Summary: Al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said in an Internet video the U.S. financial crisis was caused by Washington’s military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and taxpayers were paying the price. … Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has emerged as a nationalist strongman after reaching a status-of-forces agreement with the Bush administration requiring U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

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Summary: A suicide car bomber targeting an American convoy exploded about 200 yards outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, killing at least four Afghan bystanders. … Iraq’s parliament approved a security pact with the United States that lets American troops stay in the country for three more years.

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Summary: In an exodus that began after the 1991 Gulf War, and escalated dramatically after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has lost more than half its Christian population of some 1 million. … In the third such shooting in the Mosul area in less than a year, two U.S. troops were killed when a gunman in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire while they were distributing humanitarian aid in northern Iraq.

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Summary: KBR, a contractor providing services to the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, has committed serious violations of its contract, mainly by conducting inadequate inspections of electrical wiring and grounding at American bases. The Pentagon findings stem from the death of Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a highly decorated 24-year-old Green Beret from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who was electrocuted on January 2, 2008 while taking a shower at his base in Baghdad.

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Summary: A female suicide bomber blew herself up near an entrance to the U.S.-protected Green Zone and a bomb tore through a minibus carrying Iraqi government employees in separate attacks in Iraq, killing at least 20 people.

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Summary: St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Sartell, Minnesota.

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Summary: In the summer of 2008, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed she had a plan to lower the price of gasoline to $2 a gallon by increased drilling, including offshore drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, by fall, the price at the pump dropped to nearly $2 in a matter of weeks, simply as a result of reduced demand during the economic recession.

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Summary: Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stomped on and burned an effigy of President George Bush in the same central Baghdad square where Iraqis beat a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their sandals five years earlier. Chanting and waving flags, thousands of Iraqis filled Firdous Square to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would allow American troops to stay for three more years.

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Summary: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” on November 18, 2008, dismissed as an “urban legend” reports that she had said on an October 17, 2008 cable show with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that then-Sen. Barack Obama and other members of Congress “may have anti-American views” and that “the news media should do a penetrating exposé … and find out if they’re pro-America or anti-America.”

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Summary: At a November 2008 forum at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) leveled harsh criticism at the GOP, the lack of intellectual curiosity among some Republican members of Congress, the Bush administration’s handling of nearly every aspect of governance, and the conservative radio voices that dictate the GOP agenda (“We’re educated by the great entertainers like Rush Limbaugh”). But Hagel offered praise for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

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