All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.
No Take Backs
Christina Ruffini is a CBS News broadcast associate based in Washington.4691284In the aftermath of the holidays, I have been left with more than a few things that I would like to give back.
First there was the collection of bargain impostor perfumes I received from my anosmatic aunt, which exploded in the mail and arrived at my door smelling like a French brothel.
Then, there was the half-empty bottle of liqueur I got from a friend who simply shrugged and said, "Sorry, I had unexpected company."
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First there was the collection of bargain impostor perfumes I received from my anosmatic aunt, which exploded in the mail and arrived at my door smelling like a French brothel.
Then, there was the half-empty bottle of liqueur I got from a friend who simply shrugged and said, "Sorry, I had unexpected company."
Continue »
No Take Backs
Christina Ruffini is a CBS News broadcast associate based in Washington.
In the aftermath of the holidays, I have been left with more than a few things that I would like to give back.
First there was the collection of bargain impostor perfumes I received from my anosmatic aunt, which exploded in the mail and arrived at my door smelling like a French brothel.
Then, there was the half-empty bottle of liqueur I got from a friend who simply shrugged and said, "Sorry, I had unexpected company."
Continue »
(AP Photo/Lisa Poole, File)
First there was the collection of bargain impostor perfumes I received from my anosmatic aunt, which exploded in the mail and arrived at my door smelling like a French brothel.
Then, there was the half-empty bottle of liqueur I got from a friend who simply shrugged and said, "Sorry, I had unexpected company."
Continue »
The Father Files: Meeting "Bean"
Tucker Reals is CBSNews.com's London producer. He has been in the United Kingdom since December 2005, when he moved from the Washington, D.C., area. He now faces his biggest challenge.
Yesterday, I met Bean for the first time. Bean is the 12-week-old fetus turning summersaults in my wife's belly.
It all happened so fast. I only moved to England three years ago, and now I'm doing my part to populate this already-cramped island.
Our pregnancy (I will take the literary license frequently assumed by men and call it "ours," despite my actual, physical role in the act having long passed), was entirely planned and desired. But it still managed to surprise me when Bean popped up on a computer monitor in the darkened hospital scan room.
Continue »
Yesterday, I met Bean for the first time. Bean is the 12-week-old fetus turning summersaults in my wife's belly.
It all happened so fast. I only moved to England three years ago, and now I'm doing my part to populate this already-cramped island.
Our pregnancy (I will take the literary license frequently assumed by men and call it "ours," despite my actual, physical role in the act having long passed), was entirely planned and desired. But it still managed to surprise me when Bean popped up on a computer monitor in the darkened hospital scan room.
Continue »
Breaking The "Unwritten Rule" In Israeli Espionage
(CBS)
I've been covering Israel's espionage agencies for almost 20 years, and suddenly this morning there was a blast from the past – an arrest in what FBI personnel for years had called "the hunt for Agent X." American investigators refused to believe Israel's official contention that the Jonathan Pollard affair – running an agent with U.S. Naval Intelligence, who delivered thousands of secret documents to the Israelis – was an isolated incident.
The long memory and long arm of the law finally grabbed Ben-Ami Kadish, whose alleged crimes apparently took place before Pollard was arrested in November 1985. According to prosecutors, Kadish and Pollard were tasked by the same "handler" – a science attach? at Israel's Consulate-General in New York. That man vanished from the U.S. within hours of Pollard's arrest. Pollard eventually was sentenced to life in prison.
The diplomat's boss was Rafi Eitan, a legendary intelligence agent who took part in Israel's capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960. Eitan, a man who pushes the envelope in many ways, is now an Israeli cabinet minister.
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"I Suppose It's Always Like That, In War"
(CBS)
This long weekend I devoured Rick Atkinson's latest brilliant offering, "The Day of Battle," a profound and gut-wrenching account of the war in Sicily and Italy in 1943 and 1944. Atikinson won a Pulitzer Price for his work, "An Army of Dawn," the first part of his about the Allied effort in Europe in World War II. "The Day of Battle" is part two in the series and just as good as its predecessor. Reading Atkinson's work during the Veterans' Day commemoration is fitting, of course. But none of us have to go back 64 years to read about or see the devastation war brings to people here, there, and everywhere. And what was most striking to me about Atkinson's work were the similarities between the military and governmental war effort he described and the one in which we now are engaged in Iraq. As Richard Burton put it, in the classic World War II movie
So, as I'm reading about how the Allies miscalculated (or simply didn't pay enough attention) to the need to rebuild the Italian infrastructure in liberated territory, the side burner of my brain is heating up with thoughts about how many of those same mistakes were made in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Atkinson writes about how time pressures sabotaged effective post-occupation plans (what with Stalin and all pressing for a second front in Western Europe). But even when we have plenty of time to plan a war--- Iraq being a "war of our choosing" remember—we can't seem to get the post-fighting part right.
As I'm reading Atkinson's poignant descriptions of U.S. soldiers braving unmentionable horrors climbing up hills or scattering among rocks in brutal heat two generations ago I naturally think of today's soldiers in Iraq, dodging (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) suicide bombers and IEDs and the countless other things Iraqi insurgents have developed to kill our sons and daughters and husbands and wives. Atkinson writes about the way soldiers improvised their equipment to better protect themselves. In Iraq, GI's refurbished their own Humvees when the government couldn't.
As I am reading about the colossal mismanagement by US leaders—caused by petty jealousies, poor judgments, and callous disregard for life—which helped make the Sicilian and Italian campaigns the bloodbaths they became I think about the countless ways in which our modern-day leaders, governmental and military alike, botched their crucial opportunities to do things right in Iraq. Poor planning, bad strategies, doomed tactics—no war, no country, no administration has a trademark on those.
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