Iraq & Afganistan wars

"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.

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.

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.