Summary: The latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows President Barack Obama’s marks for handling the 8-year-old Afghanistan war have jumped by double digits — 52 percent now approve — since he capped a three-month strategy review by announcing a big troop increase. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 17, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that the speaker of Iraq’s parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, announced his resignation after a parliamentary session descended into chaos as lawmakers argued about whether to free a journalist who had thrown his shoes at President George W. Bush; that Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview with ABC News, attempted to justify the decision to invade Iraq; that a double-bombing targeting traffic police in Baghdad killed at least 18 people and wounded 52; and that Iraq’s Minister of Science and Technology escaped injury in a car bomb explosion that appeared to be an assassination attempt.

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Summary: For President Barack Obama, the economic cost of his Afghanistan surge plan proved troubling, after he received a private budget memo estimating that an expanded U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan would cost $1 trillion over 10 years, roughly the same as his health care reform plan. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 7, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that from Basra in the south to Irbil in the north, Iraqi activists are trying to counter the rising influence of religious fundamentalists and tribal chieftains who have insisted that women wear the veil, prevented girls from receiving education, and sanctioned killings of women accused of besmirching their family’s honor.

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