Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 13, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President Barack Obama’s “no drama” handling of the Indian Ocean hostage crisis — culminating in U.S. Special Operations forces’ successful rescue of an American ship’s captain held by Somali pirates — proved a big win for his administration in its first critical national security test.

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Summary: U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. Kurt Kruize arrived home for the last time on Saturday, April 10, 2009 in St. Cloud, Minn. Sgt. Kruize is the first St. Cloud soldier to die in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the third in Central Minnesota. Staff Sgt. Brian Hellermann of Freeport died in 2003 and Cpl. Anthony McElveen of Little Falls was killed in Iraq in 2005. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 10, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden truck into a sandbagged wall surrounding a police headquarters in northern Iraq, killing five American soldiers and two Iraqi policemen in the single deadliest attack against U.S. forces in more than a year, while tens of thousands of supporters of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burned ex-President George W. Bush in effigy at a rally marking the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that seven bombs rocked Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing 37 people and wounding more than 100 in a dramatic escalation of violence as U.S. forces prepared for a June 30, 2009 deadline to pull combat troops out of Iraqi cities.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 30, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Pentagon spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to fight terrorism elsewhere had reached $685.7 billion since 2001, according to the Government Accountability Office. In a letter to Congress dated March 30, 2009, the GAO said the Iraq war accounted for $533.5 billion in Defense Department spending obligations through December 2008, while spending on operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines totaled $124.1 billion, with the remaining $28.1 billion spent on operations to defend the U.S. mainland.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 23, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the al-Qaida-linked terror network, Jaish-e-Mohammed, ran schools for jihadi fighters in the heart of Pakistan, hundreds of miles from the Afghan border, amid reports that insurgent commanders and suicide bombers in the AfPak border region were increasingly coming from Punjab.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 16, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan killed four NATO troops, while bombings and clashes elsewhere in the country killed 14 more people; that a suicide bomber in police uniform detonated inside a police headquarters in southern Afghanistan, killing 11 people and wounding 29; that Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki said any U.S. withdrawals “must be done with our approval” and in coordination with the Iraqi government; that the U.S. military confirmed that U.S. forces shot down an unmanned Iranian aircraft in Iraqi airspace; and that 4,259 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 9, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Rep. Michele Bachmann had not met face-to-face with constituents at town hall meetings in her district, but was active as ever on the talk show circuit.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Rep. Michele Bachmann raised eyebrows at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., when she congratulated the new African-American chairman of the RNC with the words, “Michael Steele, you be da man, you be da man!”

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Summary: More than eight years after the Taliban was toppled from power, the number of U.S. military fatalities in the war in Afghanistan is nearing 1,000, a grim milestone in a resurgent conflict that is claiming the lives of an increasing number of troops who had survived previous combat tours in Iraq. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 24, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that although the worst of the sectarian bloodshed and loss of American lives have ebbed in Iraq, U.S. service members continue to die in the 5-year war.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on February 23, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured live coverage of the trial to decide the winner of the Coleman-Franken contest for U.S. Senate, courtesy of The UpTake.

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