had no money and power in the global scale and people failed them and no alternatives that the iraq iraq war demonstration in my opinion was the 1st sign that people were searching for something else 1st day by saying don't make war on iraq and these demonstrations were huge in your but if we look back on it over a 1000000 people in london 2000000 people in madrid nearly 3000000 in a row over 200002 new york hundreds of thousands all over the phone ship cargo every american city in provincial capital state capital was him defective effected by a desire to stop the war they were ignored and one reason they were ignored is that they had no following and little support in parliament when you have the republicans and the democrats waging war. and supporting it when you have too many black band prime minister in britain the conservative opposition supporting the war then you know you can have 2 or 3000000 people and you know that it's a reality of it and been never came out again and those numbers i remember saying at the big demonstration and. we're all trying to fight against the war don't

in iraq. and he got this from literally hundreds of daily intelligence briefings, the famous pdb, the presidential daily briefing. after 2003, most of them were dominated by the topic on iraq. he got them from probably a hundred-plus meetings of his war council. he got this from hundreds of nightly briefing notes that meghan mentioned in her remarks. these were called inside the national security council potus notes. president of the united states notes. for the iraq-afghanistan team, this was a daily chore. we put out an all-hands call and we gathered the most recent, most current developments and put them in a one, two, three-page memo to the president. this went on for years. he got this expertise from personal close engagements with all the participants on the u.s. side, to include the military commanders, but also with his counterparts. by 2006, when he was struggling with this question of sectarian violence that was spinning out of control, he was not an amateur on iraq. and the power of

what then attacked for opposing a iraq war you live in a strange world priorities are decided by your rules and decided depending on whom the united states a settled on as the enemy of the month and disses become an enemy of the poor need be to get kits i mean if you think the iraq war that american soldiers are still that libya has been destroyed that syria is trying to recover from an horrific civil war then afghanistan is still occupied all of these holes of lasted longer than the 1st and 2nd world wars will to get and they carry on and what it angers will be is that citizens in most of the western world a europe north america sleep or kerry day basically ignore the lot their governments and their countries have been doing to the middle east which isn't as state of. recreate destruction on many many levels politically socially economically culturally when the palestinians left with. absolutely not true basically supported by the united states israel and egypt receiving huge subsidies to this day for acquiescing in one has been out to make sure the loser. in some members rebel all s

it wasn't just iraq, it was iraq and israel and palestine. as it played out at the time. and finally, powell posted the human and once again, and irony here, powell's people and himself, they get asked by bush to give the speech explaining why we are going to work. he takes a job, he takes it on himself, here's what he's afraid of. bush is looking for the rationale, there's one time six months earlier where cheney sa says, what is our reason? this is a problem for the bush administration all the way through, should be a problem now. but by the end of december, the cia comes to him with evidence and they have the deputy director give a presentation and it falls flat. he says is lousy. he assigned to people on his staff, one is cheney's to draft a memo explaining why to go to work. that sitting there and bush decide powell should get this presentation so what comes to him with this memo and that's the main thing he supposed to work from and he says he's obsessed with not wanting to take that so that's his entire focus, he's got six days to prepare for this speech. he goes o

april 17 years ago it was iraq. and the there the torments that are being inflicted on this country the brutality the cruelty the western occupying. doing everything possible to divide shias from sudanese one day playing with the shia giving. makes it here on the central are in the region and then suddenly blaming other forces for it no good it they did it and now they're touting iran and they're. basically using the saudis to control the sunni population. and most important to whole describing the social infrastructure of that country that is will just start out of business a mess my friend near me client calls it that it's all day here in iraq they just strolling to an entire country and if you think about it today well the entire world is thinking about grown up wires i have absolutely no doubt and i can say this with confidence that the health service created by the iraqi series of iraqi governments was one of the best of the middle east in order to be much better able to cope with this resident the moment in ir

mostly by confirmation that iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and that iraq was far weaker than anyone in the administration had imagined. building democracy and undertaking nation building were embraced as goals, mostly after it became clear that iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. now by 2006 and early 2007, when the surge took place, it seems that the new goal was to bring about a democratic iraq that could, quote, governor itself, defend itself and sustain itself, end quote. yet, in the interviews quoted in this book and in the essays there is little discussion really of how democratization and nation building related to overall u.s. capabilities and strategic interests both regionally and globally. at one point megan o'sullivan said to steve hadley in the decision-making process, i can't write a paper about an emerging consensus because, quote, actually nobody agrees with anybody about even foundational issues, end quote. i do not see the foundational issues ill loose inated in a way. perhaps they were addressed. i'm not saying they weren't addressed. perhap

in 2002 and 2003, when the administration invaded iraq, the bowls were to rig iraq of weapons of mass destruction. and bring about regime regime change. the goal was to make sure that the iraqi government would not hand off weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups with global ambitions. the goal in 2003, was to make sure that iraq would not be a threat to its neighbors. those were the goals. and those goals, however inevitably, actually had been achieved by the end of 2003. mostly by confirmation that iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that iraq was far weaker than anyone and the administration had imagined. building democracy and undertaking nation, were embraced as goals mostly after it became clear that iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. by 2006 in early 2007, when the search took place, it seems that the new goal was to bring about a democratic iraq that could, quote govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself. and quote. yet, in the interviews quoted in this book and in the essays, there is little discussion, really of how democratization a

summer temperatures can exceed 40 degrees celsius here in the carriage in the kurdistan region of iraq. that's why biologist hanna rosin and her colleague cora shout out like to get an early start they're looking for traces of the biggest predator here a leopard that's considered the spirit of the current. they look pretty good the flagship species so it's very important it's on top predator so it's on top of the food chain. the persian leopard is virtually invisible people who live here in the mountains of countdown know with the leopard but furry few have ever seen it. even hanna rosin who's been working and doing research here for years now has never encountered a leopard in the wild that's why they use camera traps. so this is the wild growth. and we get a lot of pictures of them on our camera trance which is a good. indicator of the prey and a bit of an apology for the persian offered this is one of the reasons why we get a person like reduction. it seems this morning we've got a lot of pictures of mammals different mammal species and also a lot of birds we have. the wild goat. we

in places like iraq it's around 12-16%. people are adrift and that makes it a dangerous moment. >> sobriety, he wrote about governance. the form of governance that has evolved been imposed on iraq saddam was overthrown, is it working? do you see it working? dead iraqis have to come up with something else? doesn't try to have to help iraq come up with something else? >> great question and i'll answer that in the second. i first want to highlight the subtitle of the book is what really causes instability in the middle east, and my simple after spending nearly two two years h michael rubin on this project is, it's michael rubin and neocon who are more wandering -- warmongering. [laughing] it's a joke. before this latest episode, if you would see what's happening in the last week and then what was happening just a few months before that, young people in the streets of baghdad and in major cities and iraq questioning the very old order, the political order that is in iraq. protesting corruption, poor services and a bunch of thin

places like iraq its round 12-60%. people are adrift and that makes it a very dangerous moment. >> brian, you wrote about governance. the form of governance that has evolved or been imposed on iraq since saddam was overthrown, is it working? do you see it working? do iraqis had to come up with something else? tessa united states have helpedp iraq come up with something else? >> great question i'll answer that and a second. i first want to highlight the subtitle of the book is what really causes instability in the middle east. my simple answer after spending nearly two years with michael rubin on this project is its michael rubin. [laughing] to your question on iraq, quite honestly before this latest episode, if you see what's happened in the last week and what was happening just a few months before that, young people in the streets of baghdad and in major cities in iraq questioning the very old order, , political order that is in iraq, protesting corruption for services and a bunch of things that quite frankly when you

so through a series of events all building up through the 14th of july in iraq. the coup was led by this man nobody knew who this guy was egyptians didn't know who he was the americans didn't the russians didn't he was a complete unknown factor. the coup plotters were not pro- egyptian but people on the streets demonstrated immediately where their sympathies were with the streets in baghdad on jul july 14 the tanks that overthrew the government had nasser all over them it wasn't a big stretch to come to the conclusion this was the egyptian sponsored coup the lebanese at that point this gentleman was the prime minister and the president of lebanon in the fifties had a highly sectarian government based on fiction that christians are the majority of the people even by 1950 but that was the government as the colonial master in the twenties and thirties the prime minister is sunni muslim by convention the president only serves one term in 1958 he was obviously seeking a second term everybody knew it. it was messier than that so the dominant christian church actually s

in iraq. we had prioritized the assumption that improved politics and increasingly inclusive iraqi political process would deliver security. so, in short, the first approach was politics first. and this had to do with turning sovereignty over to the iraqi government, creating an iraqi constitution, holding electrics, forming governments and all this sort of thing. and the sense was, if we could get sunnis, shia and kurds to work together politically, there would knob reason to fight and by 2006 it was clear that the sectarian violence was overwhelming that approach. and it was insufficient. the politics were insufficient to quell the violence and we were on a downward spiral. explicit by way of my own observation, what the surge decision actually did was invert. it turned on its head this relationship between security in iraq and politics in iraq. security threshold must first be obtained to enable the politics. in a way we turned from politics first to security now. i think this actually play

the loss of iraq is as significant as loss of china to communism in 1948. it's a remarkable statement and also completely divorced from the facts on the ground. his statements were very little to do with reality in iraq and in the middle east in 1958. he was less than forthcoming. ces real concern in 1958 was not communism but this man. nasser he was the charismatic young very attractive president of egypt and he had taken power in a coup in 1952 and he was an extraordinary speaker in arabic. able to literally liftn an audience with his words. he also survived literally being on stage having an assassin fire a bullet at him and he never stopped speaking. this is charismatic to the nth degree. he was the winner of the 1956 suez crisis in which egypt essentially defeated the united kingdom, france and israel a remarkable outcome in part because eisenhower had leaned towards egypt over the three apartheid aggressors but nonetheless he'd come out of that winner and in february of 1958 syria and egypt had united together in the united arab republic and today we

iraq. the germans have a great german military,. that means a fingertip feel. he knew the texture of the war in iraq, he got this from literally of hundreds daily intelligence briefings. after 2003 most of them were dominated by the topic of iraq. he got them from probably 100 plus meetings of his war council. he got this from hundreds of nightly briefing notes. these were famously called inside the national security council potus notes. for their iraq afghanistan, this was a daily chore. around 3:00 we put an all hands call, a squat of us who are dealing with iraq and afghanistan and we gather the most current developments and put them in a three page memo. this went on for years. he got this expertise from personal close engagements with all the participants in the u.s. team. but also with his iraqi counterparts. by 2006 when he was struggling with this question of violence that was spinning out of control, he was not an amateur on iraq. the power of presidential expertise gets lost a lit

was in favor of the iraq war, i was not. he was against the iran nuclear deal, i was. but the one thing that we agree upon is to dig deeper and why we wanted to do this book and in the chapter governance, i talked a bit about iraq but not about the national governance. i talk about the experiment in governance that emerged under the islamic state which is been a couple of pages. it shows you the response of governance and discontent with a government that is not responding. it plants the seeds for the instability that we saw -- that happened in iraq under the previous prime minister that groups like the islamic state exploited. i think we should have learned by now, many years after the iraq war that the united states cannot fix the factors but it's important to factor the fundamental building blocks for stability in our analysis. the hot takes on what we will do next in the cycle of exclamation which is quite dangerous. >> isis was a new phenomenon. and there has been failures of governance of leaders in the middle east for

the biggest global peace protest of the 21st century against the unchecked imperialism the destroyed iraq and destabilize the world plus as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage europe what does it mean for capitalism kashmir and the future of the world's most famous publisher julian assange and also more coming up in today's going on the ground but let's go straight to one of the greatest living political activists and writers who has inspired antiwar figures were malcolm x. to john lennon tariq ali joins us from his north london home via skype jack thanks so much for coming on the program i have to declare an interest because you brought me to channel 4 in the 1980 s. and you were my boss but what would you say now to the millions who have been inspired by your work the fight for freedom and justice that you've undertaken in your life what would you say to them who are now profoundly pessimistic about the neoliberal response to a pandemic let alone gross inequality around the world well basically. we find. difficult to come out on the street because the nature of this but i make

forces in iraq tweeting that if u.s. troops are attacked quote iran will pay a very heavy price indeed now the u.s. has offered $10000000.00 for information on hezbollah commander sheikh mohammed qahtani who was a close associate friend and battlefield colleague of iranian general qassim salaam ani the u.s. designated cothren e a global terrorist in 2013 the state department says it's offering money for info on his activities his network his associates are part of an effort to disrupt the quote financial mechanisms of hezbollah and while the coronavirus pandemic may have tempered any immediate attacks on u.s. forces the u.s. isn't taking any chances and has moved patriot missile batteries into iraq including at al assad air base outside of baghdad where iran launched a ballistic missile attack on u.s. troops back in january former pentagon official michael maloof said the move is aimed at protecting u.s. forces and assets there but the united states appears to be consolidating its forces there to certain bases with the i

meanwhile, there is iraq that is still out there. the first sign you get of the administration, thinking about going to war in iraq is pushing the state of the union address in the beginning of 2002 when he talks about the axis of evil. the axis of evil is iraq, iran, and north korea. >> seven seconds of a statement of georges bush of that interview during his book tour. >> they are asking, that i make a mistake in the liberation of iraq? the answer is no i did not make a mistake in my judgment. >> comment? >> yes he made a huge mistake. to the extent that bush has admitted mistakes, he admits tactical mistakes that were central to the war without ever saying that the entire war in iraq was a mistake. we can talk about mistakes he has admitted. he has admitted he made a mistake in the mission accomplished landing on a aircraft carrier. he has admitted and others have admitted that the way they handled the post war was a mistake by allowing the expanding of the iraqi army. the expulsion of the bat party members from government positio

the axis of evil is iraq, iran, north korea. brian: let me run seven seconds of a statement of george w. bush's of that interview. >> they are asking did i make a mistake in the liberation of iraq? the answer is no i didn't make a mistake in my judgment. brian: comment? james: yes, he made a huge mistake. to the extent that bush has admitted mistakes, he admits tactical mistakes that were central to the war without ever saying that the entire war in iraq was a mistake. so we can talk, the mistakes he has admitted, he admitted he made a mistake in the mission accomplished landing on an aircraft carrier, and he admitted, and others have admitted, that the way they handled the post-war was a mistake by allowing the disbanding of the iraqi army, the expulsion of the party members from government decisions. it is true that he has never said the war in iraq itself was not a mistake. in fact, what you saw a right there is i guess, he doesn't believe it yet but i think that is profoundly wrong. brian: in your book, you wrote a whole boo

iraq war i wasn't. he was against the iran nuclear deal i was but the one thing that we agree upon is to dig deeper and the chapter on governance we do but talk about it but not the national governance would under the islamic state i spent a couple of pages on and it shows that response of governance and if content with a government is not responding to plant the seeds for the instability that we saw happened in iraq under the previous prime minister that looks like the islamic state and i think we should have learned by now many years after the iraq war that the united states cannot fix these factors but it's important to factor the fundamental building blocks for stability in the analysis for what we will do next in the cycle of restoration which is dangerous. >> it is a phenomenon with failures of governance and failure of leaders in the middle east for a long time. so why at this moment did a group like isys have an opportunity to rise and have such a profound impact? >> the multiplicity factors wit

so, there has been this recommendation at the very first meeting to attack iraq. why? because ... >> do you know who it came from? >> yes. it came from paul wolfowitz at that first meeting. and he does not get support from others there. first of all, if you can envision this meeting, it's the principals at a table, principals meaning members of the cabinet - it's cheney, rumsfeld, powell, condoleezza rice and wolfowitz is at a back bench. >> this is a recommendation from the second level and it is, again, shelved at the time. and during those two months while the war in afghanistan is being fought, a couple of noteworthy things happen. one is the anthrax scare. >> so, in what turns out to be something entirely unrelated to al qaeda as far as we know, people in washington and on capitol hill and so on are opening their mail and finding this powder which may or may not be anthrax, that further really scares the top levels of the administration. >> and i want to back up for a second there and say that the september 11th attacks had caught the administration in its - this

the first iraq war an exception? the first iraq war was not an exception because most scholars who study wars, will say that for their to be a war there must be a conflict that must is going on for a year or more or a thousand people are killed yearly. that conflict were 30 or more nations help the united states expel iraq from kuwait was an initial success. but what happened was the success was short-lived. two things happened. general schwarzkopf a graduate of west point allowed saddam hussein to retain some of his helicopters. use those helicopters to drop chemical weapons on the kurds. they were great allies of the united states all along. because general swarts cough, these are his words not mine, they were snookered by the iraqis they were able to continue to do to their people what they were doing prior to their involvement in kuwait. nothing really changed. they just expelled from kuwait. and, interestingly enough, when the administration in 2003 argued to go into iraq, that use the fact that saddam hussein w

from human activity not even the poles or remote mountains such as in the kurdish region of northern iraq it's one of the world's most conflict ridden areas borders drawn after world war one left the kurdish region straddling 4 states turkey syria iraq and iran. this has resulted in uprisings of violence and wars that still continue today. most recently against so-called islamic state over the decades millions of people have been displaced some fled to isolated mountain areas. kurdistan's wildlife has also been badly affected many species are now endangered but there is new hope in the current dark region of northern iraq thanks to dedicated conservationists. summer temperatures can exceed 40 degrees celsius here in the karratha and the kurdistan region of iraq. that's why biologist hanna rosin and her colleague cora shout out like to get an early start they're looking for traces of the biggest predator here a leopard that's considered the spirit of the character. and they look pretty it's a flagship species so it's very important it's on the top predator so it's on top of the food chain.

their 1st photographic record of the persian leopard for iraq that we had. this through this we dissed rediscover the christian leopard in 2011. this one is a new individual that we discovered in canada in 2017 and this way we know for sure that we have 3 adult leopards living and roaming these mountains. worldwide the population of persian leopards is estimated at less than $1300.00 the graceful yet ferocious big cat is listed as endangered. the conservationists climb the steep rocky terrain as often as possible they haven't given up hope of spotting a leopard on one of the other cliffs this is its main hunting ground. this is a typical habitat for the love birds. normally for ferrous oak forest. area so they do is when they hunt they normally sit on a tree or under a tree looking out over looking in what is going on there and then when they look at a prey they just jump down the mountain it's easier for them because they're so powerful and they jump so high and once they're lucky to get the prey that they drag it to it on to a tree and then that's where th

on the 14th of july, comes the coup and iraq. the coup was led by this man, cost him, nobody knew who this guy was. he was a complete unknown the egyptians didn't know who he was the americans did know who he was the russians didn't know who he was. he was a complete unknown factor. the coup plotters may or may not have been pro- egyptian. people on the streets and iraq demonstrated immediately that their sympathies were with him you see this pictures in july 14 with the streets holding up pictures, the tanks that overthrew the government and pictures had all over them which was not a big stretch to come to the conclusion this was in fact an injection sponsored coup. the lebanese at that point were also in the midst of a civil war. this gentleman was the prime minister i'm sorry he was the president of lebanon in the 1950s. lebanon then and today is a highly sectarian government. his base that christians are the majority of the people even by 1958 that was no longer true. that was the government that was imposed on lebanon by the

he took five tours in iraq, think about that. he had doubts about the war all along and yet he volunteered five times to go. i think he had more times in iraq in this period than any other foreign service officer. after it was over he sent him to syria which sounded like it was going to be a home or maybe boring gauge and then immediately the war broke out and then the last person that i decided to focus on those chris stevens. you all probably know of him, he was the number two in the libya embassy before the civil war and then when the civil war broke out in 2011, washington needed somebody to go into libya to sneak into the kind of washington's eyes and ears on the ground, somebody that would figure out who the rebels were and try to find out who was important and what they needed to know about him. there is a lot o a lot of foreiy in the book but it's mostly about these four people and their struggles against the bad guys and their struggles against different local leaders and countries and some struggled with washington as y

that was my first and only trip to iraq. the three of us went. the purpose of the trip was for steve to take his assessment. i can tell you about this because his trip memo showed up in the new york times a couple of weeks later and it was the scariest moment of my professional career, because there were only three or four people who had access to that memo, or so i thought. i was one of them and i knew i had not leaked it but i was not sure i could persuade anyone else that i was not the one who heavily did. fortunately the person who did was known and i live to fight another day. but if you read the memo, you can see steve wrestling with this intelligence question. who is maliki and what can we do to change the trajectory of the way he governs? the success of the surge hinged on the president, steve, and others getting that right, and i think they did. no question maliki, under the surge, governed iraq in a way more effectively. steve got the analysis right but it was an intelligence question. at the end of the day, intelligence cannot give us

what are the dynamics on the ground in iraq? how have they changed from when we made our first strategy? what are those dynamics and what are our abilities to affect those dynamics? how i was seeing it at the time was the violence which appeared to many as a civil war, that violence appeared to me to be two extremist groups, largie sunni and shia, stoking violence among a broader population. if that analysis was right if we could get the extremist groups, we could deflate the widespread violence very quickly. however, if the violence was a product of historical animosities and was not being stoked by external extremist groups, then that solution wasn't going to work. it turned out it was the first and we did see this dramatic deflation of violence in the fall of 2007. so i guess again my point is not that president bush was just saying, i refuse to accept the option of defeat and therefore i'm going for the alternative. it really -- and the papers will show this. there was a very ex-tensive process to look at the drivers of the

but meanwhile, there's iraq, it's still out there. and the first sign you get of the administration thinking about going to war in iraq is in bush's state of the union address at the beginning of 2002, when he talks about the axis of evil. the axis of evil is iraq, iran and north korea. brian: let me just -- james: yes. brian: run seven seconds of a statement of george w. bush's at that interview during his book tour. [video clip] bush: you're asking did i make a mistake for example in the liberation of iraq. and the answer is no, i didn't make a mistake, in my judgment. brian: comment? james: yes. he made a huge mistake. to the extent that bush has admitted mistakes, he admits tactical mistakes that were central to the war without ever saying that the entire war in iraq was a mistake. so we can talk -- i mean, the mistakes he has admitted, he's admitted that he made a mistake in the "mission accomplished" landing on an aircraft carrier and he has admitted and others have admitted that the way they handled the postwar was a mistake by

in 2003 during the iraq war he served as department spokesperson at u.s. central command. he earned his bachelors degree in political science from the american university of beirut and his masters and phd in political science from university of new york at albany. he has published articles on issues of leadership and development in the arab world, in the middle east journal, journal of south asian and middle eastern studies and international journal of middle east studies. try to keep them all straight. when he was posted to yemen in 2004 i recall a conversation that they had at the time with the mutual friend of ours, former yemeni ambassador to the united states. i told them use was lucky to send nabeel out because his fluent arabic and his understanding of the culture would smooth the way for his work in country. but abdul corrected me. no, he said. the opposite is true. arab american diplomats in a region have a much harder time because everyone in the country expects the diplomats to do favors for them and make exceptions for them and they don't get the same respect a

non war in iraq sort of looks like the makings of a soon to be new war in iraq several rockets hit near an american oil field in iran last week it was followed by a bawley from the united states against iranian assets iraq which is caught in the middle of all this says it wants the united states troops out. r.t. correspondent john hardy picks up the story. while the fight against the coronavirus worldwide continues another fight also continues to brew in the middle east between the united states and iran with iraq remaining the most likely battlefield last week 5 rockets were fired at an american oil company working near basra u.s. workers had already left the area it's unclear who was behind the attack but on april 1st president trouble war and that his administration received intelligence that iran or one of its proxies was planning a strike on u.s. forces in iraq tweeting that if u.s. troops are attacked quote iran will pay a very heavy price indeed now the u.s. has offered $10000000.00 for information on hezbollah commander sheikh mohamed qahtani who was a close associate friend and

summer temperatures can exceed 40 degrees celsius here in the karratha in the kurdistan region of iraq. that's why biologist hanna rosin and her colleague corner a shout out like to get an early start they're looking for traces of the biggest predator here a leopard that's considered the spirit of the current. they look great at the flagship species so it's very important it's on top predator so it's on top of the food chain. the persian leopard is virtually invisible people who live here in the mountains of colorado know with the leopard but furry few have ever seen it . even hanna rosin who's been working and doing research here for years now has never encountered a leopard in the wild that's why they use camera traps. so this through i'll go out. and we get a lot of pictures of them on our camera trucks which is a good. indicator of the prey and a bit of an apology for the persian heard this is one of the reasons why we get a persian production right. it seems this morning we've got a lot of pictures of mammals different animal species and also a lot of birds we have. the wild goat.

in response to that, the two monarchies in iraq and jordan created an alternative. the federation of arab monarchies. .. >> don't sign the checks and by 1958 the favorite alternative to eisenhower the head of saudi arabia and the much more moderate pro-western version in the eisenhower administration one year before to come to the united states the first saudi king to visit thehed united states the visit was planned for nine days and ended up lasting 12 days and to indicate bring 80 people with him there are so many saturdays on the delegation they all couldn't fit in blair house and they set up tents in lafayette square with the rest of the saudi delegation must been an extraordinary site. like to say wined and dined but given great profile by the eisenhower administration. the failure of the plot to assassinate resulted in a severe throwback the saudi royal family and a matter of days stripped assad of all of his power and stayed in power as king but essentially was powerless afteraf that he was much much less favorable so that was one great big setback from the u

and 3000 megawatts the my a plant south of baghdad is iraq's biggest it's racing to add capacity ahead of the summer heat when demand soars and frequent power cuts fuel public anger construction has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic just the latest in a series of crises that have complicated the government's efforts the challenge was that was the. first was the protests in october last year 2019 and then the fact that the government was forced to resign. that made us lose a lot of executive of $32.00 to move on continuing and implementing or signing contracts iraq is also under increasing pressure from the u.s. to wean itself off of iranian electricity and gas imports which account for 25 percent of its power supply during peak times on sunday the us extended a sanctions waiver it has been in place since 2018 allowing iraq to continue importing iranian energy for another 30 days but the shortening of the duration of waivers has angered baghdad the last would like to see. is bullying or threaten we need support instead we need 3 to. 4 years under normal circumstances with a suffi

she reported from iraq, saudi arabia, syria, lebanon and the war between israel and hezbollah earning an emmy for international news coverage. she's also reported on the state department and on american politics regularly traveling with secretariesg of state including condoleezza rice and hillary clinton and john kerry. she's been published in the atlantic, the "washington post," the foreign-policy and is currently in non- resident scholar at the carnegie endowment for international peace in washington.oo her first book is a "new york times" bestseller. she regularly speaks, continues to speak on american television and radio and was born and raised in lebanon, but she now lives between beirut andd washington, d.c.. if you have questions, please write them on the cards, the school ambassadors that have the blue blazers on half with them they've walked up and down the aisle that they will continue to do that and then once you break the questions and pass them to thee isle, give them to me and i will go through them after his kim ghattas speaks. the two of us will sit up here and i will

i hate to say biden was right on something but iraq is really 3 places. do you see -- nobody wants to give up their boundaries, current international boundaries which to me is one of the issues that the different ethnicities and like i say the kurds are promised that they never got which spared over four countries and none of those countries want to give up. it's like what is going on with turkey and syria. i guess do you see a day when current boundaries get shifted to more natural coherent ethnicity? >> that doesn't mean it's arbitrary country. when you consider egypt and 90 plus percent of the population living along the nile it doesn't matter you you draw the border. egypt has a sense of being egypt. if i have to go back through countries, iraq became independent in 1938 but back in 13th century arabic literature people talked about the concept of iraq, people talked about the concept of lebanon or syria long before they formally became independent. when it comes to states, i say that the most artificial states are jordan, qatar, emirates and kuwait a

do much or didn't do enough in order to bring justice actually in iraq then he is in iraq we have no jurisdiction about those national krantz the people who are suspected to do. the crimes. under festus head would be seated according to and in germany we are lucky that there is this huge events and jurisdiction. they can use and actually because you know size and traffic with humanity is that you feel each state to commit because each state in this world has trying to the that you can set a convention so each state has to make a trial if there is a very stout about. the kind that is not inside. your heart if i can just jump in how is this cold case being viewed by the us cd community what are they saying to you. well fess up what do we with him which case we know it is not that enough but this is good stuff because we're working very important that you know that this equipment or so in the car station trail but what we are demanding is actually is an international court of either the court or an international court together with iraq with international community to all of these but.