All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Heartfelt congratulations go out to our Kimberly Dozier, who was awarded a Peabody Award for her reporting on two amputees – who are both Iraq war veterans … and who are both women.

Receiving a Peabody award is a big accomplishment – it was modeled after the Pulitzer Prize, only 35 people took the honor this year, including CBS News' Scott Pelley, for a 60 Minutes piece, and ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, who, like Kimberly, survived a near-fatal attack while reporting in Iraq.

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Kimberly Dozier is a CBS News correspondent based in Washington.

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More than a million folks are expected to gather in Times Square, New York, to ring in the first of January 2008 — just about as far away as you can get from Baghdad or Balad, Kabul or Bagram.

But on one of those glowing signs, Americans can broadcast text messages of support to those troops, thousands of miles away in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why bother? Vets from Iraq or Afghanistan will tell you, the troops often think: A) the public has forgotten them; or B) the public is down on the war in general, and them in particular.

Rightly or wrongly, many of them take personally the media’s reports of continuing violence, or anti-war demonstrations, or congressional moves to set troop withdrawal deadlines. They perceive these acts as a negative report card on their performance, even while those reporting, marching or negotiating believe what they’re doing ultimately protects the troops. It’s one of those classic "failure to communicate" moments.

So whatever you think of the war, how it was started, how it’s being fought, what it has or will accomplish…a veteran’s group, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, is inviting you to take a moment to tell the guys and gals serving ‘over there’ what you think of them, and the sacrifice they’re making – serving in harm’s way on New Year’s Day.

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Kimberly Dozier is a CBS News correspondent based in Washington.

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There's a war inside the military over how to treat a not-so-new enemy: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"I've never had a guy in my unit develop PTSD," one senior general from Iraq told me. 'It's nonsense."

"You're only scratching the surface," of cases from this war, another senior general told me. "Keep looking."

Simply put, PTSD is what happens when you put a combatant in the pressure cooker of Iraq or Afghanistan, and tell him or her, "No matter what you see or feel, tough it out. Lock it down. Keep it to yourself." After multiple tours living on high boil, with no relief valve, some U.S. troops are breaking. Make that thousands.

The largest military employer, the U.S. Army, has rolled out new programs to teach troops what PTSD is, to try to reduce the stigma. It can be as simple as asking a patrol that saw something traumatic to talk about it out loud. That way, the incident on the battlefield gets tamed by a jawing session with your buddies, instead of becoming a nightmare that wakes you sweating at 4 a.m. with visions of the dead and maimed that won't leave you.

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Kimberly Dozier is a CBS News correspondent based in Washington.

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Remember that tough, unstoppable biker lady Cher played a few years back in the movie ‘Mask?’

That’s Debbie Higgins, at least in attitude. And love of bikes. And love for her whole family, especially her eldest son, Lance Corporal James Higgins Jr. The Marine was killed just over a year ago by a single sniper round, in Fallujah.

Her life now revolves around one thing: making his last wish come true, as he described it to her in their last phone call: to build a war memorial for all the Americans killed in action, since the end of the Vietnam War.

He was angry that no major memorial had yet been built to honor all those killed in the first Gulf War, or the invasion of Afghanistan, or all the other police actions or peacekeeping missions in between.

“They should not have to wait, Mom,” he told her. He said: “This is my mark in history, Mom. This is what I need to do...”

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Jim Axelrod previews the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric — including a special report from correspondent Kimberly Dozier, who was critically wounded in Iraq one year ago.

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This was a day many at CBS News have been waiting for.

Kimberly Dozier came home.

Eight months to the day after being seriously injured in Iraq, she walked into the CBS newsroom to thunderous applause. There was emotion, too – tears and hugs and smiles all around. Kimberly looks terrific: strong and steady and full of the spirit that has sustained her through all the hospitalizations and surgeries she has had to undergo. She looked deeply moved by the reception – and spoke poignantly about the support she has received, and about the loss she still feels.

Cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan were with her the day the car bomb blew up beside them. They didn’t survive. Kimberly paid tribute to them in her remarks, and clearly wished they could be standing beside her today, too.

Kimberly said she had one more major surgery scheduled for next week; she lost her right eardrum in the blast on May 29th, and can’t hear on that side, and doctors hope they can correct that.

I had a chance to talk with her briefly. It was our first meeting, and I came away so impressed by her resilience and determination. I’d heard so much about Kimberly from people at CBS who knew her so well. It was a privilege to finally get to shake her hand. She is that rare breed of smart, courageous and committed journalists, one willing to put her life on the line to get the story out. We need more like her.

We look forward to the day when Kimberly will return to the air and continue the great reporting she’s known for.

For now, it’s just great to have her back.

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