John Diamond, Pentagon correspondent for USA Today, reports on Pentagon’s decision to step up the air campaign attacks in Iraq.
Guests:
John Diamond, Pentagon correspondent for USA Today.

Internationally acclaimed novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux traveled for six months in 2001 and again after September 11 through Africa, from the Mediterranean Sea to the continent’s Cape of Good Hope.
Theroux noticed an Africa frustratingly different than the one he experienced as a Peace Corps teacher and university lecturer 40 years ago. The Africa [...]

Charles Heyman, editor of Jane’s World Armies, gives a military analysis of today’s developments in Iraq.
Guests:
Charles Heyman, editor of Jane’s World Armies

In the last few days, Iraqi soldiers have posed in civilian clothes, faked surrenders and used innocent Iraqi citizens as human shields. Also, a suicide attack at a military checkpoint in Iraq has claimed the lives of four U.S. soldiers.
The U.S. military has technology and weaponry far superior to that of Iraqi forces but Iraqi [...]

In the eyes of the world, Iraq is a physically deteriorated country awash in ethnic and religious hostilities. But, for thousands of years, the country between the two rivers has been a ‘cradle of civilization’ — the earliest villages, cities, writing, poetry, epic literature, temples, codified religion, armies, warfare, world economy, empires, were all born [...]

The United Nations asked governments around the world today for $2.1 billion in emergency humanitarian aid for Iraq. Rick Augsburger of Church World Service talks about the growing Iraqi aid crisis.
Guests:
Rick Augsburger, Director of Emergency Response Programs for the Church World Service.

America’s image as a superower seemed to take a hit this week in the war with Iraq. The war is taking longer than most had expected and Allies have not fallen in line as planned. Is the sheen of American hyperpower starting to wear?
According to Niall Ferguson, professor of financial history at New York University, [...]

The battle of the 37th Calvary Squadron near the city of Najaf has been called the Army’s “most intense” engagement in the war in Iraq so far. Hear a first-hand account of guerilla warfare on the road north to Baghdad.
Guests:
Ann Scott Tyson, Christian Science Monitor correspondent embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division.

Fundamental to the U.S. strategy in the war in Iraq is the assumption that beyond the circle of Saddam’s core troops and enforcers, the American invasion will be received as an overwhelming mission of mercy.
It’s a terrible “what if,” but it is haunting the American conversation on war right now. What if the beleaguered population [...]

The U.S. military began building up forces in the northern front today, dropping 1,000 paratroopers to secure a key airfield in the country’s Kurdish controlled zone. A fresh report from the Boston Globe’s Charles Sennott on the war in the North.
Guests:
Charles Sennott, correspondent, The Boston Globe

Gears have shifted in the recent hours and days of the war in Iraq. It appears that this could be a far longer conflict than the Bush administration envisioned and suggested. Time could prove a crucial factor in this war, introducing a number of elements which may complicate U.S. war plans.
Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke [...]

News organizations have embedded reporters on the battlefield. Live briefings are coming in by the hour. The war coverage is continuous. But are Americans well-served by the U.S. media’s coverage of Gulf War II?
Syracuse University professor Bob Thompson says that the large volume of the coverage does not necessarily mean the incoming information is depicting [...]

There’s two sides to every story. Christian Science Monitor’s Danna Harman says that the citizens in Cairo, Egypt are seeing different images from the Iraqi battlefields than the West is. According to Harman, the war coverage in Egypt is primarily focused on the civilian casualties and the toll the war is having on the Iraqi [...]

In central Iraq, about 50 to 100 miles south of Baghdad, the helicopters of the 101st Airborne Division stayed grounded in the midst of a vicious standstorm. Jim Dwyer, correspondent for The New York Times, gives an update report.
Guests:
Jim Dwyer, Correspondent embedded with the 101st Airborne Division for The New York Times.

Thousands of chemical suits discovered in an Iraqi hospital have renewed fears that Saddam Hussein will unleash weapons of mass destruction against U.S. troops. How will the coalition forces respond?
Rocco Casagrande, former Chief of the Biological Analysis Lab for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), believes that the possibility of Iraq using [...]

John Diamond, correspondent for USA Today, gives us the latest news from the Pentagon.
Guests:
John Diamond, Pentagon correspondent, USA Today.

Sandstorms today slowed the pace of U.S. and British troops to Baghdad. But in spite of fears of urban warfare and civilian casualties, taking the capital city remains a primary military objective.
Anthony Shadid, correspondent for The Washington Post, reports that the mood on the streets of Baghdad is somber. The Iraqi media is appealing [...]

In two separate briefings today, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer appeared exasperated by questions about progress in the War against Iraq. Talk of an impending humanitarian crisis was roundly dismissed. Is it time for tough questions?
Guests:
Samer Shehata, Assistant Professor of Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, [...]

In today’s press briefings at the Pentagon and White House, there was a sharp change in the media’s tone of questioning. After days of basking in the bright glow of bombs over Bagdhad and the roar of advancing U.S. troops, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer were suddenly, deeply, in the [...]

President Bush has asked Congress for 74.7 billion for the war in Iraq, related foreign aid and other anti-terrorism measures. How will the cost of this war affect the already struggling American economy, American jobs and businesses?
Alan Sinai, chief global economist for Primark Decision Economics, Inc., says that the full cost of war, which he [...]