Summary: The United States is sending 1,400 more Marines to Afghanistan in an effort to hold on to fragile security gains in the nearly decade-long war. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 6, 2010, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: The Obama administration has ramped up its secret war on terror groups with a new military targeting center to oversee the growing use of special operations strikes against suspected militants in hot spots around the world. The creation of the center comes as part of the administration’s increasing reliance on clandestine and covert action to hunt terror suspects. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 5, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Dr. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician who struck the CIA’s Camp Chapman forward operating base in Khost province near the Afghan-Pakistan border on December 30, 2009 killing seven Central Intelligence Agency employees, matched the psychological profile of a specific type of suicide bomber.

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Summary: A U.S. military commander in southern Helmand province reportedly told Afghanistan’s TOLOnews that the Afghan war is like a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon that never ends, the only difference being that the cartoon, unlike the war, does not claim actual lives. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 4, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that the suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan was carried out by a Jordanian doctor, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who was an al-Qaida double agent.

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Summary: The body of John Wheeler III, a military expert who served in three Republican administrations, was found dumped in a Delaware landfill on New Year’s Eve. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 3, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that White House aide John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, said U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a “smoking gun” that could have prevented the attempt by radical Islamic fundamentalist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.

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Summary: Iran has shot down “a large number” of spy planes of Western forces, according to Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 2, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Yemen — the country where failed Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly received terrorist training — was becoming a focus for both the West and Islamic extremists.

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Summary: With about 500 fatalities, 2010 was the deadliest year yet for U.S. troops in the nine-year Afghanistan war, far exceeding the 300 casualties in 2009. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 1, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan doubled in 2009 compared with the previous year, while U.S. deaths in Iraq dropped by half as troops largely remained on bases and the United States started preparing to withdraw from that country by the end of 2011.

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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 December 31, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Afghans took to the streets to protest civilian casualties, chanting “Death to Obama, Down with Karzai!” at the same time as attacks in Afghanistan killed eight American civilians including CIA officers, four Canadian soldiers, and a Canadian journalist. Meanwhile, coordinated explosions in Iraq killed 23 people and wounded an Iraqi provincial governor in the worst violence there in months.

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Summary: In an intensifying wave of sectarian violence against Christians in Iraq, militants attacked at least four Christian homes with a combination of grenades and bombs, killing two people and sending fear into the already terrified Christian community. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: Iraq Body Count, a British group monitoring Iraqi civilian deaths, said in its 2010 annual report that the number of fatalities has dropped slightly since 2009 but warned of lingering, low-intensity conflict in the years ahead. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 29, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that an Afghan soldier killed a U.S. service member and wounded two Italian soldiers in western Afghanistan, while Pakistani authorities appealed for calm after a bombing against a Shiite Muslim procession marking the holy day of Ashoura killed 43 in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi.

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Summary: Fuad Mohamed “Shongole” Qalaf, leader of al-Shabab, Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked Islamist insurgency, is threatening to attack America. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 28, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that in the midst of two unfinished wars — Afghanistan and Iraq — the United States had quietly opened a third, largely covert, war front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

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