Iraq & Afganistan wars

Sergeants Zack Bazzi and Stephen Pink were two of three soldiers on the frontlines in Iraq who were given cameras to record their experiences. Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd Infantry Regiment and were based in the Sunni Triangle. They filmed their entire year's deployment. The footage makes up the new documentary The War Tapes which was directed by Deborah Scranton. The film opens in New York and L.A. this weekend.

The new documentary Baghdad ER goes inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, the Army's premier medical facility in Iraq. Shot over two months in 2005, the film tells the stories of the hospital's doctors and wounded soldiers. The film debuted on HBO last week. Filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill discuss their project with Terry Gross.

National Guard Lt. Paul Rieckhoff is the founder and executive director of the organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (formerly Operation Truth). One of the group's aims is to see that troops in active duty and veterans are properly provided for.

He has written a memoir about his tour in Iraq shortly after the occupation: Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington.

Stephen Kinzer has reported from more than 50 countries for The New York Times and has been the paper's bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua. In his new book, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq, he writes that in the past 110 years, America has overthrown 14 governments that displeased them for "ideological, political, and economic" reasons.

The Bush administration misused intelligence to justify decisions like going to war in Iraq, according to former senior CIA official Paul Pillar. From 2000 to 2005, Pillar was the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia.

The new book While They're At War is the product of dozens of interviews with husbands and wives of those serving in the military. The stories collected by journalist Kristin Henderson, herself the wife of a veteran, describe wives waiting at home in a haze of anticipatory grief.

While reporting on the torture scandal at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Jackie Spinner was nearly kidnapped. Shaken by the experience, the Washington Post journalist returned to work, spending a total of nine months in Iraq.

Coleman is a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank. She's an expert on economic development, Afghanistan and women's initiatives in the Middle East.

In October 2003, Mark Etherington became governor of the Shiite-majority Wasit Province in Iraq. Six months later, Etherington, isolated from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, was forced to flee his headquarters in al-Kut, the province's capital.

Two big surprises awaited Paul Bremer when he arrived in Iraq: that the country's chaos made it ripe for insurgency; and that the U.S. government would withhold additional troops. Bremer became the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in May of 2003.