All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Katie's on assignment.

On January 17, 1991, the world watched the beginning of a massive air strike against Baghdad. It's hard to forget those haunting green images of explosions in the sky.

A mystery began that day. A 33-year-old Navy pilot named Scott Speicher, who was flying his F-18 Hornet, disappeared in Northern Iraq. While Speicher was first considered killed in action, that status was changed to missing. No body - and no cockpit - were found.

For 18 years, his family and friends held onto hope that he was alive, shot down by hostile fire and held captive in an Iraqi prison.

Now, closure has finally come after an Iraqi citizen led Marines to a site where Speicher's body was buried in the sands of the desert. And those remains have been positively identified.

He was the first American to die in the first Gulf War.

With the mystery solved, Captain Speicher can finally come home, and his status can be changed - to fallen hero.

I'm Jim Axelrod, CBS News.

CBS News Producer Mary Walsh recounts her first meeting in 2004 with Corporal Casey Owens, a Marine who was disabled in Iraq, frustrated with the treatment he received from the Veterans Administration.

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Iraqis greeted the final withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from their cities as if it were New Year's Eve - with a countdown clock, fireworks and dancing in the streets. Today was even declared a national holiday.

Their reaction reflects a long-held ambivalence toward American troops in their country. Rather than being hailed as liberators, as Vice President Cheney once predicted, we were often scorned as occupiers.

Yet our presence helped achieve major results - the overthrow of a brutal dictator and the establishment of a fledgling democracy.

And while the celebrations are understandable, they may be premature. As the U.S. military closes outposts, violence is increasing - with more than 250 people killed in the past week alone.

I visited Iraq in 2007 and was struck by the courage of the US troops and Iraqi people I met. I hope the future brings more joy to that country, not just because U.S. troops are leaving, but because of the enormous strides the Iraqi people themselves have made.

That's a page from my notebook.

Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News. He was one of the small pool of reporters to accompany President Bush on his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.

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It was President Bush’s last trip to Iraq and Afghanistan – two places in which Americans were still engaged in wars begun on his watch – and a guy throwing his shoes was the big story.

The jokes on Air Force One about that incident Sunday in Baghdad were flying faster than those shoes.

Even the president couldn’t resist – beginning an interview by telling reporters on the flight out of Iraq that he didn’t know what the shoe-hurler was saying – “but I saw his sole.” (Get it? Shoe sole?)

“It was a bizarre moment,” said Mr. Bush, and with mock pride he trumpeted his reflexes in ducking out of the way of the airborne footwear. “So you weren’t a lame duck,” I kidded the president to the moans and groans of his aides and my colleagues.

Back in the press cabin: “I bet they’ll be serving us “shoe-fly pie,” said one reporter.

“We’ll probably have to go shoe-less to the next press conference,” said another.

We wondered if the shoes thrown at the president were “wing tips," and whether the Secret Service would issue agents a new manual on “the taming of the shoe.”

And though President Bush was unscathed from the incident, Press Secretary Dana Perino suffered an injury. She was hit in the face by a heavy metal microphone stand that was swung around at her as security personnel rushed the shoe-hurler. It left her with a dark bruise under her right eye.

“Guess you could call that a shoe shiner,” a reporter said later...

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Kelly Wallace is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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When I told my family I was doing a story about some of the first American women to engage in direct ground combat, despite U.S. policy banning them from ground warfare, my sister-in-law said she thought women have been involved in ground combat for years.

You may have thought the same thing or be surprised to learn that while women aren’t supposed to serve in direct combat, they are.

In our story tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, we’ll introduce you to women who never expected to fire a weapon while in Iraq but who ended up in urban warfare.

“It’s the longest few seconds before you pull the trigger, seems like it’s all in slow-mo,” 27-year-old Shannon Morgan, a former Army Specialist in Iraq, told me in an interview. “But you just got to keep ...

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[Editor's Note: Tonight on the CBS Evening News, you'll see the second installment of our series, "Where They Stand," which is an examination of the issues facing the next president of the United States. This time, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Lara Logan tackles how John McCain and Barack Obama propose handling one of the biggest issues of this election: ending the war in Iraq. CBS News producer Max McClellan explains how he encountered the remarkable man featured in tonight's piece – and why he exemplifies this issue.

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Ft. Carson, Colo., is home to the 10th Special Forces Group and one incredible Green Beret named Tim Brigham. We first heard about his story through contacts in the Special Forces community – and as soon as we did, we knew we had to meet him.

Tim is a classic soldier. Understated and modest, but profoundly dedicated to the mission. He'd have to be that way, given all that he's been through. He was badly wounded on the battlefield in northern Iraq in 2005, during his second tour. His unit was ambushed by insurgents; in the midst of heavy fire, Tim's first instinct was to climb to a higher position to get a better shot at the approaching enemy. He told us the safety of his men was the only thing on his mind. As he scrambled to the roof of his disabled humvee...

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Sharyl Attkisson is investigative correspondent for CBS News.

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What's worse than an earmark that wastes tax dollars and abuses the system by allowing Congress to funnel money outside the normal process to favored businesses or entities?

Plenty, you might say. But how about a secret, classified earmark that costs American lives?

That's the allegation from a military intelligence officer Maj. Eric Egland. In an exclusive interview, Egland told me the amazing story of being on the ground in Iraq at the height of IED (Improvised Explosive Device) deaths and injuries. It was his job to evaluate a large contract that was supposed to send resources and trained people to attack the IED networks. It wasn't working. Egland says it didn't take long for him to discover the contractor was, in his words, completely unqualified for the task at hand. The workers, he said, lacked the experience, resources and know-how to do this important job. He wondered ...

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CBS News reported this week that despite millions of dollars flowing out from Iraq's rich oil resources every day, some of the country's social services, including basic hospital care, are sorely neglected. You can read the story here. Larry Doyle, our Baghdad bureau chief, saw the effects of this firsthand, when his friend and neighbor needed care. What follows is his story, told by Doyle.

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It was about 120 degrees the day I met Alfred. One of those furnaces-like Baghdad days that come blazing in every June. Alfred had found about the only relief on our rock-covered dirty street. He looked pretty comfortable in a worn, formerly white plastic chair propped in a little shade supplied by a 12-foot-high concrete blast wall.

Damn, I whispered, I’m melting. Why isn’t that chair?

“Salaam alaikum,” I sweated out in fractured Arabic.

“Sit, my friend, please sit,” was the perfect English response. And that simple exchange started a great friendship.

Almost exactly a year later, Faried Yacob George lay in an emergency room in Baghdad Hospital, one of five in the Medical City complex.

Faried was my friend Alfred. I never wrapped my tongue around his real first name so we decided “Alfred” would do just fine. Actually Alfred was in the emergency room two days and nights and eventually was given a saline IV the second day because he was dehydrated. Sitting a long time in a sweltering room will do that to you. It will do that to a healthy 20-year-old. My friend was 76.

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Today marks the beginning of two days of Congressional testimony on Iraq.

You might not know it, but there are actually two men speaking today> Next to top military man General Petraeus is Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Political progress is his job — and that's just as important as military progress.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. This morning, the President said the mission was "noble" and "necessary". But, according to our latest CBS News poll, only 29 percent of Americans agree.

It's easy to say the war wasn't worth it. What's hard is developing a responsible path forward.

For more from my Notebook, just click the monitor.