Summary: About $155 million in deposits have been withdrawn from Afghanistan’s largest bank in just the last two days, spurring fresh concerns among U.S. and Afghan officials that a financial panic could spread through the country and derail the U.S. war effort. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, in a fiery speech at an Independence Institute fundraiser in Denver that at times sounded more like the plot of a slasher movie, railed against the dangers of health care reform and other Democratic initiatives, warning the proposals “have the strength to destroy this country forever” and calling on her audience to “make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing.”

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Summary: In Aghanistan, a spike in bloodshed has claimed the lives of 19 U.S. service members in just four days, elevating the U.S. death toll for August to 55, with 76 fatalities in total for NATO forces. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 1, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan and reported that with 52 U.S. troops killed, August 2009 became the deadliest month of the deadliest year yet in the Afghanistan war; that the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan called for a new strategy against the Taliban in an assessment of the 8-year-old conflict ordered by the U.S. Secretary of Defense; and that the number of civilians killed in Iraq shot up to 393 in August 2009, the highest level since April 2009, after a spate of mass-casualty bombings caused carnage in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 31, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured Bill Prendergast’s debunking of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s false claim that she had no interest in running for political office prior to being “called by God” to run for the Minnesota State Senate in 2000.

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Summary: As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 29, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Kandahar, Afghanistan showed signs of slipping back under Taliban control as August 2009 became the deadliest month of the eight-year war for U.S. troops in Afghanistan — a setback for President Barack Obama’s war strategy.

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Summary: A total of 46 students and nine teachers were treated in a Kabul, Afghanistan, hospital after what an official at the education ministry described as “an apparent poisoning” attack by “the enemies of women’s education.” However, the pattern of the reported illness bears the hallmark of a group psychological reaction known as mass hysteria. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 27, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announced a joint town hall forum with Rep. Ron Paul as her guest. He also reported a summer of setbacks for the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan, with rising casualties, a divisive election, and growing public doubt about the war.

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Summary: A day after the number of American troops in Iraq fell to its lowest level since the war began in 2003 — fewer than 50,000 — insurgents launched more than two dozen attacks across the country, killing at least 56 Iraqis. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 26, 2009 — a day four U.S. soldiers died in Aghanistan –Aubrey Immelman reported that a coordinated multiple-vehicle bomb attack in Kandahar killed more than 40 civilians in one of the largest insurgent bombings since the start of the Afghanistan war in 2001.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 24, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman urged President Barack Obama to postpone many of his health care reform initiatives because of the economic downturn.

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Summary: Israel has denounced Iran’s fueling up of its first nuclear power plant, in Bushehr, as “totally unacceptable” and called for more international pressure to force Tehran to cease any uranium enrichment. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 21, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge claimed in a new book that he was pressured by other members of President George W. Bush’s Cabinet to raise the nation’s terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election.

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Summary: A majority of Americans see no end in sight in Afghanistan, and nearly six in 10 oppose the nine-year-old war, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 20, 2009 Aubrey Immelman featured a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showing that a majority of Americans viewed the war in Afghanistan as not worth fighting, with just a quarter saying more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan.

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Summary: The last U.S. combat brigade in Iraq has crossed the border into Kuwait, bringing to a close the active combat phase for Americans of a 7½-year war that overthrew Saddam Hussein, forever defined the presidency of George W. Bush, and left more than 4,400 American service members and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 19, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported the deadliest attack in Iraq since U.S. troops withdrew from urban centers at the end of June 2009 — and one of the deadliest of the war — with a wave of bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad killing nearly 100 and wounded approximately 1,000.

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