We talk to reporters who have been on the front lines in Afghanistan, and discuss how President Obama’s decision on troops might play out on the ground.

Max Baucus rolls out a healthcare plan. Missile defense. Murder at Yale. Jimmy Carter talks race. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Gay and straight service members launch a national campaign to change “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and US policy on gays in the military.

We’ll talk with military families behind two long wars about what it takes to keep the home fires burning.

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.

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.

Filling the ranks in wartime. We talk with a US Army recruiter, his recruit, and the film director who features them up close in a new HBO documentary, “The Recruiter.”

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 [...]

We look at the meaning and uncertain milestone of 4,000 U.S. troops dead in Iraq.
Guests:
Tom Bowman, Pentagon correspondent for NPR.
Alissa Rubin, Deputy Baghdad Bureau Chief for the New York Times.
Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
Rosemary Palmer, mother of Lance Corporal Augie Schraeder who was serving [...]

Five years ago today, the “shock and awe” bombardment was ending in Baghdad, and U.S. troopers were pouring over the border from Kuwait into Iraq.
They were not told to expect a five-year slog: longer, as Barack Obama now puts it, than World War I, longer than World War II, longer than the Civil War.
In this [...]

When the American Air Force takes to the skies and needs fuel, its jets have fueled up, mid-air, forever, from American-made Boeing air tankers. You’ve seen the pictures: The long hose comes down, the jet tops up, and off it goes.
Last week, the gigantic contract to build the next generation of air tankers took off [...]

The United States alone spends more than the rest of the world’s nations combined on defense. And defense spending has surged during the George W. Bush years, to its highest level in real dollars since World War II. Yet there is scarcely a word on the ‘08 campaign trail about military spending.
There’s plenty to talk [...]

A year ago, without warning, China shot one of its own satellites out of the sky. The U.S. protested loudly. But what a difference a year makes. The U.S. Navy is preparing to take out one of our own ailing spy satellites with a ship-launched missile — perhaps tonight.
The bus-sized satellite carries half a ton [...]

In the glare of presidential campaign lights and stock market bonfires, it’s almost possible for the war in Iraq to disappear.
But not if you’re a soldier, or an Iraqi, or cutting the checks in Washington, or feeling the strain at the Pentagon.
Iraq’s Defense Minister says U.S. troops will be needed for another decade. John McCain [...]

For too many of us, it’s the forgotten war. High up along the rocky ridges of eastern Afghanistan, American soldiers are fighting a grueling fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And they’re doing it the old-fashioned way: up close and personal.
In the Korengal Valley, one of the most dangerous places in the world for [...]

It feels like we’ve seen this before: US troops make progress in Iraq, while Iraq’s political and ethnic divide appears as vast as ever.
And yet something real has happened on the ground: the terrible bloodletting brought on by the fall of Saddam has ebbed. Neighborhoods are quieter. And as promised, the first drawdown of US [...]

After World War II, some 8 million veterans came home and went to college on the GI Bill, helping create the American middle class. Now, the latest generation of vets — battle-tried in Iraq and Afghanistan — is coming home, and many are going to college.
They’ve got less help from Uncle Sam, but they are [...]

One point six million American military service members have now been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. When they come home, they are veterans of those wars. And their struggles to reintegrate and recharge are part of the cost of those wars.
For the last year, NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdling has been digging into how we and [...]

September 16, Nisour Square, Baghdad. Heavily-armed guards from Blackwater USA, on the job, opened fire, and left seventeen dead: men, women, and children.
In the weeks since, the world has opened fire on Blackwater, and the exploding, multi-billion dollar realm of super-charged private armies that it represents. The “mercenary industry” is the new tag. Gunfire, and [...]