Monthly Archives: May 2003

Reporter John Laurence

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John Laurence knows a lot about war zones. He cut his teeth as a CBS correspondent with Charlie Company in the jungles of the Vietnam War. For three decades he kept his stories of soldiers, sanity and personal survival private, then last year released them in his critically acclaimed memoir: “The Cat From Hue.”

That experience alone might have been enough for one man. But not for Laurence. More than thirty years later, at the age of 63, he goes back to the battlefield. This time with a different Charlie Company, and in a different war zone: Iraq. Embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, Laurence traveled with the troops from a base in Kuwait to the city of Najaf to the streets of Baghdad.

Guests:

Jack Laurence, Embedded with the 101st Airborne Division — Laurence covered the war in Iraq for Esquire Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review and National Public Radio. He is the author of “The Cat from Hue: A Vietnam War Story.” The book recently won the Cornelius Ryan Award of the Overseas Press Club of America for best non-fiction book on international affairs.

The Future History of the War in Iraq

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The history of the second Gulf war is still being written, but hindsight is already helpful. Fears that the war would turn into America’s new quagmire, that it would inspire Arab world uprisings, are quelled, for now. The victory, as the White House is calling it, was decisive. Saddam Hussein is gone from power. And Iraqis are free to worship as they choose.

But as the business of reconstruction gets underway, there are more questions. About America’s ability to win, and keep, the peace. About the future of a Trans-Atlantic alliance tainted by the breakdown in pre-war diplomacy. And as the President prepares to announce a major turning point in this war, others are not so sure. America after the war, and America in the world.

Guests:

Timothy Garton Ash, Director of the European Studies Centre at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University

David Brooks, Senior Editor for The Weekly Standard

Joseph Nye, Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.