The Daily Nightly : Conflict in Iraq

Iraq vet looks to aid troops in combat

Ian Sager — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:45:00 GMT

By Scott Foster, NBC News producer, Washington

Last night, on our Veteran's Day edition of Nightly News, Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported how military chaplains are serving on the front lines helping combat troops overcome the stresses from war.

One of the characters we included in the story is Skip Spoerke, and Iraq war veteran whose own experience shows just how positive the influence of a military chaplain can be.

Dealing with sleeplessness, depression and what would ultimately become a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, Spoerke says his life was saved through interaction with a military chaplain.

Skip, who is now out of the Army, is learning to live with the lingering effects of PTSD and says he's having a much better time coping with the symptoms.

In fact, there's an additional positive angle to Skip's story. He's personally working to ease the burden on troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan by helping them realize that their combat service is appreciated.

Skip helps run a non-profit organization that bears his name, Special Kindness in Packages, Inc., which sends care packages to troops overseas.

On a recent Monday at a post office outside Boston, Skip and several other volunteers sent out nearly 200 shoebox side packages that included cookies, candy, DVDs, and other donated items designed to lift the spirits of American troops serving in the nation's wars.

Skip says he's motivated by knowing that often, a care package can be just what a service members needs after a particularly stressful or difficult day. "All of a sudden you come back from a mission and you have a care package and it lightens the mood, it lightens everything, it really does make the service that you're doing worth it," he explains.

Skip knows the toll combat stress can take. "For me to be able to be on the sending end of this and not the receiving end I know that I'm still supporting my friends, my comrades and the guys that I served with over there before," he says.

Skip explains, "...a service member doesn't know necessarily know that a care package is coming...it's puts a smile on the troops' faces and that's why I'm happy to be a part of this organization."

To find out more about Skip and his organization, visit www.skipcares.org.

Click here to watch Jim Miklaszewski's report on military chaplains.

Fallen but not forgotten: 15 more deaths

Daily Nightly Contributor — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:33:00 GMT

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.

1. Army Master Sgt. Thomas Bruner, 50, of Owensboro, Ky., liked Christmas so much he even decorated the inside of his garage. "We've always had big Christmases," Jane, his wife of 27 years, told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "He had reindeer, he had lights, a snowman, a sled." Bruner, a member of the Army Reserve, died Oct. 28 in Kabul, Afghanistan, of an apparent heart attack. He was on his second deployment to Afghanistan.

2. Army Maj. Jeffrey Calero, 34, of Queens Village, N.Y., loved to tinker with his 1970 convertible and spend time with his fiancee, Allison. He was an engineer in Manhattan before his National Guard unit was activated in June. Calero, a Green Beret, was killed Oct. 29 by a roadside bomb in Kajaki, Afghanistan. "He was gung-ho about going there," his father told Newsday. "Whenever duty called, he was there."

3. Army Staff Sgt. James Bullard, 28, of Marion, S.C., was home on leave in September for the birth of his son, Kristopher. "He was a family person, a good-hearted guy, an all-around good guy," his brother-in-law told scnow.com. Bullard, with the South Carolina National Guard, was killed Oct. 30 when his unit was attacked by insurgents in Spearwan Ghar, Afghanistan. Besides Kristopher, he is survived by his widow, Amber.

4. Army Sgt. Louis Griese, 30, of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., left for his third tour in Iraq about a month after his daughter, Skylar, was born. His mother didn't want him to go. "I said, 'I'm afraid for you this time,'" she told wbay.com. "And he said, 'Mama, I'm afraid, too, but that's my job.'" Griese, with the 101st Airborne Division, died Oct. 31 in Tikrit of injuries suffered in a roadside bomb blast. He leaves Skylar and his widow, Stephany.

5. Army Cpt. Timothy McGovern, 28, of Idaville, Ind., was in charge of a 90-member unit of the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq. "He was able to do his job without sending a note or a letter to a mom or dad," his uncle told the Indianapolis Star. "No one was killed." Until Oct. 31, when McGovern and one of his men were killed by a roadside bomb in Mosul. "For this to happen to him has been very hard to swallow," McGovern's uncle told the Star.

6. Army Spc. Brandon Smitherman, 21, of Conroe, Texas, died in the same bomb blast that killed Cpt. McGovern. He was a third-string defensive end and deep snapper on his high school football team. "He was a great kid who always did what we asked him to do," his coach told the Montgomery County Courier. Smitherman joined the Army in 2005 and was a general construction equipment operator for the 1st Cavalry Division. He was due home in January.

7. Army Sgt. Daniel McCall, 24, of Pace, Fla., was a star athlete in high school, playing football and running track. He came in second in the 400-meter run in the state championship track meet. "He was a happy-go-lucky kid," his high school coach told the Pensacola News Journal. "He could run forever and run fast." McCall and two other members of the 3rd Infantry Division were killed by a roadside bomb in Salman Pak, Iraq, on Oct. 30.

8. Army Pfc. Rush "Mickey" Jenkins liked to wrestle, play the guitar, and shoot skeet growing up in Grassy Creek, Va. He died in the same bomb blast on Oct. 30 that killed Sgt. McCall. It was Jenkins' 22nd birthday. He had been home on leave just two weeks before then. "I just feel like it was God's way of letting us say goodbye to him, letting us see him one more time before it was his time to go," his younger brother told WSET.

9. Army Pvt. Cody Carver, 19, of Haskell, Okla., was remembered for his wicked sense of humor. He liked to tape the kitchen sink sprayer so that it squirted his mother when she turned on the water. "I asked him, 'Son, is the Army going to take away this part of you?'" his mother told the Muskogee Phoenix. "He said, 'No, Mom, you'll always need to be looking around corners for me.'" Carver had been in Iraq less than a month when he died in the Salman Pak bombing.

10. Air Force Master Sgt. Thomas Crowell, 36, of Neosho, Mo., was a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. "He was very, very proud of that," his mother told the Joplin Globe. Crowell and two other OSI special agents were killed Nov. 1 by a roadside bomb near Balad Air Base in Iraq. Crowell, who had been in the Air Force for nearly 18 years, was seven months from retirement. He leaves his widow, Carol, and two children, Eric, 9, and Ian, 2.

11. Air Force Staff Sgt. David Wieger, 28, of North Huntingdon, Pa., died in the same explosion as Sgt. Crowell. "There were two Air Force men at the door," Wieger's mother told KDKA. "I started screaming, thinking if I just keep backing up, I won't have to hear it, but I knew right away what it was." Wieger was remembered fondly at his former high school. "He was a great young man, great sense of humor," a school official told ThePittsburghChannel. "It's tragic, just tragic."

12. Nathan Schuldheiss, 27, of Newport, R.I., was a civilian assigned to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He was on his way to interview a group of informants when the bomb blast killed him and Sgts. Crowell and Wieger. In a will he wrote before deploying to Iraq, Schuldheiss, who had a law degree, left $1,000 for the bar tab at his funeral. He also asked that his ashes be spread over the Gulf of Mexico, where he loved to sail.

13. Army 2nd Lt. Tracy Alger's passion back home in New Auburn, Wis., was barrel-racing, a rodeo-like event in which horse and rider maneuver around large barrels. "We spent a lot of time together traveling to barrel races," her mother told the Fond du Lac Reporter. "We did everything together." Alger, 30, a transportation officer with the 101st Airborne Division, was killed Nov. 1 in Shubayshen by a roadside bomb. She had been in Iraq two weeks.

14. Army Sgt. 1st Class Johnny Walls, 41, of Bremerton, Wash., joined the Army 22 years ago, right out of high school. "The Army was his life," his sister told the Kitsap Sun. Walls, with the 1st Infantry Division, was killed Nov. 2 in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, by small arms fire. "He was just going to have his birthday [Nov. 15], so we were all getting stuff together to send the day we found out," his sister told the Sun. Walls leaves his widow, Alene, and sons, Brent, Alex, and Bradley.

15. Army Pfc. Dwane Covert Jr., 20, of Tonawanda, N.Y., was cleaning up debris at a base in Al-Sahra, Iraq, on Nov. 3 when he picked up a bomb disguised as a caulking gun. It exploded, killing Covert, a member of the 3rd Infantry Division. "He was due to come home in December because he has a baby on the way," his mother told the Tonawanda News. His widow, Jeanette, is expecting their daughter, Zoe. Covert also leaves a 22-month-old son, Cameron.

Washington Producer John Rutherford is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He posts a weekly tribute to service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The question of immunity

Barbara Raab — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:56:00 GMT

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.

The tactic is an outgrowth of a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The court said if government employees are told they'll be dismissed if they don't cooperate with an internal investigation, anything they say cannot be used to prosecute them. In other words, the government can't coerce employees into self-incrimination by threatening to fire them. State apparently decided that same protection extends to contractors. And a State Department official today says this procedure has been used routinely by State investigators in Iraq following shooting incidents.

A team of FBI agents was sent to Iraq specifically to work around the immunity problem. Its task was to gather evidence independent of what Blackwater told State's Diplomatic Security investigators. Today, a Justice spokesman says, "Any suggestion that the Blackwater employees in question have been given immunity from federal criminal prosecution is inaccurate. The Justice Department and the FBI continue the criminal investigation of this matter knowing that this investigation involves a number of complex issues."

That's an understatement. Federal law says Americans who commit crimes overseas can be prosecuted if they do it "while employed by or accompanying the Armed Forces." Many legal experts say Blackwater, working under contract to the State Department, doesn't come under that law.

For now, the FBI continues its investigation. Agents have not yet talked to all the Blackwater employees involved, some of whom have returned to the US and others of whom have obtained lawyers.

State of his thoughts

Daily Nightly Editor — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:57:00 GMT

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.

He will say the Iraqis are asking the United States to enter into discussions about its long-term presence in Iraq, and the president is known to favor a presence modeled -- at far fewer numbers of troops -- on that of U.S. forces in South Korea. He believes an American presence in Iraq is part of an overall Middle East policy and is aware of the view that many Americans have turned isolationist.

The president indicated, rather forcefully, that he is against a draft and doesn't feel pressure to draw down military forces based on the end of tours of duty coming due. He further indicated that if more troops were needed in Iraq (or anywhere else, for that matter), the Guard and Reserve numbers could be increased. The president is known to be following enlistment figures closely -- more important to him is RE-enlistment, based on his contention that it is a barometer of discontent in the military ranks.

The president was angered by the MoveOn.org advertisement questioning General Petraeus. He believes the ad was uncalled for and he used harsh language to describe his reaction. His emotion was fueled by his respect for the hard work, intellect and sacrifice of General Petraeus, and he indicated that while visiting Iraq recently, he warned Petraeus about the coming media glare and the importance being attached to his report in the United States.

He described the General in very glowing terms as a charismatic figure, but the president indicated the General's name shouldn't be attached to the plan because he, as commander-in-chief, takes responsibility for it. As he insisted today, any blame for failure goes to the president.

Notably, when asked about Robert Draper's new book, "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush" -- a portion of which deals with the disbanding of the Iraqi Army -- the president (who indicated he has not read the book) insisted there was no Iraqi Army left to re-constitute back at that time, saying most of Saddam's former fighters had been driven to the north where they fled and dispersed. I pointed out that this seemed like a new response; for four and a half years, the disbanding of the Army has been seen as one of the chief failings of the Iraq war. The president seemed un-bothered by that perception.

On Iran, the president indicated that future military action remains an option, and enumerated the incentives in existence to try to force a change in Iran's behavior. He further ran through the aspects of Iran's public behavior that the administration finds threatening and counterproductive.

On the management of the war, the president, as he has in the past, cited the travails of some of his predecessors in office. Today he talked about President Lincoln's struggles. He also indicated that he was very aware of how President Johnson (and Defense Secretary McNamara) conducted the war in Vietnam, including the minutiae of target selections in the same Oval Office President Bush now uses each day. He indicated more than once his distaste for public opinion polls. He admitted to being out-smarted by the enemy at several stages of the Iraq war, and spoke glowingly about the sacrifices of the military and of military families.

On the topic of Osama bin Laden, while the president indicated he was un-bothered by the latest video releases, he expects bin Laden to be found and killed by American hands.

Today's session with the president lasted close to one hour and 45 minutes. He made an informal opening statement which was followed by free-form questioning by the journalists in attendance.

I'm right now trying to insert the appropriate reporting of the above information into tonight's broadcast. Tim Russert, who was at the lunch, will join me tonight to assist in that effort.

Please read the biography of my friend Nick Oresko today, and I certainly hope you can join us for NBC Nightly News tonight. We'll be back on the air with the president's speech and the Democratic response tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

'Non-stop' for another five months

Daily Nightly Editor — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:47:00 GMT

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.

On Friday, the 28th will have been here exactly 365 days. When they arrived they thought they would be flying home that day, but like so many units, they got extended. (That is the nurses, medics and support staff. Most physicians stay six months, but get deployed more often). The extension is one of the hardest things these dedicated people have had to endure.

Change of plans
Maj. William White, the head nurse in the ER, remembers the day they got the news. "It was devastating. A lot of us were really planning on going home to our families," he said

Lt. Col. Sharon Williams, the chief nurse for the operating room, promised her three sons aged 7, 9 and 12 that she would be home for their first day of school.

"Your family holds on to that," she told me. "And when you don't meet that goal, you have to go back and tell them ‘OK, I'm not going to be there when you start school.’ It's almost like do they have faith in what you're saying?"

Stories like that are the norm with the unit. Many mothers and fathers are missing the first years of babies’ lives. Strained marriages are hardly uncommon.

And while everyone of the medical staff is quick to point out that the infantry out on patrol have it tougher, caring for so many mangled bodies is certainly stressful.

"It gets old fast. It gets real old," said Maj. Bruce Matthews, an operating room nurse. "I don’t think you ever get used to it. You just deal with it. It’s definitely a long time, no doubt about that, every day non-stop."

It will be non-stop for another unexpected five months.

Originally posted at the World Blog.

What we saw

Daily Nightly Editor — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:20:00 GMT

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 attendant 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 embarrassment 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 Baghdad.

He said to me that evening, "The job of the commander is to understand his mission." I reminded him of that today, by way of asking him his understanding of the current mission. We also talked about his use of the term "al-Qaeda" to describe those who were once known to us as "insurgents." I think people will find his answer interesting.

We'll put the entire interview on the Web -- and we'll run our choice of the most illuminating highlights tonight.

Embattled President, Unpopular War
"Seldom has a nation been so mistrusted in its purposes or so frustrated in its efforts...People of other nations are simply not buying American." The speaker was presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon, his target was President Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon's speech -- a major assault on Johnson's foreign policy -- was delivered on September 12, 1967. It was 40 years ago today.

Of the war in Vietnam, candidate Nixon said: "It is not enough to moralize about our being there to defend democracy or guarantee freedom of choice...Nor will we be believed as long as we engage in sanctimonious sermonizing that irritates our friends, bores our enemies and leaves the cynical unconvinced."

On that same day, yet another presidential hopeful took aim at Johnson's Vietnam policy, calling for a "sharp escalation" in the war, saying that the administration should "do whatever is necessary to win," including using "the full technological resources of the United States." That speaker was California Governor Ronald Reagan.

Please read today's Medal of Honor biography, and we'll look for you from Washington tonight.

Purple hearted candor

Daily Nightly Contributor — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:43:00 GMT

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."

The soldiers had their own take on whether we should begin pulling troops out of Iraq.

"All the troops would say, yeah, they want to come home," Goodman said, "but we do need to finish what's going on over there."

Wray predicted American troops will be in Iraq for another five years.

"I think it's a good idea that the troops do start to come home but not all at once and not right now," he said. "I think it should be a slow process."

Dehnke said that's a political question he can't answer.

"I just do my job the best I can, help my fellow soldiers the best I can, and let the politics sort itself out for the most part," he said.

What do you think we should do in Iraq? We'd like to hear from you. Please give us your opinion by sending a comment below.

WIFE HONORS FALLEN HUSBAND ... BY JOINING ARMY

Daily Nightly Editor — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:54:00 GMT

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. Like so many others who join, Melissa sees the military-- with its structure and support-- as a positive step forward, as a path to a better life. And that is the simple premise by which she has lived since she met her husband in grade school.

(Photo: Melissa Garvin, photographed with her husband Eddy, who was killed in Anbar Province nine months ago)

A better life. It's why her husband joined the Marines. And now without him, she feels she must move forward and this is how she's doing it.

A friend who is a therapist explained it to me this way: Some people deal negatively with death and loss. Some can react with positive force and will try to turn loss into optimism. It's how organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving were started. In fact, Melissa started a scholarship in her husband's name through the Boy Scouts that helps young scouts, with limited means, go to camp. She says the scholarship is to honor her husband and his memory. She says joining the Army is to honor herself and her decision to move forward.

And what's more, one nurse's aide says, she's good at her job. And so Melissa, Godspeed. And once again, I am in awe.

(Click here to watch the full report as it aired on NBC Nightly News.)

IN SYRIA, GIRLS MARCH AS TIMEBOMB TICKS

Daily Nightly Editor — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:42:00 GMT

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.

There are dozens of clubs just like this one the outskirts of Damascus -- a red light district built on the slender shoulders of little Iraqi girls in belly dancing costumes. The girls are nearly all Iraqi refugees forced into what U.N. relief agencies call “survival sex.” The reason why is cold math. There are 1.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria. Syrian laws do not allow Iraqi refugees to work in Syria, which struggles to provide enough jobs for its own citizens. But Iraqi children can often slip under the law, especially if they work on the black market. They work to support their families. Many were traumatized even before they left Iraq, and had relatives murdered or kidnapped. Now they are forced into prostitution -- victims of war, victimized again every night.

Some of the girls we saw also looked very young, perhaps under six years old. The club owner told us they were younger sisters or cousins who had come to the club because they couldn’t find babysitters. But the little girls were dressed in tight costumes and gyrated in unbalanced pirouettes. They were apprentices and once on stage, everything has a price.

It is difficult to imagine how these girls will ever recover from the trauma of the war and subsequent exploitation. A senior U.N. official told me the refugee crisis is a ‘time bomb’ in the Middle East waiting to explode, creating rage that is building from Baghdad to the nightclubs of Damascus, rage directed mostly at the United States and its war in Iraq.

GOT NOUR?

Daily Nightly Editor — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:59:00 GMT

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.

Lisa was understandably nervous. She’d changed her shirt in the van on the way to the airport – putting on a purple T-shirt someone had made for her reading ‘Got Nour.’ “I told her to look for a tall woman with a ‘Got Nour’ T-shirt,” she said. As we waited for Nour’s connecting flight from Frankfurt, Lisa smoked and paced on the sidewalk outside.

Nour was arriving as a refugee – someone who has fled their country because of a legitimate fear of persecution. She was one of the lucky ones. Although almost two million Iraqis have fled their country’s civil war, the United States has taken reportedly taken in fewer than 700 of them. Hundreds of Iraqi interpreters who have risked their lives working with Americans have been stranded in Iraq or left destitute in surrounding countries. Resettlement officials at the airport said they believed Nour was the first non-military interpreter to arrive in the United States after being given fast-track refugee status.

(Photo: Lisa and Nour meet at the airport)

The stylish young woman who stepped off the plane in strappy high-heeled shoes, a sparkly headscarf and flared trousers didn’t quite fit the common image of a refugee. But the plastic bag with her documents and the distraught look in her eyes did.

Nour had been shot, separated from her family and her country and lived with the fear of being deported back to Iraq since she arrived in Jordan 18 months ago. Every step in those strappy sandals was fraught with not knowing what would come next.

They had no trouble recognizing each other. Nour sobbed –- telling Lisa over and over how sorry she was she had come without Steven – how sorry she was she couldn’t save him. Lisa told her over and over it wasn’t her fault.

Nour insisted on going straight to Steven’s grave in the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. She’d never had a chance to say goodbye to him.

“I’m so sorry for everything…and maybe I’m sorry I’m alive,” she told him, kneeling in front of his black granite tombstone with a map of Basra.

The two women could hardly appear more different – Lisa is a statuesque 5’11” with flowing black hair – an irreverent New Yorker from an Italian-German family. She towers over the smaller, younger woman. You can’t see Nour’s hair –- it’s covered in public in keeping with Muslim tradition –- but with fashionable headscarves coordinated with her clothes.

They have Steven in common. This was a translator’s story with a twist. Steven had gone to Iraq as a freelance journalist. With the hordes of reporters in Baghdad after the war, Lisa says, he couldn’t afford security guards and drivers when the city started to turn dangerous. So he went to the south of Iraq, where he found that insurgents and death squads had infiltrated the Basra police. He wrote about it in a book titled ‘The Red Zone.’ Nour began getting threats for working with him and he believed her life was in danger.

Lisa was in New York, working at her job as an appraiser at an auction house. He called her at three in the morning. “He said: ‘What do we do? I’ve got to get her out of the country. Her parents will not let her leave unless she’s married. And I said ‘well then, you have to marry her.”

So they decided that Steven would convert to Islam and marry Nour as his second wife. Once he got her to safety in Britain, where she had been promised a job, the plan was he would divorce her as easily as he had married her in an Islamic ceremony and come home to Lisa.

“I have had people say to me ‘Are you crazy coming up with that idea?” Lisa says. She didn’t see any alternative.

As for what might have happened on the wedding night of her husband of 22 years and his Iraqi interpreter, Lisa insists it doesn’t matter.

“Had anything happened, if they had gotten married and if they had had a honeymoon night, it’s not the end of the world,” Lisa tells me. “He loved me and that was good enough for me.”

Lisa has turned Steven’s study into a bedroom for Nour. It’s the first time she’s shared the apartment she’s lived in for 27 years with anyone but Steven. It’s a small, friendly building in the heart of what used to be New York’s bohemian East Village. Lisa had put a note in the hallway announcing Nour’s arrival. “She will be living with me for a while. If you see a woman in a headscarf please introduce yourself,” the handwritten note read.

It’s the absence of other women in headscarves that most surprises Nour as she and Lisa walk through Manhattan. She’s heard there are a lot of Muslims in New York but she doesn’t see any.

Over the next few days, Lisa would take Nour to get a social security number. In a few weeks she will have a green card and will be able to work. She was already offered a job with an Arab television network here –- but on the condition that she take off her headscarf, she says. She refused.

Nour plans to translate Steven’s book –- the one she was clutching so tightly when she arrived – into Arabic and to help Lisa with the Steven Vincent Foundation, which helps families of media workers – interpreters, fixers, drivers and stringers –- killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. The two also plan to write another book based on Steven’s writing –- if they can find a way to decipher his shorthand.

But for now Lisa is busy showing Nour the New York that Steven loved – watching her marvel at buildings so tall she can’t see the top. The best thing for Nour, Lisa says is “just being able to walk down the street and not having to worry about a suicide bomber or a truck bomb –- she’s fascinated by the kind of people she sees. We saw a woman today with tricolor hair and she was astonished…so really it’s fun. She’s providing me with a new look at my own city and it’s just begun. Wait till I take her out to Coney Island.”

The two women have a lot of painful things to talk about and they’re taking it slowly. “Steven would be ecstatic that she’s here,” Lisa says. She says Nour’s escape and the families the foundation will be able to help are an affirmation that Steven didn’t die in vain.

Watch a video clip of Jane's interview with Nour and Lisa.