Showdown with Iraq

Transcript

MR. JAMES B. STEINBERG: Good afternoon and welcome to Brookings. This is our first of what will be a weekly series of briefings on Iraq as the situation unfolds and we move towards an as yet unspecified deadline. We'll have a chance to talk about whether there is a deadline in the minds of the Administration and others in the course of this afternoon. We thought it would be important to have a chance on a regular basis to share with you the expertise of people both here at Brookings and others that we're working with on the full range of political, military, diplomatic aspects, economic of the current crisis as we go forward.

This is a Brookings event. It's going to involve as I say scholars from across Brookings and from the outside. A fundamental role played by our Saban Center on Middle East Policy which not only has a strong core of individual leaders here at Brookings represented today by Ken Pollack, but also a high number of visiting scholars who I'll be introducing in just a moment.

Before I introduce our panel I just want to call your attention to an analysis that is out in the hall outside that Steve Hess has put together for us of an editorial response to Secretary Powell's speech. It's quite interesting. Steve's been tracking the editorial positions of the major newspapers in the United States. Interestingly he concludes, and you'll see from his piece of paper, that while seven papers moved towards the President's position, two actually moved away which I think is quite interesting and maybe our panelists will have something to say about that. But what's not in Steve's analysis is he doesn't do an analysis of columnists and the Mary McGrory factor of Secretary Powell's speech.

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