Conflict in Iraq
By John Rutherford, NBC News Producer, Washington
Despite a recent decrease in violence, the number of American troops killed this year in Iraq is the highest since the war began. At least 853 Americans have died so far in 2007, surpassing the 849 killed in 2004. The military put its best spin on these figures.
"The strategy was to interject our soldiers between the Iraqi citizens and the terrorists," Lt. Col. Douglas Ollivant, chief of plans for American forces in Baghdad, told the Washington Post. "A regrettable consequence of that is your casualties go up."
Among those casualties were 11 of the 15 Americans who died last week in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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By Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent
Federal officials and legal experts agree that what the State Department gave to Blackwater guards in Iraq is not immunity from prosecution but rather a promise not to use statements by the employees against them.
The Justice Department says the move by State's diplomatic security investigators complicated the effort to prosecute Blackwater employees. But this may all be academic, given the doubt about whether federal law actually covers their activities in Iraq in the first place.
Justice and State Department officials say Diplomatic Security investigators told the Blackwater guards that they must answer questions, but that anything they said would not be used against them. This is a standard warning in government misconduct investigations, though some legal experts are surprised it was given in a case like this involving potential criminal conduct.
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by Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor
A number of television journalists gathered for lunch with the president at the White House today -- a practice becoming more and more common when this president has a major speech to deliver. The following is a review of my notes, and is offered here under the ground rules established by the assembled White House senior aides. Vice President Cheney attended but did not speak.
As we now know, the speech tonight will amount to a full embrace of General Petraeus' recommendations. President Bush strongly insisted there was no White House guidance given to the General before he made his findings known. The president will announce the first of the troop withdrawals starting immediately (just over 2,000 Marines) though as a practical matter such things take time.
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By Robert Bazell, NBC News' Chief Science and Health Correspondent
As I have written here before the men and women who provide the medical care for U.S. and Iraqi wounded do a fantastic job. But on this trip I can see the strain brought on by the prolonged deployment, the extra five months.
I’m in the Ibn Sina hospital in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a decent facility built by Saddam Hussein for friends and family. The 28th Combat Support Hospital (CSH or "cash" in military speak), out of Ft. Bragg, N.C., currently staffs it. Combat Support Hospitals are like other numbered Army units with a home base. When this group leaves, the hospital will have a different number when the next CSH takes over.
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by Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor
The test of a writer is the ability to paint a picture in the absence of one. I'm going to attempt to describe what I saw last night -- which may indeed defy simple description, because it bordered on the spiritual.
Producer Subrata De and I boarded the 8:30 p.m. Shuttle to Washington after Nightly News. A few minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia, after we had climbed out to 10,000 feet and had reached our initial leveling-off on a southern heading, the flight attentant on the sparsely-populated plane called my attention to the window next to me, on the left side of the aircraft. It was a stunning sight.
The two powerful beams of blue light, switched on each year at nightfall on September 11th, marked the spot amid the twinkling lights down below, in Lower Manhattan, where the towers once stood. They sliced open the sky -- brilliant, powerful poles that shot up past our aircraft through the humid, boisterous air over the city. The only impediment to their skyward progress up to the heavens was a passing cloud about 5,000 feet above us as we passed by. The cloud caught the light and trapped it -- gathering up the powerful upshot of blue and absorbing it completely, until it moved on, yielding that spot in the sky, and clearing the way for the beam to shoot up, past a point where the human eye could follow it.
I lost sight of the blue beams as our aircraft made its unsentimental progress above the Jersey Shore, heading south to Washington. We could feel the acceleration as the pilots pushed the throttles forward, having received permission to step up to our given cruising altitude. I looked back at the blue light until I couldn't anymore. I was a bit surprised that the pilots hadn't brought it to the attention to those on board. I looked forward and saw them all sitting in the dark, unaware. I wanted to tell everyone on the aircraft what they were missing, but common sense took over, and I assumed that such a mission (going from seat to seat to inform my 20-or-so fellow passengers of a striking sight out the window) would violate one of the many in-flight rules instituted after the very same attack that the blue lights were meant to commemorate. The aviation rules we now live under are the least of what has happened in the name of that attack. Our pilots last night were all business. So were the National Guardsmen who watched me go through security. It all goes back to the blue lights.
Subrata and I talked about what we had just witnessed. The flight attendants crammed around the window in the row behind us, discussing the same thing. Soon, the process the airlines euphemistically call "beverage and snack service" was underway, and before too long, we were landing in Washington. During the ride to the hotel, past the fortified monuments and the police cars that now stand watch outside places like the Department of Agriculture, I thought about what I had seen on the plane.
Six years later, many of us consider it an embarassment that there's no memorial to 9-11 inside the sad, tragic expanse of Ground Zero -- just a commuter train station and a lot of construction equipment. What we saw from the air was a towering memorial.
The arrival of September 11th each year is always a setback for many of us who live and work in New York. While some of us were affected by the attack more than others, we all deal with it in our own way. In my experience, the day always feels sullen and heavy, and the evening hours begin to bring a sense of coming relief, when the clock and calender both approach "12." That was not the case last night. More than any other event during the day -- the tolling bells, the long list of names, the wreaths and roses and the steady rain -- the two blue towers of light visible off the left wing of our aircraft were as impactful in the darkness of evening as anything in a long day of remembrances. Exactly as they were intended to be.
Questioning the General
We're in Washington today to interview General Petraeus. While he's had no shortage of television exposure this week, this was the day scheduled for interviews with the network television anchors. Our order was determined by lottery, and so -- to paraphrase a well-worn expression -- when Charlie Gibson stood up, I sat down. And Katie after me. I had last seen the General over dinner in his quarters in the former Saddam Hussein palace he (and the U.S. Command structure) now occupies in Bagdhad.
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by John Rutherford, producer, Washington D.C.
What should the U.S. do in Iraq? Gen. David Petraeus is set to deliver a much-anticipated progress report on Iraq in a few weeks, but we went out to Walter Reed Army Medical Center today to get an assessment of the war from those closest to the situation, the soldiers themselves.
Click here to watch the video.
Three of six men receiving Purple Hearts agreed to talk to us, and all three of them were generally supportive of the war effort.
"We're doing good for the community and pushing the bad guys out," Pfc. William Goodman, 23, of Concord, N.C., said. Goodman was injured by a rocket-propelled grenade while on a dismounted patrol in Baghdad.
Sgt. Jeffrey Wray, 29, of Chesapeake, Va., who was injured while on an IED detonation mission in Baqubah, said the situation was improving when he left Iraq.
"The Iraqi people were a little safer than they were before," he said, "but I think we still have a lot of work to do and a lot of steps to go in Iraq to fix it."
Spc. Nathan Dehnke, 32, of St. Peters, Mo., said he was under a "busy mission load" before being injured by a roadside bomb in south Baghdad.
"It was obviously not the best of times or not the best things to be participating in," he said, "but by the same token I'm proud to have served with the people I was there with."
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by Dawn Fratangelo, correspondent
Each and every time I meet a family connected to this war-- and there have been so many who've graciously shared their homes and life stories-- I am in awe. The young woman you will meet tonight on Nightly News shares the strength and commitment of countless others. But there is one aspect of her story that is unlike any other we've encountered in our coverage of this conflict in Iraq: After her husband, Eddy Garvin, was killed in Anbar Province nine months ago, this widow decided to join the Army and hopes to be deployed to Iraq to work as a medic.
I shook my head in disbelief when I first learned of Melissa Garvin and her decision. So, too, did producer, Sam Singal, and our camera crew. I'll be honest-- we all walked into the interview assuming that grief and loss were clouding her judgment. What other explanation could there be? Well, it turns out, we all walked away impressed by her reasoning and motivation.
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by Richard Engel, correspondent
The girls circle the stage in a nightclub outside of Damascus, holding hands in protective pairs as they march, always counterclockwise, at the same slow pace, one unenthusiastic step per second.
It’s 3 a.m., but bright as a hospital ward in here. The club owners leave on the fluorescent lights so customers can get a good look at what’s for sale. The girls’ faces are painted in slashes of pink blush. Their lipstick is drab browns and beiges. They want it that way, so it doesn’t distract from their eyes, accented with glittering splashes of emerald green and sapphire blue. Many girls connect their thin, shaped eyebrows with a black pencil, and have orange and yellow plastic flowers in their long hair, blackened with henna.
One girl, gawky and about 13, has eyeglasses tucked into the top of her tight, lilac sequined dress. Her sister, who says she’s 14, chews bubble gum and keeps borrowing the glasses. She can’t see when she puts them on and waves her hands in front of her, pretending to be blind. It makes the sisters laugh. They are bored circling all night. I guess they also want to forget where they are. Maybe it helps if you can’t see. The 14-year-old also has a mobile phone stuffed into her bra. She pulls it out when men, mostly from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, call her over to their tables to exchange ‘missed calls.’ The men call the next day and negotiate a price and a meeting place.
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By Jane Arraf, Correspondent
It was a moment Lisa Ramaci thought might never happen –- the doors at JFK airport swinging open and a young woman in a headscarf and high heels walking into a new life of freedom –- and safety.
It was a very long journey for both of them. Nour al-Khal is the Iraqi interpreter who was with Lisa’s husband, Steven Vincent, when he was abducted and murdered in Basra in 2005. Nour was wounded in the attack and Lisa had spent 18 months fighting U.S. authorities to bring her to the United States.
I first met Lisa more than a year ago at a dinner for the Committee to Protect Journalists. She introduced herself as the widow of Steven Vincent. His murder then was recent enough that you could tell she found it strange to be defining herself that way. Over the next year, this extraordinary woman started a foundation in Steven’s name to help the families of local journalists killed in war zones and successfully battled to get Nour to the United States –- all while being treated for breast cancer.
“I was filling out paperwork, making phone calls, e-mails, pledging to stand financial security for her, promising that I would let her live with me,” Lisa said. Many times it seemed she would never get her here.
(Photo: Lisa and Nour in Bryant Park)
But now, here we were with her at JFK, waiting for Nour to arrive, to meet the woman who would be sharing her home. I’d met Nour in the Jordanian capital, Amman, while she was waiting for her visa. Like many Iraqi refugees, she lived in fear that she would be deported back to Iraq. And she wasn’t sure what to expect from her new life.
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