Saad Eskander has faced down looters and gunfire as director of Iraq’s National Library and Archives. He joins us to look at Iraq’s future as US combat troops prepare to leave.

In our first hour today, we reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and spoke with Ambassador Christopher Hill. He discussed everything from Prime Minister Maliki’s recent political “dating game” to the “elusive concept” of having firm political rules in Iraq.

A U.S. offensive in Afghanistan. Al Franken heads to the Senate. Mark Sanford keeps talking. And unemployment keeps rising. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Tuesday, June 30th, U.S. combat troops will be all but gone from Iraqi cities. We’ll talk with two reporters, an American and an Iraqi, about where the pullout leaves Iraq.

For Memorial Day, we talk with veteran and scholar Andrew Bacevich about America, war, and the world: troops, leaders, and fateful choices.

President Obama speaks in Turkey, and reaches out to the Muslim world. We’ll hear reactions from across the region.

President Obama has announced his plan to end, he says, the war in Iraq – as he turns hard to Afghanistan. We’ll ask leading anti-war critics how they see Obama on war.

Pulitzer Prize-winning defense writer Tom Ricks on the U.S. military’s lessons from Iraq – and challenge in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, more purple-dyed fingers as Iraqis vote in provincial elections. In Washington, the White House and Pentagon weigh plans to end the war. We’ll look at what’s next.

Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command until last year, gives us his read on threats, and opportunities, now in the Middle East and beyond.

Obama’s national security team goes bipartisan. Will his policy? We’ll ask top analysts what kind of defense the country really needs.

On Veterans’ Day, we look at American women at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what a new generation of women in uniform has seen at the battlefront.

The last big issue: America’s wars. With one week to election day, we’ll look at McCain and Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Frontline dispatches from where the fighting never ends. New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins on Iraq, Afghanistan, and “The Forever War.”

Reporter Farnaz Fassihi talks about ordinary Iraqis during the war’s darkest days.

Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you almost never see the casualties in American newspapers. We’ll hear the debate over censorship and battlefield images.

With Senator Obama in Middle East, we look at what a President Obama’s real options would be in the tough terrain from Israel to Islamabad.

Talk about awkward.
The United States and Iraq are negotiating a new legal framework for U.S. military operations in Iraq. A new “status of forces agreement.”
And Iraq’s prime minister stands up and says the negotiations aren’t working. That they’re at an impasse. That Iraq’s demands are unacceptable to the U.S. and U.S. demands [...]

Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring the sacrifices of American military men and women in war. On this Memorial Day, there is no shortage of sacrifice to consider.
In wars since 9/11, thousands have died. More than 400 in Afghanistan. More than 4,080 now in Iraq.
In March this year, when the U.S. military’s [...]

For most Americans, the sacrifices made by service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are — after all these years — still out of sight and far away.
For colleagues, for comrades in arms, those sacrifices are as close as a man’s last breath. A woman’s last word.
Memorial Day honors sacrifice across many generations. But [...]