He's the author of a biography of World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was beloved by the public, and G.I.s and generals alike. He witnessed the great American campaigns of the war — North Africa, Sicily, Italy, D-Day, Normandy, the liberation of Paris, and Okinawa. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "I would not miss that column any day if I could possibly help it." Pyle was killed in Okinawa just three weeks short of the war's end. Tobin's book is Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II.
He has compiled a new anthology of 120 poems, titled Poets of World War II (American Poets Project). The poets include Kenneth Koch, James Dickey, Richard Hugo, Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. Some of the poets have experienced combat, others have not. Shapiro is a decorated veteran of World War II; he flew 35 missions as an Air Force radio gunner.
Anthony Shadid, foreign correspondent for 'The Washington Post.' Before working for the Post, he was a correspondent at The Boston Globe's Washington bureau. He spent nine years with Associated Press, five of them in Cairo. He is the author of Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam. In the spring of 2002, he was shot by Israeli troops in Ramallah while covering a story for the Globe. He's currently reporting for the Post from Baghdad.
Edward Wong covers the aviation industry for The New York Times. Many airlines are in a precarious position: the war, fear of terrorism and a weak economy has left them with fewer travelers, facing cutbacks and bankruptcy. He will discuss the state of the airline industry.
Charles Sennott is foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe. He is currently in northern Iraq where he is traveling independently with a group of journalists. In a Globe report filed April 2 he writes about U.S. special forces finding "preliminary evidence" that Islamic militants in the area were intending to develop chemical and biological weapons. He and other reporters witnessed the fight between special forces and Ansar Al-Islam militants. After the battle, Sennott and other journalists gained access to the Ansar Al-Islam camp where weapons were kept.
He specializes in defense and proliferation issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is senior associate and director of the Non-Proliferation Project. He will discuss the evolution of the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq. Its origins begin with a small group of influential officials and experts in Washington, D.C., who were calling for regime change in Iraq long before Sept. 11, 2001.
He is editor of the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard. He also chairs the neo-conservative think tank, Project for the New American Century. He is one of the architects of the blueprint for regime change found in the document "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century."
During the 1991 Gulf War, he flew 30 combat missions in his F-16. He wrote about the experience in his book, Vipers in the Storm: Diary of a Gulf War Fighter Pilot.
In January, Hamill was invited by first lady Laura Bush to the White House for a symposium on poetry. Because of his opposition to the war it was not an invitation he welcomed. In response, he created the Web site poetsagainstthewar.org. Thousands of poets responded, including Rita Dove, W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich and Poet Laureate Billy Collins. When the White House heard about the site, the symposium was cancelled. A new anthology, Poets Against The War, collects 13,000 of these anti-war poems.
He is Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek. He's currently in Jordan. He'll discuss how Jordanians are reacting to the war, what's happening with Saddam Hussein's inner circle, and whether he believes ousting Hussein would actually make the word safer.
John Burns is currently in Baghdad reporting for The New York Times. He is at the Palestine Hotel, where there are about 100 other reporters. Burns is the Islamabad bureau chief for the Times.
Jon Landay is national security correspondent for the Knight Ridder newspapers. At the time of this conversation he was about 30 miles from the city of Kirkuk in Northern Iraq. But he's not one of the embedded reporters. Landay is traveling as an independent journalist, with a driver and translator.
He is military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridder's Washington bureau. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam and co-authored the national bestseller (with Lt. Gen (ret.) Hal G. Moore) We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang: The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam. He was the only civilian decorated with the medal of valor for his actions during the Vietnam war, rescuing wounded soldiers under fire in the Ia Drang Valley. Galloway also covered the first Gulf War. Recently Galloway was special consultant to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
He is currently senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace where he is on leave from his position as Newsweek magazine's chief diplomatic correspondent. He is also director of American University's Crimes of War Project. Gutman won the Pulitzer prize in 1993 for his coverage of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he provided the first documented reports of concentration camps.
He is reporting from Central Command in Qatar. Last week he wrote a piece in The New Yorker about his decision not to become "embedded" with troops. Sides is the author of the book, Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission. He also writes for Slate.com and is a contributing editor for Outside Magazine.
