Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 18, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the Fargo-Moorhead Forum ran an informative editorial on Rep. Michele Bachmann, the face of an emerging brand of American protofascism spawned by the “perfect storm” of the attacks of 9/11, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the election of America’s first African-American president.

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Summary: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who claims to support low taxes, has inexplicably come out in opposition to an Obama administration initiative to give expectant moms a tax break — reducing the tax liabilityof mothers who breastfeed their babies by allowing a tax deduction for the purchase of breast pumps. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 17, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the Taliban’s top military commander had been captured in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces. The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started in late 2001. He ranked second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

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Summary: About 2,000 demonstrators attacked government offices in the southern Iraqi province of
Wasit, ripping up pavement stones to hurl at a regional council headquarters in a protest over shoddy public services, leaving dozens of people injured. In the northern city of Sulaimaniyah, hundreds of demonstrators also thronged the streets demanding better services. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 16, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector who fled Iraq in 1995 and went by the codename “Curveball,” has publicly admitted for the first time that he made up stories about mobile bioweapons trucks and secret factories to try to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 15, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the incendiary rhetoric of demagogues like Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann is powerful because it slips through the cracks in our acculturated human rationality, with its biological substrates in the fontal cortex, to hit a lower nerve in the subcortical brain regions of the limbic system, the seat of emotion.

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Summary: Protesters have taken to the streets in different corners of the Middle East: Iran’s beleaguered opposition stormed back to central Tehran and came under a tear gas attack by police, while demonstrators faced rubber bullets and birdshot to demand more freedoms in the relative wealth of Bahrain and protesters pressed for the ouster of the ruler in poverty-drained Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 14, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Vice President Joe Biden belittled Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s commitment to fighting terrorism as either “misinformed” or “misinforming,” saying the Iraq war wasn’t worth it because of “the horrible price” paid.

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Summary: U.S. officials are concerned that Islamic extremists may try to exploit Egypt’s upheaval but are not yet convinced that the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most influential Islamist opposition group, is necessarily a threat. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 13, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that bombs and booby traps slowed the advance of thousands of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers moving through the Taliban-controlled town of Marjah — NATO’s most ambitious effort yet to break the militants’ grip over their southern Afghanistan heartland. NATO said two of its troops were killed in the first day of the operation — one American and one Briton. Afghan authorities said at least 20 insurgents were killed.

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Summary: A suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of Shi’ite pilgrims at a bus depot in the Iraqi city of Samarra, killing 38 people and wounding more than 70. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Taliban suicide bombers killed 19 people, including 17 members of the Afghan security forces, in an assault on the provincial police headquarters in Kandahar that also wounded 49 people, including 23 civilians and nine children. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 12, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that more than two-thirds of the United States’ land mass had snow on the ground, with snow cover in 49 of the 50 states — Hawaii being the lone exception.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 11, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that Iran had produced its first batch of uranium enriched to a higher level of 20 percent, saying his country would not be bullied by the West into curtailing its nuclear program a day after the U.S. imposed new sanctions. Also featured: A psychological evaluation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including a personality profile and threat assessment conducted by Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics.

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Summary: At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, former President Bill Clinton said that Rep. Michele Bachmann’s assertion that the United States has the best health care system in the world is not true and that the new crop of Republicans in Congress are living “in a parallel universe divorced from reality with no facts.” Clinton was responding to comments Bachmann made during her Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 10, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Marines fired smoke rounds and armored vehicles maneuvered close to Taliban positions to test insurgent defenses ahead of an anticipated attack on Marjah, the biggest militant-controlled town in southern Afghanistan.

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Summary: A suicide bomber posing as a dairy deliveryman struck a Kurdish security headquarters, setting off a series of rapid-fire attacks in the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk killing seven and wounding up to 80 people. … With daily shootings and deadly bombings, it’s clear there’s still a simmering fight in Iraq as the U.S. military prepares to leave after nearly eight years, almost 4,400 U.S. troops killed and at least $750 billion spent. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 9, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and reported on the death of retired United States Marine Corps colonel Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.).

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