Follow Christiane on social media:
What time is Amanpour on CNN?
Check showtimes to see when Amanpour is on CNN where you are. Or watch online.
Al-Qaeda a ‘bloodthirsty nuisance,’ not ‘existential threat’
By Mick Krever, CNN
Al-Qaeda and other jihadis are just a “bloodthirsty nuisance,” not an “existential threat” to the world, Jeremy Greenstock, former UK Ambassador to the United Nations and Special Envoy for Iraq, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
Jihadis may be attractive to Syrians wishing to get rid of Bashar al-Assad, he said, but few people like the extremist policies they would implement once in power.
In neighboring Iraq, al Qaeda-linked militants, tribal fighters, and government forces have been battling for control of Falluja, the site of heavy fighting in 2004.
“The people of Iraq don’t want [al Qaeda or jihadis] in the long term,” Greenstock said.
And despite the recent violence, he said that U.S. President Barack Obama was right to pull the American military out of the country.
“All intervention achieves – and sometimes it’s worth it – is to freeze the state of a country, maybe get rid of somebody…and then when we go it all starts going again.”
“We don’t have the power to change all the historical roots of what creates that country.”
Iraq’s ‘increasingly authoritarian’ policies partly to blame for violence, says former U.S. official
By Mick Krever, CNN
The Iraqi government’s “increasingly authoritarian” policies that have “marginalized Sunnis” have contributed to the worst violence in that country in years, Former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq Meghan O'Sullivan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“There needs to be a lot of changes in the policies of the government of Iraq in order for this threat to be neutralized,” she said.
Violence in Iraq is the worst in years, and part of the city of Falluja may have already fallen into the control of an al-Qaeda affiliated group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The current situation is “really the culmination of two things,” O’Sullivan said: the “worsening situation in Syria” and the government’s policies.
There are conflicting reports about who is fighting whom in Falluja, with government forces, tribal groups, and the al-Qaeda affiliates all involved.
Iraq facing ‘biggest fight’ since Americans left
By Mick Krever, CNN
Iraq’s security forces are taking on their biggest fight since U.S. troops withdrew from the country at the end of 2011, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who was national security adviser in Iraq for the five years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Violence in Iraq is the worst in years, and part of the city of Falluja may have already fallen into the control of an al-Qaeda affiliated group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“It is a big challenge, but I am pretty sure – and there is no shadow of doubt in my mind – that Iraqi security forces will prevail,” al-Rubaie said.
There are conflicting reports about who is fighting whom in Falluja, with government forces, tribal groups, and the al-Qaeda affiliates all involved.
“Most of the Western media has got this wrong,” he said.
It is not about Sunni versus Shiite, or about the Shiite government “killing the Sunni communities.”
“This is a fight between Iraq and al-Qaeda terrorists,” he said. “This is a fight between a constitutionally elected government in Baghdad and the outlaws, the terrorists of al-Qaeda in the desert.”
He also however called on the U.S. to put pressure on the Gulf Arab countries “to reduce the sectarian polarization between Shiite and Sunnis, because that is what is translated into blood on the street of Baghdad.”
Al-Rubaie called on all Iraqis, no matter their affiliation, to stand behind the Maliki government.
“They should unite behind the Iraqi security forces to get them to win this fight and then we after that we will argue who was right, who was wrong in the economic policy, in the social policies, in security policy, and so on and so forth.”
Former Iraqi PM Allawi on engulfing violence
CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi about the violence engulfing his country.
Deadly violence engulfs Iraq
CNN's Hala Gorani speaks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari about the increased deadly violence that is engulfing Iraq.
Blood spilling across borders
CNN's Hala Gorani, in for Christiane Amanpour, speaks with Peter Galbraith about Iraq and the Middle East splintering across sectarian lines.
Galbraith is a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Is Iraq unraveling?
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Iraq is seeing some of the worst violence since the civil war of 2006.
Hundreds of people have been killed over the past few weeks –dozens died on Monday alone in a wave of tit-for-tat bombings targeting the Sunni and Shiite communities.
However, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari insists the country is not unraveling.
"We are worried indeed because of this increase in the number of terrorist attacks and also the rise of sectarian tension," Zebari told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Tuesday. "But really, the country is not sliding into civil war or sectarian war."
However, in the unusually frank conversation, Zebari acknowledged the many failures of his government, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and its inability to rise above sectarian differences. FULL POST
The Iraqi in Bush’s ear admits errors in judgment
By Samuel Burke & Claire Calzonetti, CNN
Ten years ago this week Baghdad fell. It had been a scant three weeks since the United States had invaded Iraq.
The world watched as jubilant Iraqis and U.S. Marines tore down a giant bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. The image was played over and over again all over the world. In the United States, it was taken as a sign of victory. The world later find out that images weren’t all that met the eye. For example, some accounts later claimed that the crowd was made up largely of troops and journalists, not every-day Iraqis.
But then, as now, the toppling of Saddam's statue remains the perfect metaphor: Perception did not match reality. A war the U.S. thought it had easily won instead dragged on for another decade, killing thousands of American forces and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians.
After years of death and destruction, the majority of Iraqis, today, say they don't think democracy can work.
The American people thought it would be a quick and clean war because that's what their leaders told them. And those leaders were citing assurances from prominent Iraqi exiles to back up their case.
One of those exiles was Brandeis professor, Kanan Makiya. Just days before the invasion, then-Vice President Dick Cheney cited Makiya as one of the people who led him to believe that U.S. troops would be “greeted as liberators.” FULL POST
Key player in Iraq war turns critic
“I've come to a conclusion: the justification for the intervention was wrong,” Former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said of the Iraq War in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, which aired Tuesday.
“[We] may have got rid of Saddam, but it certainly never brought peace,” Prescott added.
Looking back, on the ten-year anniversary of the war, Prescott said everyone should ask themselves whether the war was justified, and whether the true objective was in fact regime change, not weapons of mass destruction.
Prescott said that former Prime Minister Tony Blair “certainly believed” it was because of the alleged weapons of mass destruction. FULL POST
Iraq: Where were the journalists?
How could so many incorrect assertions in the lead up to the Iraq war have been taken as fact?
After the war, some of the United States’ leading newspapers were forced to apologize for getting it so wrong.
But two reporters consistently got it right: Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, former Knight Ridder reporters for the McClatchy newspapers.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour marking the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, they cited reporters’ access to top officials in Washington as one of the top problems. The top-level bureaucrats, they said, had more of a propensity to spin toward the line that the Bush Administration was pushing.
“Most of our reporting was with intelligence, military and diplomatic midlevel and lower level – the types that journalists don't really talk to or go after,” Warren Strobel told Amanpour.
In the video above you can watch the complete interview, reflecting on journalism in the lead up to the Iraq war. The journalists also explain why some of their own newspapers wouldn’t even print their stories.
@camanpour on Twitter
