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 #1: One year ago today, on January 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman announced the Mass of Christian Burial for Br. Dietrich Reinhart, president emeritus of Saint John’s University, in the Saint John’s Abbey Church, Collegeville, Minn. … One-year retrospective #2: One year ago today, on January 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured year-end “honors” for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann that couldn’t be accommodated in his December 31, 2008 Minnesota 6th Congressional District Year in Review. He also reported that former U.S.-installed prime minister of Iraq Iyad Allawi — comparing the U.S. decision to hasten elections in Iraq with the Bush administration’s support for a vote in the Palestinian territories that was won by U.S. foe Hamas in 2006 — said that despite repeated warnings U.S. officials blindly foisted a Western-style democracy on Iraq, helping plunge it into sectarian bloodshed and a political morass.

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Summary: An Afghan soldier killed a U.S. service member and wounded two Italian soldiers in western Afghanistan. … 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, setting off riots and igniting fears of sectarian unrest. … Gunmen killed five Sunni security guards — members of the Sons of Iraq, or Awakening Councils — in a gruesome pre-dawn slaying at a village checkpoint north of Baghdad. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 29, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that 8,300 to 9,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2008, bringing the total number of civilian deaths since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to at least 98,400, according to figures released by Iraq Body Count.

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