You won’t hear it from George Bush, but Operation Iraqi Occupation, begins today. Just yesterday, Iraqis kissed coalition troops and toppled statues of Saddam Hussein, celebrating Baghdad’s fall. Today, Kurdish families threw roses to coalition troops rolling into Kirkuk. Although the U.S. hasn’t declared victory, Iraq’s Ambassador to the UN says “The game is over.” While the game may be over, now the real work, the work of bringing food, water, and medicine to a torn and lawless country, and of transforming a dictatorship into a democracy begins. As fighting continues, the White House is meeting with Iraqi exiles to try to create a provisional government — a task many say will be torturous, perhaps even impossible, in this divided nation, ripe with scores to be settled. Winning the peace.

Guests:

Bathsheba Crocker, International Affairs Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and lead author “Post-War Iraq: Are We Ready?”;Sandra Mackey, author of “The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein.”

Even before the war in Iraq began, the word went out from the White House the word “occupation” was not to be used in connection with Iraq. Liberation, they said, is more like it. And now, with all the reports of the fall of Saddam Hussein, the question is: What will come next in Iraq?

Before the war started, the White House hinted the U.S. occupation of Japan and Germany following World War II might provide a blueprint for Iraq. Back then, the U.S. military occupation resulted in democracy and prosperity in both those countries. But it took years. In Japan, General MacArthur had the total power of a potentate. In Germany, billions of dollars poured in under the Marshall Plan.

Guests:

John Dower, Professor of Japanese History at MIT and author of “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II”

Charles Maier, Professor of European History at Harvard University and Editor of “The Marshall Plan and Germany”

Pamela Hess, Pentagon correspondent, UPI

Baghdad is falling. The spectacle of American tanks rolling through the city, says one Reuters correspondent, is akin to “Iraqi tanks pulling up on Fifth Avenue in New York.” Residents swarm the streets, some brandishing the spoils of looting. And a towering statue of Saddam Hussein, one of the last remnants of a defiant, dying regime, looms above Firdos Square, a massive noose around its neck, set to be pulled down into history.

Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, American forces have seized a military airport, captured a prison, and set fire to Republican Guard barracks. A definitive day in the war in Iraq. But it’s not over yet. Resistance remains strong in the north. Saddam Hussein is unaccounted for. And a humanitarian crisis threatens. Day 21 in the war in Iraq.

Guests:

Thomas Barnett, Senior Strategic Researcher for the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War College

David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security

Andy Nelson, staff photographer for the Christian Science Monitor.

Soldiers, said Harry Truman, “must eat together, sleep together and all too frequently die together. There can be no friction in their everyday living that might bring on failure in battle.” When President Truman mandated the racial integration of America’s armed forces in 1948, he foreshadowed a legal battle that today has put American military leaders at odds with their Commander in Chief.

Truman’s words echo in a brief filed by a group of prominent retired military officers in the University of Michigan affirmative action case, the outcome of which could impact the military’s 30-year old practice of considering race in selecting officers. An officer corps that reflects the racial diversity of the enlisted ranks, the retired generals say, is good for morale, and necessary for national security.

Guests:

Roger Clegg, Vice President and General Counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity

Tad Oelstrom, Director of the National Security Program, the Belfer Center Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and former Director, the United States Air Force Academy

Colonel Michael Jones, director of admissions, United States Military Academy at West Point.

Perhaps the two most important questions so far in the U.S.-led war in Iraq are on the verge of being answered: First, does the regime still harbor weapons of mass destruction, and second, where in the world is Saddam Hussein? So far, tests on the drums of chemicals that American soldiers found yesterday suggest traces of deadly nerve agents and mustard gas. If more sophisticated tests also prove positive, it would lend weight to one of the Bush administration’s key arguments for launching this war.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, military officials still aren’t certain if Saddam Hussein was killed by several 2,000 pound bombs dropped into the exclusive neighborhood of Mansour. But if he was, it could change the course of events in this war and for the future of that nation.

Guests:

Colonel (Retired) Robert Work, Former Marine Corps Colonel and currently a Senior Analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington DC;
Jonathan Tucker, Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington and currently on leave from the role of Director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies

John Danisweski , Los Angeles Times correspondent in Baghdad.

Name the place, Karbala, and Muslims around the world think of a desert battlefield in Iraq. The army on one side vastly outnumbers those who oppose them. It is a fight to the death, a fight for access to the water of the Euphrates River, a fight in which women and children are killed, and a fight that ends with the brutal annihilation of the smaller force. And, it is a battle in the desert that took place over 13-hundred years ago.

With their passionate connection to the past, Shi’ite Muslims will see the fighting this weekend in the streets of Karbala through the lens of that ancient conflict. Once again, the battle will be seen as a fight for freedom against oppression, only this time, it was done with the muscle of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne. Revisiting the original battle of Karbala.

Guests:

Peter Chelkowski, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University

Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director, American Islamic Congress

As U.S. forces continue storming Baghdad and dismantling Iraqi defenses, all is eerily quiet on the home front. Surveillance aircraft are again patrolling a nation that remains on orange alert. Yet, despite the fears and the warnings, to date there has been none of the terrorist blowback predicted in the run up to this war. Nevertheless, the fight for the security of the homeland continues.

Congress is tangling over how much to spend. Tom Ridge is wrestling with his new department’s organizational chart, and many are wondering whether the government is really on the case, or if would-be terrorists are simply biding their time. Either way, it is still unclear whether the nation is that much more prepared to thwart terrorism than it was before the New York skyline changed.

Guests:

Robert Pfaltzgraff, Professor of International Security Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and founder of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis

Rita Hoffman, Emergency Management Coordinator in Olathe, Kansas

Nick Licata, city councilman in Seattle

In a 24/7 news cycle, the political cartoonist lives on the verge of constant overload. Artist, news junkie, provocateur, the political cartoonist digests reams of newspaper column inches and hours of broadcast news reports in the daily quest for the angles that rankle, those choice twists of news that best lend themselves to visual interpretation.

The process is selective. The artists are skeptical, and sometimes even a little bit impish. Because the best political cartoons capture in the lines of an illustration all the emotion and attitude of a heated argument. And at a time of war, the onus on the artist who makes these two dimensional Op-Eds is that much greater. Pushing the public’s buttons. The fine lines and finer points of the best political cartoons.

Guests:

David Horsey, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Editorial Cartoonist for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Steve Bell, Editorial Cartoonist for The Guardian Newspaper at London

Robert Ariail, Editorial Cartoonist for The State newspaper at South Carolina.

The latest news from the front: “Saddam Hussein International airport” has a new name. Earlier this morning, coalition troops who quickly renamed it “Baghdad International.” But U.S. forces at the doorstep of the city seem in no rush to go in. Saddam Hussein would like to see the battle for Bagdad turn into another Stalingrad, where a ragtag group of determined Russian defenders held off a better equipped German army.

Saddam is promising coalition forces a defeat at the gates of the city and urging Iraqis to fight troops “with their hands.” But a suicide bombing near a coalition checkpoint in western Iraq, and recently uncovered chemicals may provide darker hints about what a battle in the city might look like.

Guests:

Owen Cote, Associate Director of MIT’s Security Studies Program and Co-Editor of International Security and Adjunct Lecturer at the JFK School of Governement at Harvard University

Thanassis Cambannis, Boston Globe correspondent currently in Kuwait

James Blaker, senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council in Washington, DC

John Reppert, executive director of the Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

Ann Barnard, Boston Globe correspondent at Central Command, in Kuwait City.

Politics, strategy, and the pursuit of prisoners. Yesterday, America woke to the joyful news that U.S. troops had rescued prisoner of war Jessica Lynch. It was a raid straight out of the movies, daring commandos rushing into a hospital where Iraqis had imprisoned private Lynch. “The little brat’s caused a big stir in this county,” was the comment from Lynch’s father.

But the rescue has created an even bigger stir among the ranks of the military. The guiding principle of the U.S. Armed Forces is to never leave its soldiers behind. But until this week, American troops hadn’t successfully rescued a POW since they carried soldiers out of North Korean prison camps almost 50 years ago. What’s more, the missing from World War 2, Korea, and Viet Nam still number in the thousands.

Guests:

Colonel Fred Kiley, professor of English at the U.S. Air Force Academy

Jay Veith, Author of “Code-Name Bright Light: The Untold Story of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts During the Vietnam War”

Lynn O’Shea, editor with the National Alliance of POW/MIA Families.