This volume contains essays drawn from The Kensington Review, covering the second half of 2003. During this period, the occupation of Iraq demonstrated not only the lack of planning on the part of the Bush administration but also its general incompetence in administration in general. Elsewhere, Zimbabwe's descent into misery continued, and in some ways, it accelerated; Britain's Tony Blair began to take the heat for his support of the Bush White House in its Iraq policies; and France and Germany violated with impunity the Stability and Growth Pact upon which the euro was launched - setting a precedent which would directly lead to the excessive borrowing in periphery states of the eurozone that undermined the currency later in the decade. At the same time, the people of California indulged in a grand case of buyers' remorse, recalling Gray Davis as governor and replacing him with action-film actor Arnold Schwarzenegger after a campaign that resembled a circus more than anything else.

Jeff Myhre founded the Kensington Review in the autumn of2002. He attended the University of Colorado where he doublemajored in history and international affairs. He earned his PhDat the London School of Economics in international relations. Heis a member of both the Foreign Policy Association and theWorld Policy Institute