History

"Bush's War," a two-part special from the PBS series Frontline, investigates the lead-up to — and the justification for — the U.S. war in Iraq. Journalist and Frontline producer Michael Kirk joins Fresh Air to discuss the program.

Foreign correspondent Charles Sennot recently returned from Iraq, where he witnessed the U.S. military's "troop surge" first-hand as an embedded reporter with the Army's 28th Infantry Regiment.

Secularist Shiite politican Ahmad Chalabi was for years part of an opposition group dedicated to overthrowing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. He's also the subject of the new book The Man Who Pushed America to War.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli reviews HBO's new series John Adams, produced by Tom Hanks.

Was America meant to be a Christian nation? Steven Waldman, founder of Beliefnet.com, debunks myths about religion in the lives the Founding Fathers, and in the early history of America in his new book, Founding Faith.

Bassam Aramin and Zohar Shapira, the co-founders of Combatants for Peace, are on a mission to end the cycle of violence in Israel and Palestine by bringing together individuals who previously fought against each other. So far, around 450 former enemies have joined the group.

The Library of America has published World War II Writings, a new collection of stories by A.J. Liebling. The volume, edited by Pete Hamill, includes three books, two dozen New Yorker pieces, maps and a chronology.

Director Brett Morgen joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to discuss his new film, Chicago 10. The film mixes trial footage and animation to tell the story of the "Chicago 8" — protesters held accountable for violence that erupted with police outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.

Critic John Powers reviews Where to and Back, a newly released DVD trilogy from the late Austrian director Axel Corti. Written by Georg Stefan Troller, the films are loosely based on Toller's life as a Viennese Jew who took refuge in the United States as a teenager and then returned to Europe as an American soldier during World War II.

The cease-fire that's kept Shiite militias in check for months is in danger of unraveling. And some U.S.-backed Sunni militias are growing restless. Patrick Cockburn, author and Iraq correspondent for The Independent in London, offers observations on war in Iraq.

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.

Slate columnist Fred Kaplan offers a scathing critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy initiatives in his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.

Missed evidence, ignored clues, political considerations--investigative journalist Philip Shenon examines the shortcomings of the 9/11 Commission.

The National Guard's Fighting 69th infantry, based in New York City, had been neglected until the events of Sept. 11, 2001. That day's terrorist attacks, and the Bush administration's march to war in Iraq, drove the unit to transform itself into a battle-ready force.

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.

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.

Baghdad-born activist Yanar Mohammed directs the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson was chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell; he became an outspoken critic of the Bush administration after leaving the State Department in January 2005.

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.

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.