Iraq & Afganistan Wars

Before most Americans had heard of the Taliban, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote a book about them. After the Sept. 11 attacks, it became a best-seller. Rashid's recent reporting for English-language newspapers involves Islamist militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post has been reporting from Lebanon. Shadid won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for international reporting. His latest book, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War, has just come out in paperback. Shadid is of Lebanese descent and grew up in Oklahoma City, Okla.

Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent for The New York Times, discusses efforts to recruit Iraqis for the Iraqi army, and looks back at the invasion of Iraq. He co-authored the recent book Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. Gordon is also a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine.

Deputy Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Ginger Cruz oversees the audit, inspection and investigation operations established to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq. Cruz just returned from Iraq.

British diplomat and journalist Rory Stewart walked alone across Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban. The former fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Havard's Kennedy School of Government wrote about it in the memoir The Places in Between. Stewart was later appointed a provincial governor in post-invasion Iraq, and has a memoir about that experience as well.

Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, talks about his new book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes a hard look at the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins has been covering the war in Iraq and is back for a brief visit to the United States. Filkins updates us on the situation in the Middle East. Last year, he received the George Polk Award for War Reporting for his riveting, firsthand account of an eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Falluja.

Army chaplain and captain Ran Dolinger has 20 years of experience in the army, ministering to soldiers in the field, and training other chaplains. He was in Iraq from July 2003 to February 2004, and returns there September. He currently serves at the Chief of Chaplains Office as media liaison officer.

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.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins has been covering the recent elections in Iraq. In April, he received the George Polk Award for War Reporting for "his riveting, first-hand account of an eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Falluja."

In a cover article for the December issue of Atlantic Monthly, reporter James Fallows argues there is no easy way out of Iraq for American forces. Pressure is mounting to withdraw U.S. troops, but the move would almost certainly leave Iraq in chaos. It will take years to train an Iraqi security force.