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After decades of documenting and decrying the human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein, Kanan Makiya is finally getting what he’s wanted. The Iraqi leader is gone, and Makiya is back in Baghdad helping draft a new constitution for his homeland.

In the lead-up to the war, Makiya helped pen a “blueprint” for a post-Saddam Iraq that became part of the Bush Administration’s war plan. He was an optimist then — someone who believed that the Iraqi people should be liberated — regardless of what argument was used, the cruelty of the leader, weapons of mass destruction, terrorist — and he is an optimist today. He is one of the leading figures in Iraq’s reconstruction; trying to grow democracy in a country that has no memory of that.

Guests:

Kanan Makiya, author of the “blueprint for democracy” for post-Saddam Iraq and the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University

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For news consumers in the U.S. it was yet another busy week in the Mideast. It was a little bit of everything; an Israeli raid in Gaza left eight dead and 70 injured Palestinians, Prime Minister Ahmed Qurea urged the U.S. once again to revive the road map, Israel vowed to keep building the “security wall’” despite U.N. condemnation, and militants executed two of their own fro collaborating with Israel.

But for some people in the region these headlines can carry a world of difference. As part of our effort to bring you the voices of the people behind this conflict, today we’ll speak with Palestinians who are living in the West Bank and hear their thoughts on suicide bombs, the possibility of peace, and what it means to stick to the land.

Guests:

Saed Andoni, a Bethlehem based TV producer and film editor

Mohammad Ghazal, engineering professor at Al Najah University in Nablus, and a member of Hamas’s political leadership.