Iraq & Afganistan Wars

Journalist Mark Bowden discusses Saddam Hussein, the subject of his cover story for the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The story is –Tales of the Tyrant: The private life and inner world of Saddam Hussein. Bowden is also author of the bestseller Black Hawk Down, which was made into a film. His book Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the Worlds Greatest Outlaw, about the U.S. government's role in bringing down Colombian cocaine kingpin and terrorist Pablo Escobar is now in paperback. It won the Overseas Press Club Award for best non fiction book on foreign affairs.

Journalist Steven Erlanger is the Berlin Bureau Chief for the New York Times. Hell talk about European reaction to the Bush administration, its planned invasion of Iraq, and its position on the middle east, and its response to September 11th. And about how the European union is changing the lives of Europeans.

Journalist Thomas Ricks covers the military for The Washington Post. Last week the Senate held hearings about Iraq. Ricks will discuss possible scenarios for a U.S. attempt to topple Saddam Hussein, and the likelihood of such an action. Ricks has also reported on U.S. military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Kuwait, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. Prior to joining The Post, Ricks wrote about the military for The Wall Street Journal. He's also the author of the novel A Soldier's Duty, about a U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan.

Charles Tripp is senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He's the author of A History of Iraq.

Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Daniel Yergin will talk about the changing economy of oil in light of the possibility of war with Iraq. Yergin's 1991 book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, is highly acclaimed. He is president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. His new book, co-authored with Dr. Joseph A. Stanislaw, is The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace that is Remaking the Modern World. The Prize was adapted into an eight-hour PBS/BBC series.

She is the Foreign Affairs/U.N. Correspondent for The Boston Globe. She's about to go into a special training camp for journalists planning on covering a possible U.S. war with Iraq. She's also reported on the war on terrorism from Afghanistan. Her recent book, The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, is now out in paperback.

She is on the steering committee of the group International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). The group organized last Saturday's peace rally in Washington, D.C.

He is a former congressman and now general secretary of the National Council of Churches, and a United Methodist minister. He is also co-chair of the Win Without War coalition. Last year he led a delegation of clergy and lay leaders to visit Iraq.

He was a leader of the peace movement in the 1960s. He is a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, and author of a number of books including The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, and Media Unlimited. Gitlin is also a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.

She is the foreign affairs/U.N. correspondent for The Boston Globe. She recently returned from Iraq, where she is reporting on the preparations for war. She has also reported on the war on terrorism from Afghanistan. Her recent book, The Key to My Neighbor's House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, is about the war crimes tribunals and the efforts of victims to find justice. Neuffer was on Fresh Air in December 2002, speaking about journalists attending boot camp in preparation for war coverage.

He is professor of psychiatry and psychology at the Graduate School University Center and director of The Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York. He has written books on many topics, including a Japanese cult that released poison gas in the Tokyo subways, Nazi doctors, Hiroshima survivors and Vietnam vets. He will discuss the emotional impact of the Columbia shuttle disaster, as well as the impact of an impending war in Iraq, and the looming nuclear crisis in North Korea.

He is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, and is now professor of national-security studies at the National War College in Washington, D.C. Since the late 1980s he has been tracking Iraqi war crimes. He has also worked closely with the Kurds — who control a small territory in northern Iraq. Galbraith will talk about what a post-Saddam Iraq might look like.

He has just returned from several weeks in Afghanistan. His book, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, is now out in paperback. He's also the author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Rashid is a correspondent for The Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph, reporting on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg comments on the increased usage of the adjective "gallic." He says it's like a shorthand for "the French are at it again."

They cover the military for The Washington Post. They'll discuss military preparedness for the war with Iraq. They collaborated on the special report "Unrivaled Military Feels Strains of Unending War: For U.S. Forces, a Technological Revolution and a Constant Call to Do More." In it they said, "The more capable the U.S. military has become, the more it has been asked to do, and now strains are beginning to show."

The United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa talks about the current state of the AIDS crisis there. He recently returned from a tour of Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, where he was investigating links between hunger and AIDS. He is the former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and was the Canadian ambassador to the U.N. from 1984-1988.

He served on the front line in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the Gulf War. He's written the new memoir, Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. Journalist Mark Bowden (author of Black Hawk Down) writes of the memoir, "Jarhead is some kind of classic, a bracing memoir of the 1991 Persian Gulf War that will go down with the best books ever written about military life." Swofford attended the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is currently a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient.

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.

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.”

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).