Summary: Scores from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment show that American students continue to trail behind higher performing nations, with the U.S. ranking 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that 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.

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Summary: China is worried tensions in the Korean peninsula could spiral out of control if not dealt with properly, President Hu Jintao told U.S. President Barack Obama in their first discussion of the situation since North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong nearly two weeks earlier. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos on ABC News “This Week” that the U.S. has not had any good intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in “years.”

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Summary: Intelligence officials say foreign fighters have been slipping back into Iraq in larger numbers recently and may have been behind some of the most devastating attacks this year, reviving a threat the U.S. military believed had been almost entirely eradicated. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 5, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that similarities between George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and Barack Obama’s surge plan for Afghanistan belie the fact that there are few commonalities between the two war theaters.

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Summary: More than seven years after the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division entered Baghdad in March 2003 as the first conventional U.S. forces in Iraq, its soldiers are coming home from a year-long deployment that saw the end of combat operations. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 4, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the national edition of the Washington Times featured a shameful full-page ad by the anti-Obama website ProtectOurLiberty.org, claiming that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. The ad copy claimed that under a 60-year-old British law, President Obama is a citizen of Britain and “is currently also a British protected person and/or a British citizen to this day.”

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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 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that adapting to rising seas and higher temperatures was expected to be a big topic at the U.N. climate-change talks in Copenhagen, along with the projected cost — hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it going to countries that cannot afford to do it themselves.

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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: The bodies of six soldiers of the 1st Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky., killed by an Afghan border policeman in an apparent fragging in Afghanistan, have returned to U.S. soil at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 1, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured President Barack Obama’s address to the nation to outline his strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Immelman also provided his weekly summary of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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Summary: The U.S. Department of Defense has released the report of its comprehensive review of issues associated with the prospective repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, instituted during the Clinton administration. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided links, graphics, and video to supplement a report by Michael White of the British newspaper The Guardian, who — pointing to Rep. Michele Bachmann — said what troubled him about the U.S. today is that “public reaction to the Obama presidency is irrational, emotional, and ignorant.”

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Summary: The United States has now been fighting in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Union, whose occupation lasted nine years and 50 days before the USSR retreated in defeat on Feb. 15, 1989. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 29, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision in December 2001 not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force. The report affixed a measure of blame for the state of the Afghanistan war today on military leaders under former president George W. Bush, specifically Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary and his top military commander, Gen. Tommy Franks.

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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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