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Cato Daily Dispatch for September 22, 2003

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(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)

Bush to U.N.: I Was Right about Iraq

"President Bush will tell the United Nations on Tuesday that he was right to order the invasion of Iraq even without the organization's explicit approval, and he will urge a new focus on countering nuclear proliferation, arguing that it is the only way to avoid similar confrontations," The New York Times reports.

"According to the officials involved in drafting the speech, for an audience they know will range from the skeptical to the angry, Bush will acknowledge no mistakes in planning for postwar security and reconstruction in Iraq. Privately, however, many officials are acknowledging that the Pentagon was unprepared for the scope and duration of the continuing guerrilla-style attacks against the American-led alliance and the newly appointed Iraqi Governing Council."

According to the Cato Institute's director of foreign policy studies, Christopher Preble, the United States should welcome aid from the United Nations if "it's on our timeline."

"The Bush administration claimed that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States," Preble writes in "The U.N.'s Role in Post-War Iraq.". "His regime is destroyed. The threat, therefore, is eliminated. The Bush administration should remain focused on ending the military occupation and on turning the government of Iraq over to the Iraqi people as quickly as possible. If the member states of the United Nations can help, and if they can do so on our timeline, we should let them. If not, we should tell them to mind their own business."

Iraqi Leadership Proposes Free-Market Reforms

"Aiming to reverse decades of economic decay under Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leadership council announced sweeping free-market reforms Sunday that would permit foreign investment and impose income taxes - but keep oil under government control," according to The Associated Press.

"Yet even the council's U.S. backers conceded that big multinationals were not likely to rush to Iraq, despite its promise, as long as instability reigns and violence erupts daily."

In a Cato Institute Foreign Policy Briefing Paper, "Monetary Options for Postwar Iraq," released today, Steve H. Hanke, senior fellow and economics professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Matt Sekerke, a Johns Hopkins Institute researcher, argue that the creation of a currency board or "official" dollarization are two of the best ways to establish stable money.

"The quick introduction of either regime will help the Coalition Provisional Authority to establish economic stability and pave the way for a timely exit from the increasingly costly postwar engagement," Hanke and Sekerke write.

Anti-Drug Media Campaign Hasn't Connected with Kids

"Congress should at least cast a skeptical eye on the Bush administration's request to expand the [National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign] with $170 million in funding next year, $20 million more than it received last year," argues an editorial in today's Los Angeles Times. "The way in which the campaign has tried to get its messages across is stodgy and unlikely to connect with kids.

"Drug czar John P. Walters has mismanaged the media campaign in other ways - using taxpayer dollars to directly attack state medical marijuana programs and ballot initiatives, for instance."

Essays in "After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century," edited by Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, argue that drug prohibition has proven to be a costly failure that has created more problems than it has solved and call for a national debate on the drug issue.

Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org