SmallGovTimes.com

By: Jim Kouri | Published on 08/01/08    

Immediately following President George W. Bush's Iraq strategy speech, Beltway insiders knew exactly where to go for analysis of the proposed "surge" of troops in Iraq.

People who wish to know the facts about defense issues would be hardpressed to find an organization more trustworthy and informative than the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It's also done the job news media organizations refuse to do: expose international corruption.

For instance, FDD Journalist-in-Residence Claudia Rosett broke the story regarding the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal. By breaking the story, she caused the world to see the UN in a new light.

Through three years of intrepid investigative journalism, Claudia documented the institutional failures and abuses by high-ranking officials that made Oil-for-Food one of the largest financial frauds in history.

FDD is the only nonpartisan policy institute dedicated exclusively to promoting pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that drive terrorism.

The Foundation was created shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A number of philanthropists and policymakers decided to engage in the worldwide war of ideas and to support the defense of democratic societies under assault by terrorism and Militant Islamism.

FDD uniquely combines policy research, democracy and counterterrorism training, strategic communications, and investigative journalism. They focus their efforts where opinions are formed and, ultimately, where the war of ideas will be won or lost: in the media, on college campuses, and in the policy community, at home and abroad.

At a time when college campuses are under the sway of apologists for terrorism, FDD has trained hundreds of professors and university students as pro-democracy, anti-terrorism advocates and activists.

A key part of the training is an intensive fellowship program in Israel and Washington, DC, examining how democracies defend themselves from terrorism. FDD also runs a separate US-based program that trains professors in how to teach about terrorism.

As a result of their training, professors have launched new courses on terrorism and students have held hundreds of on-campus events and registered hundreds of media appearances. FDD students have gone on to jobs in the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the military, the Peace Corps, and the White House and have won Fulbright and Truman scholarships to continue their studies.

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