Government & Politics

He is an expert on the mental health issues of military personnel and their families. He was a senior social worker in the first Gulf war counseling soldiers before and after battle. Martin has written extensively on these matters and teaches in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College outside of Philadelphia.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

He is group editor at Energy Intelligence, a company that publishes news and provides data and analysis about international energy issues. Ibrahim is also a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, Ibrahim was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, and Tehran Bureau Chief. He also covered energy for The Wall Street Journal.

Staff writer for The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch. He wrote a recent profile in the magazine about U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and the United Nations. Gourevitch is the author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda and his most recent book, A Cold Case.

Journalist Elizabeth Neuffer is the Foreign Affairs/U.N. Correspondent for The Boston Globe. She recently returned from Iran and was in Iraq earlier this year. She has also reported on the war on terrorism from Afghanistan. She's also the author of the book, The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, about the war crimes tribunals and the efforts of victims to find justice.

William Taubman is a Political Science Professor at Amherst College and an expert on Russia. He has written many books on the Soviet Union. His latest is a biography of the Russian ruler Nikita Khrushchev who led the country after Stalin’s death and attempted to de-Stalinize the country. It’s called “Khrushchev: The Man and His Era” (W.W. Norton). Taubman will also discuss Russia’s recent veto of the Security Council resolution on Iraq and Russia’s relationship with Saddam Hussein.

Former New York Times Balkans Bureau Chief and Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Hedges. He's covered war zones in Central America, the Middle East, and the Balkans for over 20 years. He'll talk about the mindset of being at war. Hedges is also the author of the book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. (Public Affairs).

Michael Ignatieff is Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and the Director of the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. He has traveled to Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan. He discusses his reluctant support of a war on Iraq, and his concerns.

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Thomas Powers. His new book is “Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda” (New York Review Books). POWERS wrote about Iraq after the war in the New York Times article, “The Man Who Would Be President” (Sunday, 3/16/03). He writes, “What then happens to Iraq’s 23 million people, its oil and its relations with its neighbors will remain the personal responsibility of Mr. Bush and his successors in the White House until one of them chooses to surrender it.”

His new book is Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage. During the Cold War, a small group of scientists, engineers, businessmen and government officials developed spy planes and spy satellites to collect information about Soviet arms. Taubman is the deputy editorial page editor of The New York Times. He has reported on national security and intelligence issues for over 20 years.

James Bennet, Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, will tell us about the current state of affairs between Israelis and Palestinians, and the impact war would have on the region.