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 the 14th 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 said that voters should see the Iraq war not only as a national security or foreign policy issue, but as a pocketbook issue, in that the war and occupation contributed to driving up the price of oil by weakening the dollar. In that context, he also pointed to a Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report detailing billions of dollars lost on construction projects in Iraq.

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Summary: British foreign secretary David Miliband says the phrase “war on terror” — though capturing the urgency of the situation immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — is ultimately “misleading and mistaken,” because it gives the impression of a unified, transnational enemy embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

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Summary: President-elect Barack Obama says his administration will not compromise its ideals to fight terrorism, adding at a press conference to announce his CIA and national intelligence nominees, Leon Panetta and Adm. Dennis Blair, that he has told them to honor the Geneva Conventions.

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Summary: In an exit interview on CBS “Face the Nation,” Vice President Dick Cheney offered a spirited defense of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, of which he was a key proponent and architect, saying the United States was close to achieving its aims in Iraq.

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Summary: Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to portions of a report released by the Senate Armed Services Committee. … In the deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly six months, a suicide bomber struck a crowded restaurant near the northern city of Kirkuk where Kurdish officials were meeting with Arab tribal leaders, killing at least 55 people and wounding about 120.

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Summary: Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled a willingness to forge ahead with two key priorities for the incoming Obama administration: accelerating the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center. … President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team will include two veteran cold warriors — former NATO commander Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser and Robert M. Gates as defense secretary — and a political rival — Hillary Clinton as secretary of state — whose records are all more hawkish than that of the new president.

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