Summary: Intelligence officials say foreign fighters have been slipping back into Iraq in larger numbers recently and may have been behind some of the most devastating attacks this year, reviving a threat the U.S. military believed had been almost entirely eradicated. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 5, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that similarities between George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and Barack Obama’s surge plan for Afghanistan belie the fact that there are few commonalities between the two war theaters.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: More than seven years after the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division entered Baghdad in March 2003 as the first conventional U.S. forces in Iraq, its soldiers are coming home from a year-long deployment that saw the end of combat operations. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 4, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the national edition of the Washington Times featured a shameful full-page ad by the anti-Obama website ProtectOurLiberty.org, claiming that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. The ad copy claimed that under a 60-year-old British law, President Obama is a citizen of Britain and “is currently also a British protected person and/or a British citizen to this day.”

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: WikiLeaks’ cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders, and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 28, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that many soldiers and policy makers believe the conflict in Afghanistan may be harder and more intractable than the war in Iraq.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani has given Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki the nod to form the next government after an eight-month deadlock following the March 2010 election. Al-Maliki retained power by cobbling together alliances with Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, including the Sadrist movement led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has close ties with Iran. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 12, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Rep. Steve Israel called on U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to apologize for Holocaust imagery displayed at a rally organized by Bachmann at the U.S. Capitol on November 5, 2009 to protest health care reform.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: The Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, has threatened more attacks on Christians after a siege on a Baghdad Catholic church left 68 people dead. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Sixteen bombs went off in at least 10 neighborhoods across Iraq’s capital of Baghdad, many at restaurants and coffee shops full of civilians. The death toll climbed to 76 in the first hours following the blasts, with nearly 300 wounded. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that of the 364 Iraqis killed in October 2009, 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. Meanwhile, there were more Taliban bombings in retaliation as Pakistan continued its offensive in South Waziristan, a tribal region adjoining Afghanistan, where al-Qaida terrorists are believed to have hideouts.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: At least 58 Iraqi Catholics died and more than 70 were wounded when police stormed a Baghdad church where gunmen were holding dozens of parishioners hostage, threatening to kill them if al-Qaida-prisoners were not released. Since the war began, Iraq has lost half of its 1.5 million Christians. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 31, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Microsoft Network (MSN.com), promoting its new Bing! search engine, featured a demo search of “angry Americans.” It caught my attention, because history has shown that times of economic uncertainty — as we’re currently experiencing while bogged down in two wars in the aftermath of 9/11 — can be a fertile breeding ground for extremist ideologies, as we saw in Germany during the Great Depression following a humiliating defeat in World War I.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Investigators believe the same al-Qaida-affiliated group responsible for the Christmas Day underwear bomb were behind the PETN-based devices hidden in packages sent from Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first official visit to Pakistan, faced sharp rebukes from Pakistani audiences brimming with resentment toward U.S. foreign policy, including one woman who accused the U.S. of conducting “executions without trial” in aerial drone strikes, equating it to terrorism.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical, anti-American Muslim cleric whose Mahdi Army militia once fought U.S. occupation forces in Iraq positioned himself as a big winner in Iraq’s months-long political deadlock when his Sadrist party threw its support behind beleaguered Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 1, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported on the inauguration of Fr. Robert J. Koopmann, OSB, as the 12th president of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

  ::  Read Comments (0)

Summary: The heavily fortified Green Zone in Iraq’s capital has in recent weeks come under an intensifying barrage of rocket attacks, and a senior American military commander is suggesting that Iranian-backed militias are behind the attacks in an effort to influence the formation of a new Iraqi government. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 29, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  ::  Read Comments (0)