Iraq & Afganistan Wars

Rep. Charlie Wilson died this week at 76. Fresh Air remembers the brash Texas Democrat, who was best known for secretly arming the Afghan mujahedeen against Soviet troops in the 1980s. In 2003, both Wilson and George Crile, author of Charlie Wilson's War, spoke to Fresh Air about the covert operation.

In November of 2009, journalist Aram Roston published a story in The Nation titled "How the US Funds the Taliban" about how U.S. military contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. Roston is an award-winning investigative journalist who has reported from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. His 2008 book, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, is about the relationship between the U.S. government and one privileged Iraqi.

T. Christian Miller doesn't shy away from trouble. He has reported on conflicts in Kosovo, Israel and Iraq, among others, and the Web site he founded, ProPublica, is dedicated to covering stories with "moral force" — providing in-depth coverage of environmental, defense, and human rights issues. One story Miller has been following closely, in a series of articles titled "Disposable Army," is the fate of employees who worked for private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jeremy Scahill has been investigating Blackwater, a military contractor with a long involvement in the Iraq war. His latest story, published Nov. 23 in The Nation, uncovers the contractor's involvement in a covert program in Pakistan run by the U.S. Joint Special Command.

President Obama has said he wouldn't send more troops to Afghanistan if he didn't think the security of the American people was at stake. Peter Bergen gives us an update on the threat: what's left of the Taliban and its connection to al-Qaida.

Pakistan has an estimated 80 to 100 nuclear warheads. How secure are they? Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh talks with host Terry Gross about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and what Pakistan and the U.S. are doing to keep it safe.

When Marine engineer Jonathan Kuniholm returned to his industrial-designed shop after a tour of duty in Iraq, one of his first projects was personal: He wanted to improve on the design of the prosthetics he'd been using since he lost part of his right arm in an ambush. Kuniholm and his colleagues founded the Open Prosthetics Project, an open-source collaboration that shares its innovations freely.

Advances in military medicine mean that more soldiers are surviving on the battlefieled, but many are coming home with missing limbs. When they come home, those soldiers turn to Colonel Paul Pasquina, medical director of the amputee program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the latest in in prosthetics.

Washington Post Pentagon Correspondent Greg Jaffe joins Fresh Air to talk about the military options available to President Obama as he develops a new strategy in Afghanistan. Jaffe is co-author of the new book The Fourth Star, about the four generals who led the US military's efforts in Iraq.

New York Times reporter David Rohde was covering Pakistan and Afghanistan in November 2008 when he and two companions were kidnapped by the Taliban and held in the tribal areas of Pakistan for seven months. Rohde recounts the ambush — and his subsequent imprisonment and escape.

A staff writer for The New Yorker, Jane Mayer joins Fresh Air host Terry Gross to talk about what she discovered while researching her upcoming article "The Predator War." The story explores the ethics and controversies surrounding the CIA's covert drone program, in which remote-controlled airplanes target and kill terror suspects within Pakistan — a country that's a U.S. ally, not an adversary.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid discusses the challenges facing President Obama in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His most recent book is Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

Charles Sennott has been reporting on the Taliban since 1995. He recently returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he revisited the people and places he got to know through his reporting.

Washington Post military correspondent Ann Scott Tyson was recently embedded with Marines in Afghanistan fighting in Helmand Province, a stronghold of the Taliban.

Writer and director Armando Iannucci's new film In the Loop involves an unnamed country in the Middle East, whisperings of military involvement, epically foul tirades and razor sharp political satire.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews In the Loop the new British political satire co-starring James Gandolfini.

Did the Bush administration discourage an investigation into a mass grave of Taliban prisoners? Dr. Jennifer Leaning, Nathaniel Raymond and Dr. Nizam Peerwani of Physicians for Human Rights discuss their investigation of the alleged massacre at Dasht-i-Leili.

Journalist Bradley Graham discusses the successes and failures of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. Graham is the author of By His Own Rules, a lengthy new biography of Rumsfeld.

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow discuss their collaboration on The Hurt Locker, a combat movie about an Army bomb squad that roams Iraq in search of explosives to defuse.

Allison Silverman, the executive producer and head writer of The Colbert Report, discusses the show's recent broadcasts from the combat zone in Iraq.