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Register for the CPA Industry Day
In response to Congressional interest in the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA) contracting process and business opportunities in Iraq for constituents, I am pleased to announce that "CPA Industry Day" will be held on November 19, 2003 in Arlington, Virginia. Industry Day is the first step in a series of measures designed to make CPA's contracting process as transparent and open as possible.

In their own words, A collection of quotes by neoconservatives.
In their own words
A collection of quotes by neoconservatives.
"A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who's been mugged by reality but has refused to press charges."
- Irving Kristol
"Change - above all violent change - is the essence of human history."
- Michael Ledeen

Neocon 101
Some basic questions answered.
What do neoconservatives believe?
"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.

Five women confront a new Iraq
From actresses to lawyers, women are seizing a historic if uncertain moment
Ashtar Jassim Al-Yasari is standing in the cramped office of her newspaper, Habez Bouz, when the air conditioning suddenly cuts out. An immediate crash of heat - the product of temperatures outside soaring above 130 degrees F. - makes it harder to tolerate the jostling in the narrow room that houses editors of four papers that have sprung to life in postwar Baghdad.

Ms. Yasari, wearing a lavender head scarf that makes her khaki-green eyes even more striking, is the only woman among them.

There are other women journalists in Iraq, but postwar insecurity has forced many professional women to stay home. Yasari shrugs at the situation with an air of steely equanimity: It won't stop her, she says, though her father or brother escorts her whenever she leaves home - something she never faced before the war.

Iraq's simmering south
Monday the Monitor begins a three-part series that examines initial US efforts to transfer power at the grass-roots to Iraqis. US commanders, virtually alone in overseeing vast regions of Iraq, have pushed for at least superficial local empowerment as vital to stability. They have often forged ahead of civilian occupation authorities in Baghdad, resisting top-down mandates in favor of pragmatic problem solving from below. Yet so far steps toward Iraqi self-defense and self-rule remain fitful and tentative, hampered by mutual misunderstanding, resentment, and mistrust.

Iraq's new challenge: civil society
Ban Saraf, an Iraqi-American entrepreneur, navigates Baghdad daily, helping 88 new councils find their democratic voice.It has been sixth months since the US-led forces toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein - and it could be years before they leave Iraq. But some of the most difficult challenges ahead will be taken on not by the military, but by contractors tasked with rebuilding Iraq.

Why Iraqis abroad are reluctant to return
BAGHDAD – It is hard to slip a word in edgeways when Hind Rassam and her two sisters get together. They work in offices only a few hundred yards from each other, but they are so busy they can go weeks without meeting, and they have a lot to catch up on.
Hind, Amal, and Shamim Rassam are an unusual trio of Iraqi-American sisters who have returned to Baghdad since Saddam Hussein's fall to help rebuild their country. There are an estimated 3 million or more Iraqis living abroad, of which at least 500,000 are fellow exiles waiting and watching but still reluctant to come home

Reduction in U.S. Troops Eyed for '04
U.S. military commanders have developed a plan to steadily cut back troop levels in Iraq next year, several senior Army officers said in recent interviews.

There are now 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The plan to cut that number is well advanced and has been described in broad outline to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld but has not yet been approved by him. It would begin to draw down forces next spring, cutting the number of troops to fewer than 100,000 by next summer and then to 50,000 by mid-2005, officers involved in the planning said.

America Must Let Iraq Rebuild Itself
No Iraqi will ever forget the momentous April day when a crowd of hundreds of cheering Baghdadis, helped by an American armored vehicle, pull the huge statue of Saddam Hussein to the ground. With this act, we tore down three decades of tyranny and repression and began building in its place a foundation for freedom, democracy and a better future for our children.

State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq
A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials.

Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy.

Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society.

U.S. Forces Try to End Standoff in Iraqi City
KARBALA, Iraq — American-led forces surrounded the headquarters of a militant Shiite leader near one of Islam's most revered shrines Saturday and set up roadblocks to prevent more of his supporters from entering the city center a day after three U.S. soldiers were killed in a brief but violent firefight with his bodyguards.

The battle here between U.S. and Iraqi police and the followers of Ayatollah Mahmoud Hassani claimed the lives of a U.S. military police battalion commander and two other U.S. soldiers and left several Americans wounded. Two Iraqi police officers and a large but undetermined number of Hassani's armed followers also were killed.

Progress Competes With Chaos in Iraq
NASIRIYAH, Iraq — This city in southern Iraq saw some of the fiercest fighting of the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein. Yet today the most visible uniform here is not military, but the bright blue overalls of new municipal workers on an urban beautification project. Life, residents say, is getting better.

About 250 miles up the river, near the Sunni-dominated town of Ramadi, the picture is far different: Tense Americans from the 82nd Airborne Division, weapons at the ready, run a checkpoint on a highway that has seen so many attacks it might as well be named "Ambush Alley." Here, locals quietly applaud each strike on U.S. forces.

Chronology of Iraq since fall of Saddam
LONDON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Iraqis crowded into banks on Wednesday to swap tattered banknotes for crisp new currency issued by the U.S.-led administration, which is seeking to erase the image of Saddam Hussein from postwar Iraq.

Contributions to reconstruction in Iraq
LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Spain on Friday pledged $300 million of economic aid to Iraq to 2007, making it one of the world's most generous donors to Iraqi reconstruction

Middle East Trade Initiative
To re-ignite economic growth and expand opportunity in the Middle East, the President proposed on May 9th, 2003 establishing a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area within a decade. Building on our free trade agreements (FTAs) with Israel and Jordan, the United States will take a series of graduated steps:
Help reforming countries become members of the World Trade Organization;

Negotiate Bilateral Investment Treaties and Trade and Investment Framework Agreements (TIFA) with governments determined to improve their trade and investment regimes;
Complete our negotiations on a free trade agreement with Morocco by the end of this year;
Continue to pursue a FTA with the reform-focused leadership in Bahrain;
Launch, in consultation with Congress, new bilateral free trade agreements with governments committed to high standards and comprehensive trade liberalization; and
Provide assistance to build trade capacity and expansion so countries can benefit from integration into the global trading system

The U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement (FTA)
The U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will enter into force on December 17, 2001. The Governments of the United States and Jordan signed the agreement on October 24, 2000, and President Bush signed the implementing legislation on September 28, 2001. The FTA will eliminate duties and commercial barriers to bilateral trade in goods and services originating in the United States and Jordan. The FTA also includes, for the first time ever in the text of a trade agreement, provisions addressing trade and environment, trade and labor, and electronic commerce. Other provisions address intellectual property rights protection, balance of payments, rules of origin, safeguards and procedural matters such as consultations and dispute settlement. Because the United States already has a Bilateral Investment Treaty with Jordan, the FTA does not include an investment chapter.

TRADE GLOSSARY (S-Y)

TRADE GLOSSARY (A-R)

CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS AFFECTING U.S. TRADE POLICY

The Language of Trade
The third edition of The Language of Trade contains a glossary of trade terminology, a list of acronyms used in international trade, and a chronology of major events in international trade since 1916. It updates, revises, and expands the second edition of The Language of Trade, which was published in 1993.

Commerce Secretary Evans Praises Iraq's Economic Potential
U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans praised Iraq's economic potential in an October 14 press conference after meeting with Iraqi business leaders, entrepreneurs, local officials and students, according to a Commerce Department press release.

THE NEW IRAQ, Progress & Accomplishments
The Iraqi Minister of Finance Mr. Kamil al-Gailani announced the release of the Iraqi Budget for 2004. The budget provides authority for the commitment and expenditure of money by the Iraqi Ministries for 2004 and sets the fiscal framework for 2005 and 2006. It meets the recurrent expenditures of the Ministries and provides for Iraqis' most urgent daily and social needs. (CPA)

New Iraqi Currency
Starting on October 15th 2003 a new national currency known as the 'new Iraqi dinar' will begin to replace the existing currency, the 'old dinar', and the currency used in the North of Iraq, the 'swiss dinar'. The new Iraqi dinar will create a single unified currency that is used throughout all of Iraq and will also make money more convenient to use in people's everyday lives.

Internationalization Strategy on Track for Iraq, U.S. Says
A senior administration official, briefing reporters October 16 on Air Force One as they accompanied President Bush at the start of a six-country trip to Asia and Australia, welcomed the unanimous vote by the U.N. Security Council to approve a new U.S.-backed resolution on Iraq.

A text for all seasons at the UN
The less than fanatical follower of United Nations Security Council machinations would be forgiven for wondering what this week's unanimous vote on Iraq really meant - and most analysts at the UN are not too certain either.

Iraqi Governing Council blocks anti-US motion at Islamic meeting
The US-backed Iraqi Governing Council yesterday succeeded in blocking a resolution at a summit of Islamic nations that called for the early departure of US troops, saying the motion would represent unwanted interference in the coun-try's internal affairs.

Iraq spending request raises US hackles
Rahm Emanuel, a Demo-cratic congressman from Illinois, felt so strongly about the $87bn (€75bn, £52bn) request by President George W. Bush for more military and reconstruction aid for Iraq and Afghanistan that he had T-shirts made.

US companies to be big gainers from Iraq outlay
Much of the US financial contribution to Iraqi reconstruction will be earmarked for American companies, according to the top international official at the US Treasury.Congress on Friday prepared to approve around $20bn (?18bn, £12bn) of spending on Iraqi reconstruction ahead of next week's international donors' conference in Madrid.

Bush Cites Philippines as Model in Rebuilding Iraq
President Bush told the Congress of this former American colony on Saturday that Iraq, like the Philippines, could be transformed into a vibrant democracy. He also pledged his help in remaking the troubled and sometimes mutinous Philippine military into a force for fighting terrorism.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
When it comes to the future of Iraq, there's not just one Democratic Party; there are three.

First, there are the Nancy Pelosi Democrats. These Democrats voted against Paul Bremer's $87 billion plan for the reconstruction of Iraq. The essence of their case is that the Bush administration is too corrupt and incompetent to reconstruct Iraq. If Bush is for it, they're against it.