To the Point

Creating Democracy in Iraq

As a candidate, George W. Bush sneered at the idea of -nation-building.- As President, Bush wants to rebuild a defeated country and turn a dictatorship into a democracy. The US has begun the arduous process of democratizing Iraq. In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein, nobody says that-s going to be easy. Some contend that it can-t be done at all. Could Iraq be a model for the rest of the Arab world? What about ethnic fragmentation and the mutual hostilities of clans, tribes and religions? Will it work? Will oil and ethnic diversity be assets or liabilities? Can the US alone confer legitimacy on a new Iraqi regime? We get several perspectives from journalists in the Persian Gulf, a political scientist at the Hoover Institution, and a leading authority on democratization from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Making News: Terror Alert Lowered Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge today lowered the national terror alert to "yellow." The alert had been raised to orange just prior to the war on Iraq, after -chatter- convinced intelligence agents that such an attack was inevitable. Josh Meyers, who covers terrorism for the Los Angeles Times, reports that the absence of such an attack in the US or the Arab world has security officials somewhat surprised. Reporter's Notebook: The Human Genome Project While the world was focused on the war in Iraq, scientists were completing what may be the most ambitious biomedical research project ever undertaken, one that transform our species, or at least the way we think of ourselves. Dr. Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine says the extraordinary achievement will open up challenging ethical questions.