Wednesday, September 5, 2007

HW Assignment/Deadline #2: Annotated Bibliography

Ricks, Thomas E.. Fiasco, The American Millitary Adventure in Iraq. New York: The Penguin Group, 2007.

Fiasco is basically a comprehensive history of the entire Iraq situation dating focusing primarily from September 11 up, but also going into a brief account and analysis from the first Gulf War. The author, Thomas Ricks, who is The Washington Post's senior Pentagon correspondent and held the same job at The Wall Street Journal for upwards of 20 years. He has covered nearly all of the major millitary operations in that time period. His book provides a birds eye view of Iraq taking in millitary operations, civillian agencies, politics, culture and more to provide as factual an account of Iraq as I think I'm going to find in it's scale class. From the Washington Post to the Marine Corps Gazette this book has received praise as well as from major political figures such as John McCain and former president Bill Clinton. The subject of Iraq would be a good research topic for me as the situation there, though it affects everyone, affects me in particular as I'll likely spend time there.

http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2007/08/illegal-immigration-crackdown-nails-160.html

This sight is essentially another blogger who has created a site where they keep information about important issues (or at least as they see them). What I found particularly interesting about the site was not so much the articles, which I can find elsewhere. But the enormous amounts of posts, both pro and con, which follow them. This allows me to get enormous amounts of pro and con arguments and find many different views about the issue, as well as some ideas about what needs to be done. Illegal immigration is an important issue for me because, while working in private security, I come into contact with a large number of illegal immigrants and the fallout of the ease with which such people cross into our country. One idea for a narrower field of research in this subject I found was the idea many people have to send the jobs that we've been sending to china to mexico to improve the economy and make it a environment it's people will want to stay in. I could perhaps do research into whether we should or not.

Harris, Scott. "U.S. Iran Tensions Rise- 2nd Carrier To Gulf." Scoop 10 JAN 2007 05 SEP 2007 .

This article is an interview between the author and Trita Parsi, the president of the Iranian-American Council. It discusses the growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Trita Parsi tells his opinions on whats being done and what is causing the whole situation. I found Trita Parsi to be someone who looks at both sides of the issue before making an opinion which I found very impressive. Doing research on the growing situation in Iran would be important for me because, for the same reason as Iraq, it is a situation which very directly affects me. It is a situation that could erupt and put me right in the middle of it.

2 comments:

Courtney said...

Sounds like you have some pretty solid topic there good job i like how detailed you are in your annotated bib. Gives a good solid point on what you are talking about.

jeff fitzwater said...

It would be interesting to see what effect this would have on our relations with china if we forced companies to move to Mexico instead of china. At first i would think that it is cheaper in china but with their growth over the last few years it makes it a little cloudy. It would be interesting to read more about.