The Future of Iraq

October 21, 2003

Biographical Statements

Karlyn H. Bowman is a resident fellow at AEI. She joined AEI in 1979 and was the managing editor of Public Opinion magazine until 1990. From 1990 to 1995, she was the editor of The American Enterprise, AEI’s flagship magazine. Today Ms. Bowman continues to work on the magazine as editor of its public opinion section. Her publications include, with Everett Carll Ladd, “Public Opinion toward Congress” in Congress, the Press, and the Public (AEI-Brookings, 1994); Public Opinion in America and Japan: How We See Each Other and Ourselves (AEI Press/Roper Center, 1996); and What’s Wrong: A Survey of American Satisfaction and Complaint (May 1998). In 2000, AEI published “Public Opinion and the Clinton Legacy,” a study by Ms. Bowman and Seymour Martin Lipset. She is a regular television and radio commentator, and since 1995, she has written a biweekly polling column for Roll Call.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at AEI. An expert in Middle East affairs, he focuses on Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the former Soviet Union, as well as terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1997) and a chapter on Iran in Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (Encounter Books, 2000). He is also a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and International Herald Tribune, among other publications. He formerly held positions such as director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century and as a Middle Eastern specialist for the Central Intelligence Agency. He recently returned from an extended trip to Iraq, where he conducted research for a forthcoming AEI study.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. Before coming to AEI, she was a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1992 to 2002. Ms. Pletka also served as a staff writer for Insight Magazine, as well as an editorial assistant for the Los Angeles Times and Reuters in Jerusalem. Ms. Pletka’s recent opinion editorials have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times Deutschland, Jerusalem Post, and USA Today. She is a frequent television commentator, with appearances on PBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, HBO, BBC, ITV, and other networks in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. She recently returned from an extended trip to Iraq, where she conducted research for a forthcoming AEI study.

Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project for the New American Century. In the early 1980s, he was a member of the professional staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and from 1982 to 1984 served as the committee’s minority staff director. In 1984, he was appointed by President Reagan to the post of executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the White House. He served in that position until 1988. Since then, he has held visiting fellowships at the National Interest and the Brookings Institution; served as coordinator for the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence’s Working Group on Intelligence Reform; and worked as a consultant to the Department of Defense. In addition, he has been an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the coauthor, with Abram N. Shulsky, of Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (2002); coeditor of and contributor to U.S. Intelligence at the Crossroads: Agendas for Reform (1995); coauthor of The Future of U.S. Intelligence (1996), a monograph prepared for the Working Group on Intelligence Reform; and coeditor of the forthcoming volume, China’s Rise and America’s Response.