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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July has been the deadliest month in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

At least 34 Americans have been killed, and suicide bombers have launched an onslaught on government buildings. Those haunting images of Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier held captive by the Taliban, are another startling reminder that this war is far from over.

As the Taliban gains strength in remote regions, Hamid Karzai is losing his in Kabul. Corruption and chaos have undermined his rule and weakened support for American involvement.

This single country represents a world of challenges for the United States. The road forward will be strewn with massive potholes, barricades and IEDs, as Americans try to keep terrorists at bay by building a better nation.

It's a terribly dicey and complicated situation, but we can only hope, for the sake of the Afghan people and the safety of the world, one day, the tag line: "Graveyard of Empires" will be buried for good.

That's a page from my notebook.

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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As the Pennsylvania primary proved, the Democratic nomination is still very much a competitive two-way race. The Clinton and Obama campaigns may be run very differently, but they have the same goal in mind – winning their party's nomination … and ultimately the White House.

We wanted to give viewers a look at a day in the life of each political campaign, to show you just how the sausage gets made. Don’t tell Otto von Bismarck.

Our first stop: Chicago, straight to the Obama headquarters where the action never stops.

David Axelrod, Senator Obama’s chief strategist, told us his average day is “a cascade of phone calls, emails, conference calls, and meetings.” From time to time we might all feel that way, and trust me – I get a lot of emails. He gets a deluge.

The office almost crackles with energy. We thought of David Bowie’s song “Pressure,” that rhythmic crescendo of tension and excitement. But the office is just half of it!

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It began five years ago tonight, and some of our correspondents who've been embedded in Iraq have shared their experiences – and unique viewpoints on this war – in Reporters Notebooks. A sampling and links:

From CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent Chip Reid:

Exactly five years ago I was with the Third Batallion, Fifth Marines, waiting for the order to cross what they called the Line Of Departure-a pass they'd cut through the giant sandberm that ran along the Iraq/Kuwait border. I was squeezed into the back of an Amphibious Assault Vehicle-an engineering marvel that was built for beach assaults but had no trouble making it all the way to Baghdad, and beyond. We were part of a convoy that stretched as far as I could see forward and back. Amazingly, many of the 19 or so Marines who were squeezed into a space built for about 10, slept. They were smart enough to know they'd need their rest. I was not. I stood and watched through an open hatch as we blasted through the LOD and roared across the Iraqi desert – with no idea of what to expect.

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On the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, Larry Doyle, the Baghdad bureau chief for CBS News, submitted this inside look at what it takes to cover this war. And he should know: Larry's been producing our coverage of conflicts and wars for four decades. Yes, you read that correctly: four decades. So, read on, and enjoy this photo our foreign desk dug up of Larry working with Lara Logan in Camp Victory, Baghdad.

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When American troops crossed the sandy berms marking the border of Kuwait and Iraq, I was afraid, anxious and frightened.

Frightened, even though I was a good 50 miles away in a swank Kuwait City hotel suite (that doubled as a CBS News office) surrounded by solid walls, with good communications and room service. A dozen or so CBS colleagues were out there in the dark, inhospitable desert, some hearing angry gunfire for the first time and virtually cut off from the world. They were the “embeds," the pentagon’s journalist front line. I had seen combat, reported on wars, and knew they were in the middle of a life-changing and life-threatening event.

I thought about Iraqi friends who, even farther north, were also terrified, crouched and bundled under beds, cars, and shelters as “shock and awe” rained down … and changed their lives.

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David Martin is National Security Correspondent for CBS News.

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The war began in dramatic fashion: Stealth fighters and cruise missiles launching a bolt out of the blue attack against a compound where Saddam Hussein was believed to be spending the night. Saddam survived the strike and perhaps that should have been an omen of the difficulties to come – that it would take more than high tech weapons to get rid of Saddam. It took foot soldiers to flush him out of a hole in the ground. And today it is foot soldiers in the form of the troop surge who have helped produce a reduction in violence.

Donald Rumsfeld used to talk a lot about "transformation," and a great transformation has finally taken place, although not on his watch … and not the one he envisioned. What he had in mind was transforming the Cold War military into a smaller, more agile fighting force. After he left, a larger fighting force was sent into Iraq to conduct a new counterinsurgency strategy.

The conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. wouldn't be in so much trouble in Iraq if Rumsfeld had just sent more troops in at the start. I'm not sure I buy that. For one thing, more troops would have taken longer to get there, so the whole dynamic of the initial invasion would have been different. For another, there was no plan for what to do with more troops. Finally, if more troops had used the same heavy-handed tactics that prevailed in the first years of the occupation, they might have succeeded only in outraging Iraqis even further.

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Jill Jackson is a Capitol Hill field producer for CBS News.

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House and Senate lawmakers gathered today in the Capitol Rotunda to remember and pay tribute to U.S. Soldiers who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The half-hour ceremony was complete with the Presentation of Colors by the United States Armed Forces Color Guard and the National Anthem sung by a local Washington, D.C., high school student. The front row was reserved for service members who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate majority leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell all did their best to put political differences aside to focus on the members of the military serving all over the world. The sharp words normally slung about a failed war in Iraq were avoided.

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