Iraq & Afganistan wars

The surge in Iraq is one of the issues that divides the presidential candidates, but Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within, reveals that it also divided the Bush administration and the military.

Journalist Steve Coll discusses "The General's Dilemma," his profile of General David Petraeus, which appears in the Sept. 8, 2008 issue The New Yorker.

There are 100,000 private military contractors in Iraq. Mercenary John Geddes explains why he thinks this is a good thing. His new book Highway to Hell is an account of his experiences in Iraq as a soldier for hire.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind says that the war in Iraq was based not simply on blunders but on lies. His book, The Way of the World, accuses the Bush administration of burying critical information and forging a letter that linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lt. Col. John Nagl wrote the textbook on counterinsurgency — literally. Nagl was part of the team that drafted a U.S. Army field manual on counterinsurgency. Having completed his tour in Iraq, Nagl talks about how military theory was put into practice in the region.

For soldier Brian Turner, words have the impact of bullets. His poems provide a first- person account of war; The New York Times praised their "attention to both the terrors and the beauty he found among Iraq's ruins."

Journalist James Glanz is Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times; he's just reported on a government study criticizing the Bush administration for broadly overstating certain gains in Iraq.

In his new book, Torture Team, international lawyer Philippe Sands argues that the Bush administration's interrogation policy constitutes a war crime.

Journalist Ahmed Rashid's new book, Descent into Chaos, examines the Unites States' nation-building efforts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Rashid argues that U.S. efforts have failed — and served to destabilize the region further.

The former White House spokesman rocked the capital last week with a provocative memoir. He joins Terry Gross to talk about What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.