Looking out towards the west of Baghdad from our hotel room, we can see this morning two American fighting vehicles on a bridge across the Tigris. We saw intermittently, white plumes of smoke shooting up from presidential sites - we believe that was Iraqis attacking American positions…" (Paul Wood, BBC, April 8, 2003)

BAGHDAD HOSPITALS OVERWHELMED WITH CIVILIAN CASUALTIES FROM U.S. BOMBING
Just one of Baghdad's hospitals had carried out 60 serious operations in one day. Doctors are said to be exhausted. The director of the Red Cross team in the city, Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, said the start of ground operations by US troops in and around the city in recent days had led to a massive increase in doctors' workloads. This contrasted with the situation during the aerial bombardment of the city in recent weeks, when hospitals had mostly treated casualties with relatively light shrapnel injuries. "Now when you have military engagement on the ground level, most people, at least the combatants, are hit much more seriously... it's all the more work for the doctors," Mr. Huguenin-Benjamin told the BBC. (BBC, April 8, 2003)

FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS IN BASRA WAITING FOR A CONCLUSION HASN’T BEEN EASY
"…It's like the Wild West, and even the most serious humanitarian concern, water, is not being adequately administered.
Everywhere I went in Umm Qasr, people asked me for water. Wherever you look, people are carting around buckets and drums. While tankers are being sent into the city by the Allied forces, people in the town told me that the water was being sold by the Iraqi drivers at 250 dinars for 20 litres – the average Iraqi earns 8,000 dinars a month. The standard humanitarian quota for water in emergency situations is a minimum of 20 litres per person each day…"
(Patrick Nicholson in the Independent, April 5, 2003)

AN ASSESSMENT
The Jim Lehrer News Hour analyzes recent developments with a panel including Former air force operations planner, Colonel Samuel Gardiner, former Marine Corps Middle East counterintelligence officer Dale Davis and Adeed Dawisha, a political science professor at Miami University of Ohio.
(PBS, April 7, 2003)

MANAGING A "THREE-BLOCK" WAR
The battle for Basra and Um Qasar not only recalls British operations in Northern Ireland, but it also illustrates a classic 3-block war. Military units are forced to simultaneously engage in humanitarian and peace keeping operations while engaging in full blown combat. Switching from one mission to another can be confusing and the fact that much of this is being shown in real time on television puts an unusually heavy load on junior officers. The least mistake can have a larger impact on the way the rest of the world sees the war.
(Mark Burgess, Center for Defense Information, April 4, 2003)

IS THE GENEVA CONVENTION STILL RELEVANT?
Both sides have skirted international law in the War with Iraq. The result may be a redefinition of the rules for modern warfare.
(Foreign Policy Association, April 3, 2003)

Paul Wolfowitz

WOLFOWITZ HAS A LARGER VISION THAN JUST IRAQ…
Of course the undersecretary wants Saddam out, but more than that, he’d like to see Iraq turned into a western version of democracy that will eventually spread throughout the Middle East, and may even find itself friendly to Israel. Daring vision, or well intentioned naievete? The vote is still out. (Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, April 7, 2003)
Wolfowitz interviewed on Fox News

David Sanger in the New York Times on the mixed messages the Iraq invasion sends to the rest of the world. Abandon weapons of mass destruction, or build them faster to prevent the next U.S. invasion? (David Sanger, New York Times, April 6, 2003)

TRUTH MIGHT BE THE FIRST CASUALTY IN WAR, BUT SOME DON'T MIND
Iraqi information minister Mohamed Said Sahaf has set a new record for denial of reality, refusing to acknowledge the presence of American troops while shells burst outside his window. Sahaf's determination to stick to the partyline despite visible evidence to the contrary has sparked snickers among his own staff. But while the spin master's behavior seems bizarre to westerners, it made him a hero for Arabs who oppose the war throughout much of the Middle East. David Lamb analyzes the phenomenon in the Los Angeles Times.
(David Lamb, L.A. Times, April 9, 2003)

WHAT ABOUT AN EX-CIA MAN FOR IRAQ'S NEW GOVERNMENT?
Iraq’s current Minister of Information will soon be jobless. As a replacement, some administration experts have suggested former CIA chief James Woolsey. Given the Middle East’s well known paranoia about the CIA, the suggestion seems a bit unusual, and in fact, it was quickly shot down by the White house, but Woolsey seems destined for another influential post in post-Saddam Iraq. The Nation's David Corn analyzes recent skirmishing in Washington.
(David Corn, The Nation, April 4, 2003)
Jim Lobe on Woolsey in Asia Times
"…Less well-known than his long-time associates and close friends, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the former head of the Defense Policy Board (DPB) Richard Perle, Woolsey has long believed that Washington has a mission to use its overwhelming military power and its democratic ideals to transform the Arab world. And he has pushed for war with Iraq as hard as anyone, even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001..."
(Jim Lobe, Asia Times, April 8, 2003)

THE PENTAGON HAS WON THE BATTLE TO OVERSEE IRAQ’S RECONSTRUCTION
The Pentagon won the battle to reshape Iraq with virtually no Congressional oversight and no public debate. The American regime that will replace Saddam has been developed in secrecy, and staffed by men who have little or no experience in the complexity of nation building. The Brookings Institution's Ivo Daalder thinks it is a risky gamble. "...This approach to Iraq's post-war administration is unilateralism on steroids," writes Daalder."It contemplates nothing less than the wholesale takeover of Iraq not just by the American government, but by the Pentagon. Administration officials counter that they want no such thing—power and control will be handed over to the Iraqi people as soon as possible. But the timing of this handover remains unclear and there is no agreed process to determine which Iraqis should constitute the new authorities..."
(Ivo Daalder, the Brookings Institution, April 7, 2003)

NOW THAT WE HAVE NEARLY WON IN IRAQ, CAN WE WIN BACK EUROPE?
The Brookings Institution organized a panel discussion with Robert Kagan, Ivo Daalder, Charles Grant and Christoph Bertram, director of the German Institute for International Affairs. Observes Bertram: "I think the United States is learning to live with this
extraordinary unchecked and unbalanced power in a world in which the strategic challenges are no longer as predictable, orderly as they used to be before, and Europe is gradually waking up to the sense that the challenges are out there, that our means to deal with them are woefully underdeveloped, and that the kind of relationship we thought we had with the United States is no longer…" (a transcript of the entire panel discussion is available as a pdf file)(Brookings, April 3, 2003)

Richard Holbrooke moderates a panel discussion with Jean David Levitte, France’s ambassador to the U.S. and Germany’s ambassador, Wolfgang Ischinger.
(CFR, March 25, 2003)

IRAQ’S LEADING SHIITE OPPOSITION LEADER QUESTIONS U.S. MOTIVES
In an interview with the Egyptian weekly Al Ahram, Sayed Mohamed Baqer Al-Hakim, leader of the Teheran-based Supreme Islamic Revolutionary Council says that the majority of Shiites don’t want Saddam, but nevertheless see the U.S. as an occupying force. Al-Hakim has enormous influence in southern Iraq, but has depended on the hospitality of Iran for the last several years.
(Al Ahram, April 3, 2003)

EGYPT TRIES TO BLOCK JIHAD VOLUNTEERS

The 500 Egyptian volunteers crowding the Law AssociationOffices in Cairo chanted "One nation, one enemy." A sign outside depicted George Bush as a vampire sucking the blood of an Arab child. The Egyptian government is trying to turn back volunteers, but some have said they are prepared to walk. Anger and disappointment in the poor showing of the Republican Guard is adding to the pressure against Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak.
(Emily Wax, Washington Post, April 6, 2003)

CHARITY AND TERRORISM
There is no question that some Islamic charities have funneled money to organizations engaging in terrorism—notably Hamas. But an across the board rejection of all Muslim charities is not going to be sustainable. The international community is going to have to learn how to be more discerning about who is actually helping paramilitary organizations. The International Crisis Group provides a detailed analysis of the current situation and major players.
(ICG, April 2, 2003)

REMEMBER AFGHANISTAN?
If you think the war is over, think again. Finishing the job correctly will have a lot to do with our credibility in reshaping post-Saddam Iraq.
(Sohail Abdul nasair in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March-April 2003)

JOHN SIMPSON ON THE BOMBING OF A U.S. CONVOY BY AMERICAN PLANES
The miscall by a U.S. Special Forces officer not only triggered one of the worst "friendly fire" incidents in the war, it also came close to killing BBC correspondent John Simpson. For a brief period the news media gained an insight into what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a "smart bomb".
(John Simpson, BBC, April 5, 2003)

War toll: journalists killed, missing and held in Iraq
Tuesday April 8, 2003
DEAD
Jose Couso, Telecinco cameraman
Taras Protsyuk, Reuters cameraman
Tareq Ayyoub, Al-Jazeera cameraman
Julio Anguita Parrado, reporter for Spanish newspaper El Mundo
Christian Liebig, journalist for German Focus magazine
Terry Lloyd, ITN correspondent
Paul Moran, freelance Australian cameraman
Kaveh Golestan, freelance BBC cameraman
Michael Kelly American journalist and Washington Post columnist
Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, BBC translator
Gaby Rado, Channel 4 News foreign affairs correspondent
David Bloom, NBC TV correspondent
MISSING
Fred Nerac, French ITN cameraman who went missing in the ambush that killed Terry Lloyd on March 22.
Hussein Osman, Lebanese translator who went missing in the ambush that killed Terry Lloyd.
Wael Awad, Syrian reporter working for the Dubai Arabic TV station al-Arabiya. Not seen since March 22.
Talal Fawzi al-Masri, Lebanese cameraman working for the Dubai Arabic TV station al-Arabiya. Not heard from since March 22.
Ali Hassan Safa, technician working for the Dubai Arabic TV station al-Arabiya. Not heard from since March 22.
DETAINED
Peter Wilson, London correspondent for the Australian, captured in Basra and held in Baghdad
John Feder, photographer for the Australian, captured in Basra and held in Baghdad
Stewart Innes, translator with Australian news team, captured in Basra and held in Baghdad
Marcin Firlej, Polish journalist with news channel TVN 24, captured south of Baghdad
Jacek Kaczmarek, journalist with Polish public radio, captured south of Baghdad
DETAINED AND BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN RELEASED
Seven Italian journalists working for Corriere della Sera, Il Giornale, Il Messagero, L'Unita, Il Mattino, Il Sole 24-Ore and Il Resto Del Carlino.
THE GUARDIAN

HOW POOR ARE THE WORLD’S POOR?
A number of economists have recently hinted that the figures banded about for world poverty may be missing the mark.The situation, they contend, is not really as serious as it is being projected. A "work group" organized at Columbia University last week, and hosted by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stieglitz, became particularly heated. Sara Burke, writing in an economic-focused website, Gloves off, summarizes the opposing arguments, and provides links ot relevant sites.
(Sara Burke, Gloves Off, April 6, 2003)

HOW MUCH HAS THE WAR DIVIDED US?
Michael Wolf in New York Magazine points out that the war tends to make everyone excited and less likely to listen to anyone with an opposing point of view.
Michael Wolf, New York magazine, March 31, 2003

Need information, but having trouble with a broken link? Send an e-mail to wtd2@nyu.edu
or click here
We may be able to help

For quick access to the Global Beat, set your bookmark to:
http://globalbeat.org