Iraq & Afganistan Wars

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.

Actor Liev Schreiber had what he thought was a good idea: He'd reach out to a Baghdad film student, offering him an internship on a shoot. But as Nina Davenport's documentary proves, good intentions don't always end in good outcomes. Critic-at-large John Powers has a review.

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.

Veteran peace negotiator Padraig O'Malley worked on the conflicts in Northern Ireland and South Africa. Mac Maharaj played a role in the latter nation's anti-apartheid movement. Both took part in recent closed-door negotiations in Finland, aimed at bringing reconciliation among rival factions in Iraq.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez commanded ground troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004; it was on his watch that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal took place. Subsequently, Sanchez has vocally criticized the conduct of the Iraq war — especially the Bush administration's "catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan." His new book is Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story.

As chief of high-value targeting for the Pentagon, Marc Garlasco helped plan the targets of laser-guided bombs during the invasion of Iraq. Now a senior analyst with Human Rights Watch, Garlasco visits war zones where he assesses the damage being done to civilians by bombs and lobbies for greater deliberation in the use of air power.

"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.

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.