Preparing for a War with Iraq: Coalition Building and Homeland Defense

Transcript

MR. JAMES B. STEINBERG: Good afternoon and welcome to Brookings. This is the third in our series of briefings on Iraq, weekly briefings. We've had a few before the weekly series started. How long we will go remains to be seen. We'll have a little pool outside. Beyond the conventional pool of when the military action will start, it's how long the Brookings briefing series will last.

Today we're going to do our briefing in two parts. We're going to begin by a latest update on the diplomatic situation at the UN and around the world, and to discuss those issues we have Fiona Hill, a Senior Fellow here at Brookings who is going to talk about both the situation in the U.K. and in Russia. Then Phil Gordon who is going to give us a report from both the old and the new Europe. And we might get Mike O'Hanlon to pitch in a word or two about the situation in Turkey at least on the military front.

Then the second part of our briefing, we're going to turn to the question about what does the crisis with Iraq mean in terms of the threat to the United States from terrorism. What should we expect, what kinds of dangers do we see and how should we be responding to it.

We're fortunate today to have with us a special guest, our Nonresident Senior Fellow here at Brookings, Dan Byman who is going to talk about the terrorist threat. He has been one of the most insightful analysts of the terrorism problem in the country and brings a lot of expertise on both the Middle East and the terrorism problem more generally, so we're grateful to have you with us today.

The complete transcript is available in PDF form (PDF—146KB)

View Full Transcript »