Iraqi Military Moves to Reclaim City from ISIS
In what looks like a precursor to the planned U.S. offensive in Mosul scheduled for this spring, the Iraqi military began a large scale operation on Monday to retake the city of Tikrit from the...
View ArticleWith No End in Sight, Military Families Pay the Real Price in Afghanistan
Click on the audio player above to hear the full interview.Last week, at least one humanitarian worker argued that America should delay its withdrawal of 9,800 U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan,...
View ArticleUsing The Mistakes of The Past to Explore The Future of The Middle East
Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.More than 12 years after the United States invaded Iraq, refugees are fleeing for the European Union as the self-proclaimed Islamic State overruns...
View ArticleRemembering The Man Who Sold a War to the White House
Click on the audio player above to hear this segment.In 2003, Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi helped persuade the United States to invade Iraq. He died at his home in Baghdad on Tuesday at the age of...
View ArticleAs Numbers Dwindle, Veterans Groups Battle to Attract New Members
Click on the audio player above to hear this segment.This Veterans Day, we're looking at some of the support systems available to our vets. Our friends at the "American Home Front" project, a public...
View ArticleThe Life and Legacy of George H.W. Bush
This segment originally aired live on December 21, 2015. An edited version was included in a best-of episode of The Brian Lehrer Show on January 1, 2016. The unedited audio can be found here.2016 will...
View ArticleNew Novel Tackles the Identity and Conflict of the Iraq War
The new novel "The Rope" explores Iraq during the first four years of the American occupation.Written by Kanan Makiya, it opens with a real event — the hanging of Saddam Hussein — and follows a young...
View ArticleFeds Eye Blackwater Founder for Selling Mercenary Services Abroad
After the September 11th terrorist attacks, hundreds of U.S. military contractors flooded into the Middle East to profit off America's new conflict in Iraq. Erik Prince, then the founder of the...
View ArticleJane Sanders on the Campaign Trail; Life in the Bubble; Why Coke Cares About...
Coming up on today's show:Jane Sanders, social worker, academic, and wife of Senator Bernie Sanders, speaks on behalf of her husband's campaign.Why - and when - do corporations care about gay rights?...
View ArticleThe American Occupation Through Iraqi Eyes
Kanan Makiya, Bagdhad-born professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University, and the author of The Rope: A Novel (Pantheon, 2016), wrote an (anonymous) critique of the Iraqi...
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Doubling Down Before the NY Primary; What's On Your Ballot; Slightly-Blue...
Coming up on today's show: It’s the day before the big New York primary. Hear how the Democrats are doubling down with POLITICO New York's Azi Paybarah, MTV's Ana Marie Cox, and Slate's Jacob...
View ArticleThe Man Behind Iraq's Uprising
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview.Political unrest in Baghdad reached a tipping point this weekend when anti-government protesters overtook the Iraqi Parliament building....
View ArticleAn Uncertain Fate for Mosul
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. The spring offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the self-proclaimed Islamic State was announced last February and set to begin...
View ArticleReckoning With Over 15 Years of War in Iraq and Afghanistan
J. Kael Weston a former U.S. State Department Official, spent seven years working in Afghanistan and Iraq at the height of combat and traveled among Iraqis, Afghans, diplomats and U.S. Marines. In The...
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Why America’s longest war is getting longer
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioJUDY WOODRUFF: Our nation’s longest war just got longer. The Obama administration had hoped to cut the number of U.S. service personnel in Afghanistan, currently at...
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News Wrap: GOP gun and anti-terror bill faces House opposition
Watch Video | Listen to the Audio JUDY WOODRUFF: Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are going to investigate the FBI’s inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail practices. They announced...
View ArticleMiddle East Mayhem, Building Super Batteries, Native Beats
Coming up on today's show:This weekend, The New York Times Magazine will publish something akin to a short book. The issue will feature a single, very long nonfiction narrative about what has gone...
View ArticleObama Founded ISIS? A Veteran Takes Down Trump in 90 Seconds
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment.On Wednesday at a rally in Florida, GOP Presidential Nominee Donald Trump told a crowd that he believes President Obama started the Islamic State...
View ArticleWith the Middle East in Mayhem, An Iraq War Vet Says We Made a Mistake
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview.Like more than half of the U.S. service-members that served in the Iraq War, Captain Asha Castleberry — a U.S. Army veteran who was deployed in...
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Explaining the Middle East conflicts through the eyes of six individuals
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioRELATED LINKS“Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart Connecting Students to “Fractured Lands K-12 Lesson Plans College Lesson Plans JUDY WOODRUFF: Now to the...
View ArticleDid George W. Bush Make the Worst Foreign Policy Decisions in U.S. History?
In Bush, presidential biographer Jean Edward Smith looks at what drove the decisions of President George W. Bush, including his decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Smith offers a thoroughly researched and...
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A Defense Department dictionary helped this poet write in the language of war
Poet Solmaz Sharif’s book “LOOK” examines the violence of war using language pulled from a military dictionary. Photo by Arash Saedinia.Solmaz Sharif says she has always been obsessed with...
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Shields and Brooks on Trump’s ‘solitariness’ and Clinton’s fight for...
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioHARI SREENIVASAN: And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David...
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In Fallujah, ISIS is gone — but so is everything else
Watch Video | Listen to the AudioJUDY WOODRUFF: Now to the final report in our three-part series this week, The Fight for Iraq.The coming battle to reclaim the city of Mosul from ISIS will be the...
View ArticleIraqi Forces Move to Take Back Mosul from ISIS
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. The city of Mosul in northern Iraq is surrounded by a coalition of fighters aiming hoping to retake the the strategic location, which has been...
View ArticleCalifornia Vets Forced to Pay Back Thousands in Enlistment Bonuses
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment.More than a decade ago, the California National Guard was working on a way to recruit more troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. They decided...
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Sister’s worry over another deployment inspires this Veterans Day poem
Gretchen Marquette’s debut collection of poetry is called “May Day” by Graywolf Press.Gretchen Marquette says she remembers very clearly when she wrote the poem. Her younger brother had called the...
View ArticleObamacare Up in Smoke, Ford Challenges Trump, Fighting Terror With Music
Coming up on today's show:As Republicans rally to repeal Obamacare, The Takeaway considers the future of the Affordable Care Act with Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the ACA and an economics...
View ArticleFighting Terrorism With a Cello
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment.In April 2015, a car bomb exploded in the Mansour district of Baghdad and killed 10 people. Bombings are not unusual in Baghdad, but what...
View ArticleWeek 5: The Future of National Security Under Trump
There are big questions facing the Trump administration about its approach to national security. On Monday, President Trump named Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be his new national security adviser....
View ArticleWeek 5: Can President Trump's Policy Claims Be Taken Seriously?
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Baghdad on Monday for an unannounced visit aimed at reassuring Iraqi allies. He told reporters that despite Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary, “We’re not...
View ArticlePresidential Diplomacy in 1989
Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and the author of When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War...
View ArticleAn Iranian-American's Grand Tour of Exile
Author Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi discusses her new novel Call Me Zebra. It follows the journey of 22 year-old Zebra, who fled Iran with her family during the Iraq War and settled in New York....
View ArticleIraq's Accidental Journalists
Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the night of “Shock and Awe” exploding across the night sky over Baghdad, the opening salvo in an ongoing war.It was a deadly conflict to cover and foreign...
View ArticleWe, the Liberators
In March of 2003, U.S.–led coalition forces invaded Iraq, sparking a seemingly endless conflagration that claimed tens of thousands of lives and continues to shape events both international and...
View ArticleReporting From the Quagmire
In the weeks before US–led coalition forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, John Burnett— now a southwest correspondent for NPR — was chosen to take part in the military’s embedded journalists program. The...
View Article'Shock and Awe' & the Lies That Started the Iraq War
Rob Reiner discusses his new film, Shock and Awe, which looks at the journalists who questioned the Bush White House’s justification for the Iraq War. While criticized at the start of the war, history...
View ArticleRob Reiner's Film on the Iraq War, Meet Mr. Rogers, The Last of the Avocados,...
Rob Reiner discusses his film Shock and Awe, based on the true story of journalists who uncovered the Bush administration's deception in the Iraq War. Morgan Neville discusses his new documentary,...
View ArticleThe Eights | 2008 and the End of the Bush Era
John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, columnist at The New York Post and contributing editor of The Weekly Standard, joins the show for this installment of The Eights: A Brief History of the American...
View ArticleThe Truth and Lies Behind the Iraq War
Immediately after 9/11, the Bush administration started its campaign to wage war in Iraq. It is now well-documented that the grounds for doing so — that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass...
View ArticleIraqis Who Aided the US Military Are Being Denied Refugee Status in America
Since day one, the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq has been dependent on Iraqis to act as interpreters and guides. The job has come with considerable risk, especially in the wake of ISIS,...
View ArticleThe United States of Amnesia
The end to the Mueller investigation has been wholly unsatisfying for those who see Trump’s presidency as an aberrant detour on conservatism’s march. This presidency, this in-your-face self-dealing,...
View ArticleIran's Grief; Congress Will Come To (Dis)Order; The Top Political Risks of...
Coming up on today's show:Azadeh Moaveni, journalist, academic and senior gender analyst at International Crisis Group, talks about the emotional reaction in Iran to the assassination of Qassem...
View ArticleLast Chance at Justice
History tells us that, in a time of crisis, we have to be careful about how we respond. At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, Salah Hasan Nusaif al-Ejaili was working as a journalist when the U.S....
View ArticleAnn Patchett Reads Maile Meloy
Ann Patchett joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Proxy Marriage,” by Maile Meloy, which was published in The New Yorker in 2012. Patchett is the author of eight novels, including...
View ArticleThe Legacy of Abu Ghraib
One man’s ongoing effort to get justice for the abuse he endured at a U.S. prison in Iraq. At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, Salah Hasan Nusaif al-Ejaili was working as a journalist when the U.S....
View ArticleThe Complicated Legacy of Colin Powell
Colin Powell was a Vietnam War veteran, a four-star general, and—among other high-level positions in the U.S. government—the Secretary of State under George W. Bush. Powell was well known for his...
View ArticleRevisiting the Iraq War in "The Army We Had"
The American soldiers who were interviewed 20 years ago for the documentary "Gunner Palace" about the war in Iraq, look back on their experiences today in "The Army We Had." While many Americans may...
View ArticleAmir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble Featuring Hamid Al-Saadi at Drom
Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble featuring Maqam vocalist Hamid Al-Saadi at DromApril 2. 7:30PM. $20-25.As a composer and as a musician, Amir ElSaffar brings together two different musical streams....
View ArticleThe Day Saddam Hussein’s Statue Came Down
On April 9, 2003, a US marine battalion rolled triumphantly into Firdos Square, in the center of Baghdad, two and a half weeks after the US invasion of Iraq began. Hours later, the marines toppled a...
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