The Rumi Forum presented " Iraq, A Personal View" with Ambassador David Newton, Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute

What are Iraq's vital realities and what can we see about its dangerous and uncertain present and future?. Some personal observations based on living in Iraq from 1984 to 1988 and directing Radio Free Iraq from 1998 to 2004.

Ambassador David Newton is currently an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute. He returned to the United States at the end of 2004 after having served for six years in Prague as the first director of Radio Free Iraq. Shortly before that appointment he had retired from a thirty-six year Foreign Service career (living twenty-two years in the Arab world), having served as ambassador to Yemen (1994-97) and as the first ambassador to Iraq (1984-88) following the resumption of diplomatic relations. Other Foreign Service tours included deputy chief of mission in Yemen and Syria, political counselor in Saudi Arabia, and Department of State assignments as director for Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, as Near East division chief in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and as economic officer for the Arabian Peninsula. In 1993 he headed an inter-agency delegation to Jordan to deal with the effects of the Iraq sanctions. From 1990 to 1993 Ambassador Newton was international affairs advisor and chairman of the national security policy department at the National War College, also doing extensive public speaking and working during Desert Shield/Desert Storm with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency on Iraq, for which he was commended by President George H.W. Bush and JCS Chairman General Powell. In February 1998, immediately after Foreign Service retirement, he was appointed a special envoy for public diplomacy, traveling to twelve Arab countries to explain U.S. policy on Iraq to the media and the public.