We huddled in one office this morning watching the British sailors and Royal Marines talk about their experience. We watched live on MSNBC, and the coverage was followed by a blistering commentary by Col. Jack Jacobs (ret.), NBC News military analyst and Medal of Honor recipient. We'll be airing some of Jack's comments on the broadcast -- his views won't be shared by all -- hear him out, however -- and if you still have trouble understanding the ethos he represents, may I again recommend the best-ever collection of stories about Medal of Honor recipients.

Another decoration is in the news. Purple Hearts were given out today, and while they're given out most days, this ceremony was special. I'm posting here the internal coverage note that our own Washington Producer John Rutherford distributed in our in-house computer system. As you read through his reporting, please pay special note to his final paragraph. He granted me permission to include it in this space.

Six soldiers wounded in Iraq received Purple Hearts today at a solemn and emotional ceremony at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Brig. Gen. Michael Tucker pinned medals on the 6 men and urged them to go out and tell their stories to America.

"It's good for America to hear your story," he said. "This Army's at war, but sometimes we believe that perhaps the nation's not at war."

The 6 recipients were:

- Sgt. Jerald Gragg, 27, Granite Falls, N.C., wounded by an IED in Baghdad.
- Sgt. Aeron Rimando, 22, Carson, Calif., also wounded by an IED in Baghdad.
- Sgt. Hector Lopez Jr., 26, El Paso, Texas, shot by a sniper in Mosul.
- Sgt. Wade Walling, 37, Connersville, Ind., wounded by an IED in Ramadi.
- Spc. Thomas Darr, 39, Lyman, Wyo., wounded by an IED in the Iraqi Area of Operations.
- Spc. Joseph Bacani, 21, Tusgin, Texas, shot by a sniper in Baghdad.

Sgt. Walling choked up as he thanked Walter Reed for caring for him, God for protecting him, and his wife and son and daughter for standing by him.

"It means a lot to receive this award," he said.

Spc. Darr and Spc. Bacani also spoke.

"This isn't an award you plan on or want to get," Darr said, "but you just go out there and do it and hope it doesn't happen, but then it's an honor to wear it."

"I sure wish I was in Iraq with my scout brothers," Bacani, a cavalry scout, said, "but this is just what happens. I'm thankful for them saving my life. I just wish everyone would come home safe."

After the ceremony, the 6 men and their families stood on a stage, and people lined up to personally thank them.

In 1970, I was wounded in Vietnam. I was treated at an Army field hospital in An Khe. One day a corporal came through our ward and casually asked each patient why he was there. Later the corporal returned with an armful of small rectangular boxes and tossed them on the beds of the men who were wounded in combat. That's how we received our Purple Hearts back then.
-- John Rutherford, NBC News

Also vying for a slot at the top of the broadcast tonight: the report on global warming, and the call-up and deployment of reservists as we reported for the first time last night. Two feature items of note: if you read Jonathan Alter's cover story in this week's Newsweek, you'll know he found great comfort, during his successful battle with cancer, in a Web site that helps the seriously ill and their families and friends all keep in touch. He'll do the television version of that story tonight. Also -- a look at America's First Mob Family: We'll spend two minutes or so with the Soprano's cast and crew as they prepare for the beginning of the end of the series.

MOURNING A LOSS
This next item is related to the above: There are now 110 living Medal of Honor recipients. Today we learned Raymond Murphy died. Here is his background and citation. (scroll down) He was awarded the MOH by President Eisenhower in 1953.

We hope you can join us for our broadcast on this Good Friday evening, and we look forward to seeing you next week.

It was proof of the operating assumption that Iraq will find a way to get you until you are clear of Iraqi airspace and safely out of the country. After a final day of reporting, we chose to start making our way to New York by making a stop in Amman, Jordan, before ending the week in New York tomorrow night.

So there we were sitting on squishy, vaguely sticky sofas in the dated, cavernous, sparse and dark confines of the main terminal at Baghdad International Airport. I was chatting with Gen. Wayne Downing, while I scrolled through some photos of the trip that cameraman Jeff Riggins had taken and downloaded onto his laptop. Suddenly there were five straight concussions. We all knew what they were -- rockets or mortars -- and we all know there's always the chance that they were controlled explosions. They were not. Cameraman Craig White and Producer Subrata De went to the window and saw the puffs of smoke rising from a patch of grass just off the taxiway in front of us. Amazed at the staying power of the insurgents (after all, these attacks are so common on or near the airport grounds -- three rockets landed there yesterday and we've been at this for four years), Riggins theorized that our outgoing flight would be delayed for hours. Au contraire.

No sooner had we watched the smoke fade, when we heard the boarding announcement. We got in line and were basically hustled out to the jet -- the very same Fokker jet named "Jessica" that we flew to Baghdad on. It was the same collection of people -- basically a flying bar scene from Star Wars. It was capped off by the sight of the airline security agent, sitting in the front row on the aisle, the butt of his handgun visible inside his blazer as he drifted briefly off to sleep after takeoff. As this posting should indicate, we are here in Amman where we will originate the broadcast before hopping on a seemingly endless series of flights and connections (but I bet no mortars) designed to have me in the chair in New York at this time tomorrow night.

I'm lucky to work with the best people in television, and I want to thank the superb, sharp and dangerous dismounted fire teams who literally protected my life this week when I was in some dangerous areas with the U.S. Army and Marines. I'm charging my iPod, BlackBerry and phone for a new lease on life (both the appliances and their owner) as we make the Atlantic crossing toward home. We have a great piece tonight on a little-known Saddam resort now being used by the U.S. Army -- and now it can be told: before leaving Baghdad, we conducted an exclusive interview with Gen. Dave Petraeus -- a portion of which we'll preview tonight -- but which will air in greater bulk tomorrow evening.

Please join us for tonight's broadcast from Amman. We'll see you tomorrow night from New York.

Considering there are well over 140,000 Americans here, I've had two stunners in the Small World department in the last 48 hours. Yesterday in Camp Victory, I ran into an Army Reservist who works in the store where I buy my eyeglasses. This is his second tour -- he's a computer technician, and it was wonderful to see him and to show off the fact that I had purchased both the sunglasses I was wearing, and the reading glasses in my pocket, from him. While we were in Ramadi a few days ago, a young captain left a lengthy note for me. I met him when I was paying one of my many visits to West Point a few years ago. He stayed in touch, and months later asked me to be his co-conspirator on an elaborate plan. He brought his longtime sweetheart in to our studio to be my guests for a broadcast of Nightly News. They sat in the control room for the broadcast, and I invited them both up to the set for photos afterward. That was where the conspiracy kicked in. I asked his girlfriend to sit in my chair and I backed away while the brave West Point cadet (there's battlefield bravery... and then there's THIS kind of bravery...) got down on one knee and proposed to her, and our cameras rolled videotape of the entire scene. Postscript: she smartly said yes, they now have a child, and he is here as part of an armored platoon on his second tour. He heard that I was coming to Ramadi, and while he was out on patrol and could not come to see me, he was nice to leave me a note and update me on life. And that... as Paul Harvey would say... is the rest of the story.

Tonight conditions here have improved a bit. It's not as cold as it was last night, and I'm typing this inside a relic of a mini-van, on a laptop balanced atop an equipment case. It's not much, but it's home.

My thanks to the soldiers and aviators of the First Cav for a safe trip into downtown Baghdad today. Safe passage is never assumed, but these guys did everything humanly possible to insert us and get us home... without excitement. Flying over the heart of the city at 100 feet is a singular experience -- and like the larger story of this war, it is a changing picture -- children wearing uniforms play in a schoolyard 100 yards away from the skeleton of a smoldering car. Iraqi police were making an arrest in a market and drawing huge crowds, while a block away several buildings sat crumbled, some with the distinctive signature of JDAM bomb damage through what was formerly the roof. We have been able to travel great distances to inspect this story up close, while maintaining a satisfactory degree of personal safety, as I promised several people back home that I would. That is thanks to the good people who have ferried us around and supported our travels. The lack of sleep became acute for every member of our team today, all at different times and to differing degrees. Everyone is working very hard to broadcast this story from this unforgiving place -- and I am indebted to all.

We are doing the broadcast tonight from an area where several Humvees are parked, and I plan to make them a part of the broadcast -- the lesson is adapting (not fast enough for some, to be sure) to combat conditions.

More from here when there's time.

We hope you can join us for another broadcast from Baghdad tonight.

Same drill tonight, I'm afraid. We were out shooting for much of the day, and then the heart of the afternoon was taken up writing the piece you'll see on the broadcast tonight about our trip into Baghdad with the First Cavalry. As a result I will divide this in two and post a longer bit when I have time after the broadcast. This was another macro/micro day, perfectly illustrating the dichotomy of the conflict between big picture and small. We will begin the broadcast with the sad toll from today (and please remember the three stateside families being notified of the loss of a loved one), and then Richard Engel and I will both show you what we found on our respective outings. More later...

What an odd feeling in Saddam's old palace tonight, where we met with 4-star Gen. David Petraeus, the man in charge of the show here. The phrase "all that glitters..." comes to mind -- when you notice the construction is all about facade -- hollow walls, a chandelier that is made with plastic parts, cheap un-matched squares of marble, flaking gold plating on the fixtures... and Saddam's initials and inspirational slogans everywhere. Eerie, but not quite as creepy as the palace that I entered in downtown Baghdad just 48-hours after the initial invasion -- where I watched Special Forces soldiers remove what were believed to be the personal possessions of the dictator for DNA testing, and where a line of Third Infantry soldiers quickly formed to use the bathroom -- their first actual bathroom in days of driving and fighting -- which just happened to be Saddam's bathroom.

We're dealing with the common effects of working eight time zones away from New York. We're often expected to work, in effect, two days for every one at home. While our day (and often our only time to shoot and report) is New York's night, New York then comes alive when we are dead on our feet. Patrols happen when they happen, generals are available when they're available, and we can't change the fact that the first live feed of Nightly News is at 2:30 in the morning. We gain some solace knowing the men and women asleep in the tents that surround us are in many cases running on less fuel than we are -- while people's lives often depend on their work during the day.

At 5:20 this morning, we realized we had no bottled water. In a land where tap water is not an option, producer Subrata De and I got the keys to an ancient minivan and drove to a water depot on base where we got a shrink-wrapped case of large bottles. The pre-dawn hours on a military base have their own dangers: in our case, dodging the glowing "ARMY" logos on the backs of the shirts and jackets of the early-rising, insanely-motivated soldiers out for their morning run. We raced back to avoid the psych-out of sunrise (we had to get to sleep) and I covered the windows in the room where I'm staying with two thicknesses of trash bags held on by gaffer tape. It worked.  It's now a kind of permanent night, but I'll take it.  Our first interview tomorrow morning is exactly six hours after we get off the air tonight.

When we are on the grounds of Camp Victory, it feels very safe. Life is defined as inside or outside "the wire" in military parlance... and sometimes it is hard to determine where the two part company. There were loud and distant concussions tonight as we headed to see the general. It's hard to know if it's an "engagement" or just a controlled explosion of seized ordinance.  Automatic weapon fire can often be heard. Matching bursts usually mean firing range. Two different kinds of bursts usually mean a firefight. This afternoon, we saw "CINNABON/IRAQ" baseball hats for sale at the Cinnabon outlet here on base. At $8.95, it's a unique souvenir... for those who don't mind the thought of wearing Cinnabon-themed clothing and accessories.

And to the wife of an Army Black Hawk pilot who commented on yesterday's post, asking why I didn't credit her husband's air wing with Monday's six-hour mission to Ramadi and back: the military commonly asks us not to identify what the commanders called the "air package" that flew us and accompanied us -- though if your husband was the pilot of the chopper I was flying in with Gen. Odierno, that means I met him and thanked him for his work. We could easily fill up all of our airtime each night with the thanks we owe to the individuals and groups here, military and civilian, who have protected us and facilitated our reporting. Hopefully they know how we feel about their work.

We tried very hard on the air tonight to adequately present the split picture of the conflict that a personal visit to Baghdad makes very plain. The company commanders see task victories -- mission progress in their sectors. Nightly News viewers hear words like "another bloody day in Iraq" (a perfectly accurate portrayal). Shiite pilgrims gathering to pray are killed by a man with a bomb tied around his rib cage. That's today in Iraq. It is a grim, tense and troubled place with an uncertain future, a violent past and a huge role in the American political and social debate.

Tomorrow is another day. Nightly News has just concluded and we are folding up our tent, or our truck as it were, because it is now so cold my fingers no longer work on the keyboard. We'll get back at it tomorrow, and should a rare case of time-management break out or should a computer spring to life before 4 p.m. EST, I'll post some more. Thanks for watching, in the meantime.

Time and computer problems have conspired against me today. I just got access to a working computer two hours before airtime, and am working in the back of a hollow truck -- sitting at a laptop with a Coleman lantern and a cup of coffee that Richard Engel just delivered, out of nowhere. As we are now an hour from air, I must switch my time and attention over to the broadcast -- and as soon as I am able (sometime in the next three hours) I will post a more detailed reading of our day. It has turned significantly colder tonight, but the wind has died down. We are still operating out of a complex of tents, feeding videotape and broadcast signals from our live van and trying not to wake the sleeping soldiers who surround us. More later...

Because Gen. Ray Odierno is a 3-star, the No. 2 man in charge of this massive U.S. presence here in Iraq, he travels with a lot of security -- alongside him in the air and on the ground -- wherever he goes. When we learned that he was heading out today to inspect two U.S. outposts (to make up for a trip that weather canceled last week), we thought it represented the safest possible opportunity for us to get off to a fast start in our coverage and cover a lot of ground OUTSIDE the city limits of Baghdad.

You'll see the trip on tonight's broadcast. We met a lot of enormously capable commanders today -- which is almost always the case -- and they are hugely enthusiastic about the gains they've made in their specific slice of this conflict. It is very clear, in ways we will point out tonight, that the strategy here has undergone a profound change. Richard Engel also went out with U.S. forces today, to Sadr City -- and what he found meshes in many ways with what I saw to the West of here.

One of the more impressive scenes of the day took place in Hit, when the sergeant in charge of the tactical mission we went on briefed the fire teams that were going on the patrol. He ran down the list of streets we'd be using and/or crossing, a classic laundry list of military-given names: Star, Aspen, Apple, Cherry, Strawberry, Plantain (see a theme here?), Mavericks, Bronze. He mentioned that while our planned route was believed to be clear of "all known IEDs" (and I couldn't help but think: it's those UNKNOWN IEDs that we have to worry about...), he went on to warn us that two IEDs that had been discovered "near the corner of Eucalyptus and Peach" and would be detonated, perhaps while we were in downtown Hit, and that we shouldn't be alarmed if and when we heard the explosions. The sergeant, radio call sign "Able Tac One," went on to methodically brief us on the unit's rules of engagement and the response protocol to either direct fire or IED explosion. He told all drivers to "get up on the net" in such an instance (report it on the radio to all other Humvee patrols), and to "push through" any firing or explosion. In the case of sniper fire, our unit was ordered to "identify the source and return fire." Simple as that.

Right now we are in a tent in a fairly serious (even for this region, and I've seen its best) wind storm, which by nature is rapidly deteriorating into a sandstorm. We may have some pretty sporty conditions for our live broadcast tonight. We just now are able to use a working computer, and we have one "hard" phone line to share. Cell service is very spotty -- it is Iraq, after all. Tonight we'll set aside some time to talk about our day -- and the story we collectively reported -- with Richard and with retired Gen. Wayne Downing, who is on this trip with us. He had some interesting opinions of his own about what we saw on both stops today.

Photo caption: Brian and Gen. Wayne Downing. Photo by NBC's Jeff Riggins.

BACK AT THE OFFICE
One bit of family business: Nightly News has a new executive producer. I'm thrilled that Alex Wallace, who was until today our vice president, has agreed to run our shop. Alex is a great journalist, a great leader -- and happens to be great company in the trenches. My favorite story about her is that she applied to the London bureaus of all three television networks on the day she graduated from college. The problem came when her ship came in: She received offers from both CBS and NBC. What to do? How to choose? She accepted both. A day shift at one, a night shift at the other. That's what I tell people about Alex. She's a terrific broadcast executive who is married to a great guy (an educator in New York) and has two kids. If you're a loyal viewer of Nightly News, you've actually seen her before, though you may not realize it. On that day New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his single-engine plane into a New York high-rise, Alex was en route to her children's school, and provided a valuable eyewitness report to one of our camera crews -- all about what she saw. She held a number of big jobs at CBS News before we managed to steal her away, and while a number of her front-office responsibilities will continue in this job, we are all thrilled that Alex was able to take the position John Reiss once held. We are a very close bunch, and today's announcement keeps it that way. I wanted very badly to be there for today's staff meeting in New York, but I think Alex of all people understands.

I will try to gather up some details for a later stand-alone posting from here. Something interesting happens every minute. Would that there were enough time in the day to relay it all.

Click here to watch the video.

After much planning and many hours of traveling since our departure from New York on Friday evening, we have arrived in Baghdad for several days of coverage.

The decision to come here was mine. The trip was under consideration for months and has been several weeks in the planning. It is the story of our time, it dominates our news coverage night after night, and as a journalist I believe it's important to see and touch this story first-hand. It is my third trip to Iraq since the start of the war, and this one comes at a critical time in my view. The recent change in the tempo of the violence and the decision to send more U. S. troops were both major factors in my decision. We have taken all the security precautions possible, and we will do nothing to put ourselves in any undue danger.

After I made the decision to come, NBC signed off on the trip, from the very highest levels on down, and then the planning started. It was our goal to visit before the coming anniversary of the start of the war. I'd be lying to say that the wounds suffered by my friends Bob Woodruff and Kimberly Dozier didn't weigh heavily on my mind. My own family has been profoundly affected by Bob's ordeal -- and it will stay with us and help guide our actions. I saw both Bob and Kimberly just days ago, and we intentionally delayed our trip so as not to conflict with Bob's documentary last week and the launch of the book that he and his wife Lee have written.

While in Iraq, I'm surrounded by the best possible team -- all of whom volunteered for this duty. Producer Subrata De is here (you will be seeing her photos and reading her postings) as is producer John Zito, who was embedded with U. S. forces during the war. We have an outstanding technical crew, including Craig White, who was David Bloom's cameraman during the war, and who was just here with Robert Bazell while shooting the series of reports, "Wounds of War."                     

Also with me is retired 4-star U. S. Army Gen. Wayne Downing -- a former member of President Bush's White House anti-terrorism staff, and the former head of U. S. Special Operations. Gen. Downing was traveling with me during a helicopter mission at the start of the war, which was forced down by insurgent fire, which in turn forced us to spend three days in the desert under the protection of the Third Infantry Division. It is great to have him on this trip, both for his technical assistance and for his companionship.

We will try our best to report what we see, including the texture of military life here, which is seldom reported back home in any depth. Again: we are here to take stock of this story, and see it for ourselves. We have two superb correspondents in our Baghdad bureau, Richard Engel and Tom Aspell, who will continue to cover the day-to-day life and warfare on the streets they know so well.

My thanks to all the people who got us here and are keeping us safe. My thanks to my friends back at NBC News in New York -- who will turn what we report -- into a great broadcast each night we're here.             

We'll see you on the air from Baghdad.