Cause of war: assessing the Bush administration's case against Iraq (transcript in pdf format)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
September 26, 2002

On September 26, The Technology and Culture Forum - http://web.mit.edu/tac/www/index.html - which addresses critical issues of our day, sponsored this program at MIT.

The Rev. Amy McCreath, Coordinator of the Forum, noted the importance of this issue and that this program had been suggested by several students - Julia Steinberger, Stephanie Wang and Eric Downs.

Kenneth Oye served as moderator. Dr. Oye is an associate professor of political science at MIT and works in the fields of American foreign policy, international political economy, international relations theory and technology policy. A former director of the Center for International Studies at MIT, he has also served on the faculties of Harvard University, the University of California, Princeton University, and Swarthmore College, and he has been a guest scholar f the Brookings Institute. He has edited and contributed to a series of four volumes on US foreign policy: "Eagle in a New World: American Grand Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era", "Eagle Resurgent: The Reagan Era and U.S. Foreign Policy", "Eagle Defiant: U.S. Foreign Policy in the 1980's", and "Eagle Entangled: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Complex World."

Dr. Oye reviewed the issues and introduced the speakers.

Scott Ritter was chief weapons inspector in Iraq and is a former Major of the US Marines, having seen combat duty in the Gulf War. Between 1991 and 1998, Mr. Ritter made over 50 trips to Iraq while assessig the weapons capabilities, the status of weapons of mass destruction. Earlier that day, Ritter spoke at Harvard University to a large audience. He had addressed an audience the previous night in Boston.

Steve Walt is Academic Dean at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has, as Dr. Oye describes, "a wonderful book" on the origins of alliances and on revolutionary regimes.

 

Over 500 attended the forum, with 350 filling the main hall to overflow with others watching in a video room. Monitors were also set up at various places on Campus. This Forum was followed by questions and answers. After the talk, the speakers graciously stayed for about an hour to speak with people.

Click HERE for a PDF Transcript of the Forum (the questions and answers are not yet transcribed; hopefully, these will be available shortly.) Most viewers should be able to easily vew pdf files with the free Adode Acrobat PDF file viewer. If you are unable to read this file, please email us and we will send you the transcript as an attachment (.doc file). Please specify if you need the document in text format.