Summary: The Bush administration was “hell bent” on the 2003 military invasion of Iraq and actively undermined efforts by Britain to win international authorization for the war, Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, testified before an inquiry into the Iraq war. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 27, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that a suicide car bomber targeting an American convoy exploded about 200 yards outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing at least four Afghan bystanders, while in Iraq, the country’s parliament approved a security pact with the United States that allowed American troops to stay in the country for three more years.

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Summary: Leaked British government documents call into question ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s public statements on the buildup to the Iraq war and show plans for the U.S.-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier, in February 2002, shortly after the attacks of 9/11. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 22, 2008, Aubrey Immelman noted that in the summer of 2008 U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed she could lower the price of gasoline to $2 a gallon in about two years by increased drilling, including offshore drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; however, just a few months later the price at the pump dropped to nearly $2 in a matter of weeks, purely as a result of reduced demand during the economic recession.

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Summary: The United States government has spent $53 billion on reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools, and bridges. But there are growing concerns, according to the New York Times, that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 21, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had stomped on and burned an effigy of President George Bush in the same central Baghdad square where Iraqis beat a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their sandals five years earlier. Chanting and waving flags, thousands of Iraqis filled Firdous Square to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would allow American troops to stay for three more years.

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Summary: Iraq’s Sunni Arab vice president, Tareq al-Hashimi, is threatening to veto the country’s election law unless changes are made giving Iraqis living abroad more guaranteed seats in parliament, throwing the January vote into question. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 15, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that Adm. Chris Barrie, former chief of the Australian Defense Force, had said there was no evidence to justify going to war in Iraq in 2003; that two U.S. soldiers had been killed in helicopter crash Iraq; and that a car bomb had killed 10 people and wounded 30 in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar.

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Summary: Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, while those in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence. … There were 133 reported active-duty Army suicides from January 2009 through October 2009, compared with 115 for the same period in 2008. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 13, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that an Iraqi soldier fired automatic weapons at U.S. soldiers at a military base in Mosul, killing two and wounding six before dying in a hail of bullets; bombers struck Baghdad for a third straight day, killing 23 people and wounding scores in a string of attacks in mostly Shiite areas; a suicide bomber driving an oil tanker detonated his explosives outside an Afghan government office in Kandahar, Afghanistan during a provincial council meeting, killing at least six people and wounding 42; Iran test-fired a solid-fuel, high-speed Sajjil long-range surface-to-surface missile with a range of about 1,200 miles; and North Korea announced it would shut the country’s border with the South on Dec. 1, 2008.

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Summary: A suicide bomber blew himself up in a market in northwest Pakistan, killing 12 people, including a mayor who had turned against the Taliban; two U.S. pilots have been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq; Iraq’s parliament has passed a long-delayed law, setting the stage for nationwide elections in January 2010. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 8, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iraqi officials, who saw President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appeared to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions in negotiations to reach a status-of-forces agreement with the United States; that Iraqi and U.S. officials were concerned about a surge in “sticky bombs”; and that Afghan president Hamid Karzai urged U.S. president-elect Barack Obama to stop the killing of civilians in coalition operations, which he said undermines popular support for the Afghan government and the international mission.

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Summary: Of the 364 Iraqis killed in October, 155 died in two nearly simultaneous bombs targeting government buildings on Oct. 25, 2009 in downtown Baghdad — the worst attack in more than two years. … More Taliban bombings in retaliation as Pakistan continues its offensive in South Waziristan, a tribal region adjoining Afghanistan, where al-Qaida terrorists are believed to have hideouts. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the 15th day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in his capacity as research director of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, published two articles in the St. Cloud Times in which he provides an analysis of his primary concerns regarding the personality-based limitations of prospective Obama and McCain presidencies.

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Summary: Two powerful car bombs exploded outside the Justice Ministry and city government offices in downtown Baghdad, killing 155 and wounding at least 500 in Iraq’s worst attack in more than two years. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the seventh day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman reported that a new poll sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio and the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute mirrored the results of a SurveyUSA poll released the previous day by KSTP television: Support for Bachmann was holding steady a week after she became a lightning rod for national criticism and media attention when she told Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that Barack Obama “may have anti-American views” and the media should investigate which members of Congress “are pro-America or anti-America.”

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Summary: Bomb attacks killed three American troops in Afghanistan, while civilian casualties sparked a protest by a group of angry villagers shouting “Death to America!” … A suicide bomber driving a dynamite-laden truck destroyed a key bridge on a highway in Iraq’s western Anbar province linking Iraq to Syria and Jordan. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the 38th day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported on Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s criticism of U.S. commander Gen. Ray Odierno and street protests against the U.S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement by supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He also posted a daily summary of security incidents in Iraq.

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Summary: In the first comprehensive tally released since the war began, Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry reports that 85,694 Iraqis lost their lives from 2004-2008 and 147,195 were wounded. The count includes Iraqi civilians, military, and police but not U.S. military deaths, insurgents, or foreigners, including contractors or U.S. forces, and it did not include the first months of the war after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. … On the 35th day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman reported on the increasing incidence of attacks by female suicide bombers — the mujahidaat — in Iraq and examined some of the factors behind this emerging threat.

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