Summary: On the same day that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Obama administration’s effort in the eight-year-old Afghanistan war is “only now beginning,” former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) — a potential successor to Secretary Gates — published an op-ed article in the Washington Post in which he cautions, “No country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations. … Bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster.” … One year ago today, on the 51st day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman released a video statement regarding the serious national security implications of the Iraq war, which Rep. Bachmann failed to address the previous evening in her speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

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Summary: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) announces a joint “town hall” forum in St. Cloud, Minn., with Rep. Ron Paul as her guest. … Robert H. Reid of the Associated Press reports that it’s been a summer of setbacks for the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan, with rising casualties, a divisive election, and growing public doubt about the war. … Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who wielded enormous influence after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, has has died, exacerbating the growing political upheaval among Iraq’s majority Shiites. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the 44th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman traveled to White Bear Lake to record a candidate statement for the Ramsey / Washington County Suburban Cable Commission, through its Government Television Network (GTN). Immelman also reported on the high human and economic cost of the Iraq war.

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Summary: Iraqi officials have announced that national parliamentary elections will be held Jan. 30, 2010, sliding the date into next year in a move that could complicate the U.S. timetable for drawing down its forces. … Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says “We cannot succeed … in Afghanistan by killing Afghan civilians” and warning that the deaths of Afghan civilians caught up in U.S. combat operations could cripple President Barack Obama’s revamped strategy for the seven-year-old war. … The U.N. refugee agency reports that nearly 1.5 million people have fled their homes in Pakistan this month, saying that fighting between government forces and Taliban militants is uprooting more people faster than probably any conflict since the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s.

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Summary: Iraqis vote Jan. 31, 2009 in the first nationwide election in three years, choosing provincial leaders in what amounts to a test of Iraq’s stability as the U.S. plans to remove its troops. A credible election without significant violence would show that the security improvements of the past 18 months are taking hold. The outcome will also show which parties stand the best chance of success in parliamentary elections a year later.

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Summary: The Army began an investigation after being prodded by Amanda Henderson, wife of Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Henderson, an Iraq combat veteran who spent the final months of his life as an Army recruiter before hanging himself with a dog chain in his backyard shed. In all, 15 of the Army’s 8,400 recruiters have committed suicide since 2003, with more than 540 of the Army’s half-million active-duty soldiers killing themselves.

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On the 31st day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported that a pending National Intelligence Estimate will conclude that Afghanistan is in a downward spiral and that U.S. intelligence agencies doubt that the Kabul government has the ability to stem the rise of the Taliban, citing widespread corruption inside President Hamid Karzai’s government, an increase in attacks by militants operating out of Pakistan, and a general breakdown of central government authority in Afghanistan.

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Summary: On the eighth day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported on a Pakistani military order to fire on U.S. troops crossing the Afghan border for raids into Pakistan; the increasing number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan; the high rate of Afghan civilian casualties; and a spate of bombings and shootings in Iraq.

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Summary: On the fifth day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported on the assassination of a provincial governor in Afghanistan, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, an assessment by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bush administration that the U.S. is “not winning the war” in Afghanistan and “running out of time,” and ongoing violence in Iraq.

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Summary: On the third day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman reported that the death of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan on September 11 brought the year’s death toll to 112, surpassing the 2007 record toll of 111 and making 2008 the deadliest for American forces in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded the country in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He also reported that Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, “I’m not convinced we are winning in Afghanistan. I am convinced we can.” In Iraq, followers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated against plans for a U.S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement, burning U.S. and Israeli flags.

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