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Iraq & Afganistan Wars

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21:40

Journalist Huda Ahmed

Since 2004, journalist Huda Ahmed has been covering the war in Iraq for the McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) News Service. This spring, she was awarded the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship by the International Women's Media Foundation. The fellowship is named for Boston Globe reporter Elizabeth Neuffer, who was killed while on assignment in Iraq. Ahmed has written about the issues of women and children in a war zone, human rights abuses and the struggle of women in a Muslim society, and will discuss the particular dangers of covering the war in Iraq.

Interview
33:52

Officer Refused to Deploy to Iraq

Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada is the first American officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that he thinks the war is illegal. He is joined by one of his lawyers, Eric Seitz, a civilian. Watada is now being court-martialed for his refusal, and for statements he made opposing the war and the Bush administration's leadership.

37:49

Journalist Thomas Ricks on the Latest from Iraq

Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks — author of the bestseller Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq — talks about his latest trip to that country and the latest strategies the Pentagon is employing there. Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Wall Street Journal staffer, is also author of Making the Corps and A Soldier's Duty.

Interview
14:53

Fibbing in the Green Zone? Never Fear, It's Fiction

Malcolm MacPherson's new novel is Hocus POTUS, a political farce about the shenanigans of White House loyalists in Baghdad's Green Zone, written from the point of view of an American journalist stationed there. The book draws on MacPherson's own experiences as a foreign correspondent for Time and Newsweek magazines, during which time he reported from Baghdad on Ambassador Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Interview
50:10

From Baghdad, This Is Jamie Tarabay

NPR's Baghdad bureau chief, Jamie Tarabay, has been living in and covering Iraq since December 2005. She spoke to Terry Gross in Fresh Air's Philadelphia studios, during a two-week break from her reporting duties. Australian by birth and Lebanese by heritage, Tarabay speaks fluent Arabic and French. She lived for three years as a child in Beirut during the bombings there. Before joining NPR she was a correspondent for the Associated Press, reporting from Southeast Asia, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

Interview
44:33

'Fiasco' Author Reports On the Petraeus Report

Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, discusses this week's long-awaited progress report from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the top two American officials in Iraq.

Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of the best-selling book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. It's just come out in paperback.

Interview
21:57

Thomas Ricks on Key Threats in Today's Iraq

Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks has recently returned from Iraq — where senior military commanders now say that the key threat facing the U.S.effort isn't terrorists, it's the intransigence of the Shia-dominated government.

Ricks, a regular Fresh Air guest, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the best-selling Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

Interview
07:37

Professor Kanan Makiya

Iraqi-born professor Kanan Makiya teaches Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University, outside Boston. He is one of the leading Arab intellectuals who called for the removal of Saddam Hussein; he also advised the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq.

Interview
14:19

U.S. Army Lt. Col. John Nagl

Lt. Col. John Nagl commands the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kan. He served in Operation Desert Storm and was the operations officer of a tank battalion task force in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He helped author the Army's Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

Interview
13:30

Retired British Army Gen. Sir Michael Rose

Gen. Sir Michael Rose was best known as the commander of the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia in the 1990s. In 2006, he called for the impeachment of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair for leading England into war in Iraq under false pretenses.

Interview
07:13

Former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith

A former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Peter Galbraith is author of The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End.

Interview
07:23

'Weekly Standard' Editor William Kristol

Editor and cofounder of the conservative Washington-based political magazine, The Weekly Standard, and an opinion columnist for The New York Times, William Kristol is a neoconservative voice on the Iraq war; he was among those who advocated for the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power before Sept. 11, 2001.

Interview
10:42

Defense Analyst Carl Conetta

Carl Conetta co-directs the Project on Defense Alternatives, a defense-policy think tank. Earlier, he was a research fellow at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies; he served for three years as editor of their journal, Defense and Disarmament Alternatives, and of the Arms Control Reporter.

Interview
07:53

Author and Journalist Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He sits on the Council on Foreign Relations, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

Interview
06:37

Oscar-Nominated 'Taxi' a Grim Wartime Ride

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, which sounds like a horror film — and in some ways, Edelstein says, actually is. It's been nominated for an Academy Award.

Review

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