Summary: A new report by the Wartime Contracting Commission estimates that about $60 billion in taxpayer money has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade of war. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 31, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: The U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of the very people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade trying to defeat in Afghanistan: the Taliban, criminals, and power brokers with ties to both. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 17, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: The possibility that power brokers and warlords in Afghanistan might be what keeps the country from unraveling has had analysts concerned, but the recent assassination of Ahmad Wali Karzai, one of the most powerful strongmen in Afghanistan, and the ensuing struggle in Kandahar for power, has brought the issue into sharp relief as the U.S. begins to draw down forces. Though much of the international effort in Afghanistan has focused on strengthening democratic institutions, foreign forces have often had to lean on strongmen. As a result, a new generation of warlords has risen to power, fueled by U.S. money. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 8, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Taliban insurgents gunned down ten members of a Christian medical team — six Americans, two Afghans, one German, and a Briton — in Badakhshan province, Afghanistan.

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Summary: The New York Times reports that confidential diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks offers a fresh sense of the pervasive nature of predatory corruption in Afghanistan, the overwhelming scale of the corruption, and the serious challenge it poses to American officials who have made shoring up support for the Afghan government a cornerstone of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, where bribery, extortion, and embezzlement are the norm. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President Barack Obama held an uncertain hand in his high-stakes gamble in the fight against Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with weak partners in both countries, doubts about the speed of building up Afghan security forces, and allies reluctant to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the fight.

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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.

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Summary: According to the Pentagon’s latest congressionally mandated 6-montly report, violence in Afghanistan reached an all-time high from April through September 2010 — up about 300 percent from 2007 — as Western troops battled an increasingly sophisticated insurgency. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 23, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the St. Cloud Times, after leading the charge in Minnesota earlier in the year to set a new standard for calling Rep. Michele Bachmann out for her radical extremism, backslid into the longstanding pattern of Minnesota media to gloss over or simply fail to report the full extent of Bachmann’s political paranoia and extremism. To compensate for this failure, I posted the full text of Times Washington correspondent Larry Bivins’ softball Bachmann interview, annotated and supplemented with critical content missing from the Bivens fluff-piece.

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Summary: In Afghanistan, the five-member “Red team” is rethinking the war in Afghanistan and questioning some of the basic assumptions behind the effort to clean up corruption and gain the upper hand over the Taliban. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President Barack Obama, speaking at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh on a day the Pentagon announced five more American deaths in Afghanistan, said he understood that Americans were tiring of the war in Afghanistan and that he was examining whether the U.S. was pursuing the right strategy there.

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Summary: Amid Taliban rocket strikes and bombings, Afghans voted for a new parliament, the first election since a fraud-marred presidential ballot in 2009 cast doubt on the legitimacy of the embattled government. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 18, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured a Politico report that elements within the GOP were concerned that the “bomb-throwing” Rep. Michele Bachmann might be inflicting damage on the party’s reputation with her incessant incendiary rhetoric.

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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: President Barack Obama is warning that the war in Afghanistan will get worse before it gets better, but he remains committed to his plan of beginning to withdraw U.S. forces in July 2011. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on May 13, 2009, Aubrey Immelman summarized and evaluated remarks by Dr. Maureen Reed on May 12, 2009, at a special DFL Minnesota Senate District 14 meeting in St. Joseph, Minn. At the time, Reed was challenging 2008 Democratic candidate Elwyn Tinklenberg for the Democratic Party endorsement in the 2010 Sixth Congressional District race for U.S. Representative against incumbent Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann.

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