Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / A historical analysis of the Iraqi military suggests that certain actions should be taken if the state building process of the United States led coalition is to be successful. The fulcrum of power in Iraq has always been the internecine ethnic, religious, and tribal relationships and interactions. This thesis studies the recently constructed security structure of Iraq, particularly the new Iraqi Armed Forces, by focusing on likely influences of the ethnic and sectarian factions and social structure of the country on security and reconstruction/reintegration of the new Iraqi Military. The thesis brings into sharp focus a singular fact that the military of Iraq has always been used in one way or another against one section of the population or another by the prevailing political power using the time-honored virtues of patronage and corruption. The use of the military in Iraq as an internal political tool more than anything else contributed to the lack of national identity, the prerequisite for a sound military structure. The thesis presents some situational operating methodologies that if followed should provide a structurally sound modern Iraqi military rather than a supernumerary police force. The recommendations would not only provide a military as a strong basis for national unity and identity, but they would create a military contributing to regional stability. / Major, Turkish Army

The struggle between the President and the Congress over the power to control the use of military force is an enduring dimension of U.S. foreign policy. In the 20th century Arthur Schlesinger labeled the growth of Presidential war power the “Imperial Presidency.” While some scholars have attempted to explain the expansion of Presidential power based on the Cold War or nuclear weapons, there has been little work studying the link between America’s ascending role in international legal frameworks and this domestic legal transformation. In this dissertation, I argue that America’s participation in international legal frameworks, such as the United Nations and NATO, has been a central factor in enabling the growth of Presidential war power. These international frameworks allow the President to circumvent Congress and to assert that the use of military force was something other than a ‘war’ that would need Congressional authorization. In case studies of pre-WWII aid to Great Britain, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, I demonstrate how the rise of executive war power relied on America’s growing participation in international legal frameworks. The dissertation contributes to the nexus of International Relations and Constitutional scholarship. It offers a unique interpretation of Presidential war power while also offering new insights on the nature of the United States’ relationship with international legal frameworks. I argue that participation in international legal frameworks has been ‘democracy-undermining’ as the President utilizes those frameworks to circumvent the Constitution’s restrictions on Presidential war power.

<p>The use of banned toxic weapons in Iraq during Gulf War 1991 started new debates. The increase in cancer cases was the main focus of these issues. The gap in literature motivated this study to find out the correlation between use of DU weapons and its effects on human health. The different probable causes of increase in cancer cases, in Iraq after Gulf War 1991, have been discussed in this study. Three causes; DU, brick kilns smoke near Basra and Kuwait oil fire smoke have been selected. The major emphasis of this study is on use of Depleted Uranium (DU). Different statistical data sets have been used and displayed in the form of maps and graphs using GIS methodologies. It’s hard to say after this GIS based study that the fired Depleted Uranium is the sole cause of increase in cancer incidences in Iraq, while some trends and risk factors at least can be observed where increase in cancer cases in different Governorates in Iraq is clearly visible after Gulf War 1991. After analyzing satellite images of different dates, the second part of this study concludes that Kuwait oil wells smoke is not responsible for increase in cancer incidences in Iraq. A small debate has been initiated regarding smoke in brick kilns near Basra. No study has been found in this regard which can provide evidences that brick kilns smoke is the cause of increase in cancer incidences in southern Iraq.</p><p>It’s not easy to carry out a full fledge GIS based study to prove DU as cause of increase in cancer cases. The main limitation in this regard is unavailability of required data. Therefore a new GIS based methodology has been devised which can be used to prove relationship between exposure to DU and increase in cancer cases in Iraq. This new methodology is also dependent on specific data sets. Hence this methodology also recommends the collection of specific data sets required for this study.</p><p>At the end, a detailed study, with honesty, has been suggested to fill up the gaps found in literature whether use of Depleted Uranium in weapons is harmful for human health or not.</p>

Victory Garden, Stuart Moulthrop’s 1991 classic hyperfiction, presents a nonlinear story of U. S. home front involvement in the First Gulf War in a way that facilitates confusion and mimics a "fog of war" sort of (un)awareness. Using Storyspace to build his complex narrative, Moulthrop incorporates poetry, fiction, historical references, and low-tech graphic novel type elements. Among the graphic components are all-black and all-white screens that function as variables. Overtly, these screens speak of closure and signify unconsciousness; however, their nonverbal role may also be linked to the ineffability trope as used by Dante Alighieri and re-interpreted by contemporary linguist Ruiging Liang. To date, critics and meta-readers have incorrectly assumed that the protagonist, Emily Runbird, becomes a fatality. By failing to read her life or death as undecidable, we deny the fiction its full power as a postmodern interpretive dilemma. This assumption plays into what might be posited as Moulthrop’s real thesis: syllogism in a corrupted (war time) information system is potentially tragic. A summary of theories and critical approaches relevant to the blank screen’s use as interstice together with sample engagements with relevant texts—reading Victory Garden, as per Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenological approach, Stanley Fish’s reader response theory, and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction—prove Victory Garden, to be a challenging but consistent literary breakdown (staged malfunction of reading habits). Ultimately, ineffability is shown to be a reading strategy and the action Aristotle characterizes as key to the definition of tragedy is seen as performed by the reader. Moulthrop dangles the question about Emily’s demise as a critical reading moment prone to corruption. The classical anagnorisis is not Emily’s; the revelation Moulthrop intends is reserved for the reader and is precipitated by the need to resolve aporia.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Terri Fine. Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-123).

Thesis (M.A.A.S.) -- Air University, 2004. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on April 24, 2009). "June 2004." Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-91).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / On 16 January 1991, a coalition of nations led by the United States launched a series of air strikes against Iraq to force that country to withdraw from Kuwait. What followed was an intense aerial bombardment of Iraqi military and civilian infrastructure which lasted until 24 February when the coalition began a ground offensive. After four days of ground fighting Iraq withdrew from Kuwait. American pictorial print media created a historical interpretation of the 1991 Persian Gulf War in the sense that selected images were immediately published to a broad audience and these images provided an acceptable story of the war. Perceptions of an Air Campaign examines the cultural meanings of the air war and how these meanings took shape in the narrative pictorial print media produced. The narrative is intricately related to the legacy of the Vietnam War. For generations, Americans viewed contemporary war, politics, foreign affairs, and culture through their memories of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. President George H.W. Bush guaranteed the U.S. public that the Gulf War was consciously being constructed to avoid a conflict similar to Vietnam. According to the president, the United States was going to war with enough resources for a swift and decisive victory, thereby avoiding the Vietnam pitfall of an open-ended conflict. Pictorial print media articulated a narrative displaying U.S. military strength and dominance that fulfilled Bush’s promise.

Successful transition to civilian employment is a challenge for veterans. The purpose of this single case study was to explore critical aspects of hiring managers' decision-making process and to understand how these strategies and techniques affect the hiring of veterans. Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory and Lewin's organizational change model formed the conceptual framework for the study. The participants for this study were 8 hiring managers from a midsized company in the Upper Hudson Valley Region, New York. Data were collected using semistructured interviews. The data were analyzed and coded and 4 themes emerged: strategies used to fill open positions, specific recruitment and interview protocols, veterans' skills from military training, and lack of experience with hiring veterans. The study results may contribute to veteran's awareness of the skills that employers are seeking that veterans may be able to fulfill. The results of the study could create an opportunity for hiring managers to recognize that veterans represent a trained, ready-made talent pool. The social impact of the study could help hiring managers identify and design the required job description criteria to include the transferable skills of veterans.

This dissertation explores the ways in which Americans constructed a public understanding about gender relations in Muslim countries from the Iranian Revolution through the post-9/11 period that cast Muslims as oppressors of women. It argues that such understandings significantly influenced U.S. foreign policy in recent decades. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the degree to which women had or lacked rights became one barometer by which Americans judged Muslim societies. Journalists, scholars, women's rights activists, novelists, filmmakers, politicians, and others in the U.S. contributed to public debates since 1979 that cast Muslims as particularly oppressive of women. The pervasiveness of such views and lobbying efforts by women's rights activists pushed policymakers to situate the attainment of rights for women within the constellation of legitimate areas of policy concern regarding the Muslim world. As a consequence, by the 1990s concern for Muslim women's rights sometimes drove U.S. policy, as when President Clinton chose not to recognize the Taliban regime in 1998; at other times, rhetoric about the oppression of Muslim women became a political tool which policymakers could use to provide legitimacy and moral force for their interventions in the Islamic world. This story is both national and transnational and involves both state and non-state actors. / History