MER Article Democracy, Deception and the Arms Trade The controversy over Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, the prime justification for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, has apparently been laid to rest. A succession of US-commissioned reports have failed to confirm the Bush administration's claims. irene gendzier • 15 min read
MER Article The Tar Baby of Foreign Aid In his 2005 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush, hailing “the beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories,” pledged $350 million in US aid to the Palestinian Authority. One day before the heralded meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian P Charmaine Seitz • 14 min read
MER Article Faded Dreams of Contracted Democracy Iraq now has an elected provisional national assembly and elected provincial councils. In the end, the $467 million given to a US contractor to build democracy had little to do with these achievements. Kevin Begos • 9 min read
MER Article The Curious Case of Oil-Exporting Jordan From time to time, the boring economic data regurgitated by Jordan’s amply staffed ministries offers up a tantalizing mystery. In the Monthly Statistical Bulletin (May 2004) published by the Central Bank of Jordan, for example, one learns that Jordanian export of refined oil products increased 46 ti Pete Moore • 1 min read
MER Article QIZs, FTAs, USAID, and the MEFTA Jordan is the poster child for the Bush administration project of “transforming” the political order in the Middle East through free trade. If Jordan is any guide, however, economic liberalization does not lead inexorably to the diffusion of political power. Pete Moore • 12 min read
MER Article The Bush Team Reloaded On September 20, 2001, just nine days after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) laid out a consensus agenda for President George W. Bush's “war on terrorism.” In addition to military action to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan Jim Lobe • 14 min read
MER Article Iraqi Elections Just once, one wishes, events in post-invasion Iraq could transpire without instantly being spun as helping or hurting President George W. Bush. There was no such luck after images of Iraqis cheerfully -- even joyously -- voting in the January 30, 2005 elections for a provisional national assembly z Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2005) Not so long ago, commentators were fond of noting how Samuel Huntington’s “third wave of democracy” had shattered upon the adamantine breakwater of Arab despotism. Today, with Palestinians, Iraqis and male Saudi Arabians all going to the polls in the space of a month, with Egyptians and Lebanese taking The Editors • 3 min read
Current Analysis Dictatorship Remains OK for our Allies President George W. Bush likes to associate his administration’s goals with the will of the Almighty. Witness the stirring coda of the 2005 State of the Union address: “The road of Providence is uneven and unpredictable yet we know where it leads: It leads to freedom.” As in many previous speeches, Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Iran’s Nuclear Posture and the Scars of War In waging war on Iraq, one of the points the Bush administration sought to prove was that President Bill Clinton’s policy of dual containment had failed -- that despite a decade of threats, sanctions, military action and UN-led disarmament, Iraq had continued to develop weapons of mass destruction ( Joost Hiltermann • 13 min read
Current Analysis Iran's Human Rights Record Should Be As 'Intolerable' As Its Nukes The Islamic Republic of Iran is in hot water with Washington and European capitals because of its apparent pursuit of a nuclear bomb. Dangling carrots of increased trade, the Europeans are trying to persuade Iran to renounce atomic ambitions. Skeptical of these methods but bogged down in Iraq, the B Kaveh Ehsani • 2 min read
MER Article Neo-Conservatives, Hardline Clerics and the Bomb Even as the US military launched a long-rumored offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja in early November 2004, the subject of anxious speculation in Washington was not Iraq, but Iran. President George W. Bush’s victory at the polls on November 2 returned to office the executive who located Iran upon Chris Toensing, Kaveh Ehsani • 14 min read
