Website Spotlight: Bush's War

Website URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/

Introductory Note:

Welcome to one in a series of posts which spotlight quality websites that I use with my U.S. History survey course students at Azusa Pacific University to enrich the regular material in our learning modules.

In this post, I limit myself to those specific aspects of the website which I find fit particularly well within our face-to-face class sessions (each student is required to bring a laptop to class) or as the basis for the students' regularly-assigned written reactions.

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I ask the students to work through the following links:

I. Annotated Video Timeline (175 video clips)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/cron/

With each of the 175 video clips, there are sections entitled "Related Video," Related Pages," and "Interviews" associated with that clip. Those links sometimes take you to other FRONTLINE videos than Bush's War itself.

Click on 10 that interest you the most.

II. Extended Interviews
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/interviews/all.html

Here are some of the ones you should look at:

L. Paul Bremer
John Burns
Ahmad Chalabi
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Dick Cheney
James Dobbins
Jay Garner
Michael Gordon
Frederick Kagan
Hamid Karzai
Jack Keane
Andrew Krepinevich
Douglas MacGregor
H.R. McMaster
David Petraeus
Tom Ricks
John Yoo

III. Battlefield Stories
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/stories/

Here are some of the ones you should read:

1. Bad Voodoo's War
2. Rules of Engagement
3. A Company of Soldiers: Innovating & Improvising

IV. Timeline: The Evolution of the Bush Doctrine
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html

V. Map: The Insurgency
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/insurgency/map/

VI. Reporter's Dispatches

Baghdad From a Bulletproof Window
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/report/

A Visit to an Iraqi Police Station
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gangsofiraq/notebooks/smith.html

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Concluding Note:

I hope you will use this blog post in conjunction with both the modules on my Learning Professor wiki and the numerous other posts in my Website Spotlight series.

1. The website spotlighted in this post fits within the following U.S. History survey course module on the wiki:
http://thelearningprofessor.wikispaces.com/Bush+43

2. The other blog posts in my Website Spotlight series--chronologically displayed by U.S. History survey course module-- can be found on this wiki page:
http://thelearningprofessor.wikispaces.com/WEBSITE+SPOTLIGHT