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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
How to contain Kim Jong Un
By Samuel Burke, CNN
A nuclear conflict on the Korean peninsula could make the Chernobyl nuclear accident look like a “child's fairy tale” – that was the warming that came on Monday from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After weeks of nuclear threats from North Korea, there is no evidence that North Korea is planning an imminent nuclear test.
But South Korea and the United States both say they would not be surprised if the North launched a missile later this week.
Whether that would be a hostile act or a test is anybody's guess. That’s the problem; very little is known about the new North Korean leadership and Kim Jong Un's intentions.
Gary Samore was President Obama's top nuclear adviser up until January. He also played a key role in the Clinton administration’s negotiation of an agreement to stop North Korea’s nuclear program.
“The North Koreans may very well launch another missile or conduct another missile test,” Samore told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “But I think most of their threats to take military action are probably just theatrics – designed to intimidate and frighten people.”
In other words, Samore believes the North Korean will do something, but more likely it will be some type of test. He said that has certainly been the pattern in the past.
Samore believes that South Korea and/or the United States have to send North Korea’s young leader a “warning message” for him to know he must not go too far, but send this message without provoking him. At the same time, Samore said the North Koreans must be careful not to alienate China, their ally, which sends essentials supplies across the border.
In the video above you can see Amanpour’s entire interview with Samore.
Margaret Thatcher, the chemist
CNN's Christiane Amanpour looks at Margaret Thatcher's time as a young woman studying chemistry.
The man who replaced Margaret Thatcher reflects on her life
By Samuel Burke, CNN
There was never a dull moment working with the ‘Iron Lady,’ former Prime Minister John Major told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“Margaret liked and argument and she liked people who would express a different view to her. She would have a very forceful discussion before a conclusion was reached,” Major said.
Margaret Thatcher’s unprecedented third term did not come to an end because of the people, but because of her own party. At the end of her political career, it looked like her own party would not reelect her and Major, a conservative politician who had been in Thatcher’s cabinet, succeeded her as prime minister.
History will likely remember her as one of the key figures who helped bring down the iron curtain. Major believes that regaining the Falklands Islands from Argentina gave her the command to deal with communism.
“[The Falklands War] changed the perception of her in the United Kingdom,” Major told Amanpour. “I think around the world it made her a world figure rather than simply a national prime minister.” FULL POST
Gun laws toughened in Connecticut
Christiane Amanpour looks at legislation coming full circle in the state of the Newtown elementary school tragedy.
Somalia's Mother Teresa - and Rambo
What do you get when you combine Mother Teresa and Rambo?
You get Dr. Hawa Abdi - at least according to a description from Glamour Magazine – who for thirty years has provided free health care to patients in her war-torn country of Somalia.
“They said that this big camp, this big hospital, to be run by a woman … it is impossible,” Abdi told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday. “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Abdi’s daughter, Deqo Mohamed, is herself a doctor and helps run the clinic with her mother.
“We don't understand the power we have,” Mohamed told Amanpour. “Women have more than we think. We don't give ourselves credit. We can be leaders, we can say no, we can lead the society and we can make the rules.”
Watch Amanpour’s full interview with Dr. Abdi and Dr. Mohamed in the video above.
CNN’s Juliet Fuisz produced this piece for television.
Running against Hugo Chavez’ ghost
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Voters in Venezuela go to the polls this weekend to elect a new president, with many asking the question: will the ghost of Hugo Chavez decide the election?
Nicolas Maduro – Chavez's vice president and hand-picked successor – brands himself as an extension of the late president, vowing to carry out the socialist revolution that Chavez began.
At campaign rallies, pictures of Chavez are as prominent as photos of Maduro himself. This sets up a tough battle for the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.
The young state governor is hoping to undo history; he lost to Chavez in the presidential election in October of last year. The margin was about 10 percentage points, though that was a much smaller difference than previous Chavez opponents.
While Capriles has rallied hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic supporters in this race, he is still down by ten points in the polls.
Leopoldo Lopez is a politician who knows what it's like to take on the legacy of Hugo Chavez, whether alive or merely as a legacy. He is one of the most influential opposition leaders in Venezuela and a key member of Capriles' campaign team.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, Lopez likened the current campaign to David versus Goliath.
“To put in real terms: this is the people against the state. The people against the entire power of the state: ‘PDVSA’ the national oil industry, all of the powers of the state put on one side of the [government’s] candidacy, and the people on the other side.”
Many voters are clearly on a wave of sympathy for the late President Chavez.
Capriles wants to run against Maduro, but Maduro wants to run with Chavez.
“It’s an extraordinary election,” Lopez admitted. But to get out of Chavez’ shadow, he believes his candidate’s campaign focus on the economy could lead him to victory.
“Maduro is not Chavez, and 2012 is not 2013,” Lopez said. “Venezuela is a different country and Venezuela is now in an economic crisis, which is a consequence of what the government did last year.”
The election takes place this Sunday.
Women in the war room and board room
Baroness Mary Goudie is on a mission.
In 1971, she became the youngest woman in England elected to her local council in England. Now, a member of the British House of Lords, she is trying to better the world, by ensuring that more women are in the board room - and the war room.
“We would get a better society” if more women were employed around the world, Baroness Goudie told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.
Watch Baroness Goudie’s full conversation with Amanpour in the video above.
CNN’s Meredith Milstein produced this piece for television.
Meet the driver behind "Nuns on the Bus"
In his weekly address last week, Pope Francis put women front and center.
“The first witnesses of the resurrection are women,” he said. “This is beautiful and this is the mission of women, of mothers and women, to give witness to their children and grandchildren.”
The reference brought the praise of many, but only worry from traditionalists, who fear that the pontiff could take steps to ordain women.
For Sister Simone Campbell, who leads “Nuns on the Bus,” a Catholic campaign for social justice, the new pope is reason for cautious optimism.
“I must say that my hope has continued to be raised by all the experiences in this very short time,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. “But I also have to say that there's a part of me that's very nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because I do worry about him and his capacity to make change to quickly, because there are those pressures that push against him.”
Watch Christiane Amanpour's full interview with Sister Simone Campbell in the video above.
CNN’s Juliet Fuisz produced this piece for television.
Facing jail for jokes: crackdown means ‘revolution's hopes destroyed’
By Mick Krever, CNN
For two veteran Egypt observers, it is abundantly clear that the government’s crackdown on satirist Bassem Youssef is coming directly from the top, President Mohamed Morsy.
“To say that Morsy is not behind the persecution and prosecution of Bassem Youssef is, I think, nuts,” Journalist Christopher Dickey, currently the Middle East editor for Newsweek Magazine, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, agreed, and said that the complaints themselves came from Morsy.
“The majority of complaints for insulting the president were formally filed by the office of the president,” he said.
Morsy’s office has claimed that the judiciary is completely independent.
The crackdown, Dickey and Bahgat said, is a disturbingly familiar sight.
“This is straight out of the Mubarak playbook,” Bahgat said. “That’s exactly what he used to do.”
“It really does look more like Mubarak all the time,” Dickey chimed in. “It’s really stunning.”
Youssef, who is known as the “Jon Stewart of Egypt,” was questioned by the public prosecutor for five hours on Sunday over complaints that he had insulted the president and Islam on his weekly show, El Bernameg (“The Program”).
The prosecutor claimed that he was simply doing his job, by investigating complaints levied by the public.
Youssef’s saga led to a diplomatic scandal of true twenty-first century proportions on Wednesday.
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