To the Point

Handing Over Power in Iraq: Are US and the Iraqis Ready?

This week, the United States has begun the process of transferring power back to the Iraqis, but with the deadline only six months away, plans for a western-style capitalist democracy may have to be put on hold. Nobody yet knows which state-run industries will be privatized, what the government will look like or what will be the role of Islam. With American troops on the ground for years to come, will the June 30 transfer of power itself be real or mostly symbolic? We discuss how an early deadline has impacted plans for transforming a nation with a former counter-intelligence officer, an expert in civil society and democracy, a political scientist and a senior legal advisor to the President of the Iraqi Governing Council. Making News: No Apparent Threat from Iraqi Weapons Program Today-s Washington Post offers what it calls -fresh perspective on the question that led the nation to war.- How well developed were Iraq-s weapons of mass destruction? Barton Gellman, the author of today's 6,000-word investigative story, says that although there were designs for such weapons, there is no indication of any active weapons program or that Iraq even had the capability to develop one. Reporter-s Notebook: World Trade Center Memorial Chosen A 13-member architectural jury has chosen a final design for the memorial at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. But, after a search that produced more than 5,000 proposals, does Michael Arad's -Reflecting Absence" succeed in evoking the magnitude of what happened on September 11? Joseph Giovannini, architecture critic for New York magazine, offers some thoughts on the politics and design of the World Trade Center memorial.