Editor's note: The broadcast aired a story Friday night by Jim Maceda about his week embedded with the Army's 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. Click here to read or watch it. After getting that story on air, Jim called to offer his additional thoughts on what was obviously an exhausting assignment.

Afghanistan is an intriguing assignment -- here is the world's superpower, trying to win over the people of one of the world's poorest, almost medieval countries, because they both share a common enemy: al-Qaida and its Taliban surrogates. American soldiers are dying here -- now more than 220. Billions of dollars ($12B to date) have been spent on reconstruction.

Covering this war has never been easy. And it's only getting harder. Nowhere else is a reporter's strength quite as sapped by the elements -- the almost impenetrable mountains and valleys, and the stalking presence of disease or infection. You spend as much time cleaning yourself and everything you touch as you do reporting the story.

I've been embedding with U.S. forces since long before it was called embedding. Since 1983, with U.S. Marines in Beirut, many of whom were killed in a truck bomb by a group called Hezbollah few had even heard of. On a scale of 1 to 10, the Afghanistan embed rates little more than a 2. Coming in at a 1, my embed with Chechen rebels outside Grozny, where my cameraman Kyle Eppler, and I literally "embedded" -- sleeping on the living room floor next to the local Chechen commander's terror cell.

Covering Operation Mountain Lion, embedded with the 10th Mountain Division in eastern Afghanistan, was no exception. I knew we were in for an unforgettable journey when our Chinook helicopter almost tipped over as we landed, in the dead of night, on the edge of a 7,000-foot precipice. This was to be our perch overlooking the most ambitious offensive by U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war.

My cameraman (once again Kyle Eppler) and I decided it was best to be with the Headquarters Company, which would command and control the operation. For good measure, Col. John Nicholson, the 10th Mountain commander, brought along a platoon of Marines to watch his back. It was a smart move. We came under attack only hours after our arrival on the mountaintop. Just as soldiers -- and the NBC team -- were settling into their sleeping bags, bursts of automatic weapons fire cut through our camp, with bullets zinging past our unprotected heads. As calmly as if he were talking to his wife about dinner plans, Nicholson called his troops into action. Soldiers jumped out of their bags and into their pants and flak jackets, grabbed their weapons and responded with overwhelming firepower. This was just a probe. Maybe two or three insurgents, testing the U.S. forces' resolve. One of the intel scouts picked up radio chatter before the attack. "Just shoot and try to injure the Americans. And God be with you." The Marines wounded at least two insurgents as they fled back into the mountains.

Kyle and I spent the night wide awake, wondering when a large group of Taliban with revenge on their minds would counterattack. The temperature dropped from the 70s to the 20s. I couldn't tell if my shivering was from the cold or my fear.

At dawn we were packing for the 4,000-foot descent down to a lumberyard in the Korungal Valley that had been a Taliban safe house but was soon to be the 10th Mountain's new headquarters. I expected the descent to be much easier than a climb. I don't remember ever being so wrong. With 50 pounds on my back (Kyle was lugging more than 100 pounds, including a car battery we would use for power) we accompanied 26 soldiers, and a platoon of Afghan Army scouts – slowly -- down the mountain, which got steeper as the signs of Taliban movement grew more evident. Two soldiers went down with dehydration. Another soldier tore a ligament. Eleven and a half hours later, we made it to the bottom, our route actually ending with an 800-meter climb up to a road above a river which we had to cross by foot.

The lumberyard did become Nicholson's new base camp. But it was the camp from hell. One standing structure with no window glass meant that every time a chopper landed with supplies or took off with the general, tons of dust flew into our "hooch" and shut down the computers we used to feed our stories to New York.

Through it all, despite the dusty, dangerous environment, the soldiers and Marines with us took it all in stride. I marveled at how the 48-year-old Nicholson could spend the same amount of time as I humping gear, eating dirt, taking incoming and punishing his body, and still find the energy to plot out the next phase of the offensive in a province neither U.S. forces nor the Afghan government had ever been to before.

It takes a long, grueling day-by-day effort to win this war... and, it seems, it's just as hard to cover it.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, has ordered that some 700 soldiers from the Army's 1st Armored Division be redeployed from Kuwait to Iraq to enhance security during the upcoming Shiite religious pilgrimage in Iraq. U.S. military officials say the bulk of the force will be deployed in Karbala, with others in Baghdad, to assist Iraqi security forces in setting up checkpoints and security perimeters around religious activities in an effort to deter car and suicide bomb attacks.

The 700 additional forces, which had been stationed in Kuwait as a standby force, would remain in Iraq for approximately 30 days, then, if conditions permit, sent back to Kuwait.

In light of the recent spike in sectarian violence in Iraq, U.S. military officials also report Gen. Casey has not made a decision to resume the overall withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, even though that announcement was expected sometime this month.  The current number of American forces in Iraq is about 133,000.

We didn't know what to expect as we drove into Luton, about 30 miles north of London. We knew the industrial town was ethnically mixed, with about 45,000 South Asian Muslims, some 30% of the population. We also knew it was where one of the July 7, 2005 suicide bombers had lived. The four bombers began their fateful day at the Luton train station, before heading into London, killing 56. Now we were looking for Muslims, and non-Muslims, to tell us, frankly, what life was like SINCE the attack, and almost two years to the day after the Madrid train bombings. Our story was meant to kick off a special series on the "Faces of Islam in Europe," but things were not going well.

First, it was pouring rain. Luton's streets were deserted. The townfolk who did venture out were hidden beneath umbrellas and parkas -- terrible for TV coverage. The rain shorted out our camera, which would roll and stop on its own. When we found the Town Hall and Luton's mayor -- a 31 year old Muslim of Bangladeshi origin -- he summarily 'white-washed' any tension between Muslims and non-Muslims in his town. After blaming the media for most of the ills, he sent us to another city counselor, in the Muslim enclave called Bury Park. He likewise could think of no one to talk to who could address the problems of increased discrimination against Muslims, aggressive immigration laws, police searches, security checks for Muslim job applicants, and the myriad other issues that Muslims, elsewhere, had documented in detail.

After hours of running in circles, our deadline approaching, I was close to 'putting a bullet' in our shoot and starting from scratch in another British town. We were now stuck in traffic, in the rain, behind a massive Luton city bus. In sheer frustration, I jumped from our vehicle and began to guide the bus driver, a British female who looked overwhelmed by her predicament, through the narrow but negotiable jam. A crowd (of South Asians) began to gather in the street. Perhaps to see the spectacle of a white Westerner guiding a city bus in this Pakistani Muslim ghetto? As is so often the case, it was THEN that the story we were looking for bit us in our collective behinds. A man walked out of a Halal meat shop and introduced himself to my cameraman, Steve O'Neil, who had decided to grab a few frames of 'local color' as I directed traffic. The man, Abdul Rahim Malik, turned out to be the veritable Sheikh of Luton. Not a mealy-mouthed politician, this entrepreneur owned several businesses, banks, and had opened Luton's first mosque. He offered an interview, without solicitation, to Steve. Did we want to know about the British police raids and arrests in Luton, since the bombings, that had turned up no terrorist material and had so far led to no charges? Steve replied, 'you may want to ask my correspondent who, unfortunately, is directing traffic at the moment.''

Mr. Malik was a gem. He explained, on camera, how the raids had created nothing but anger and suspicion among local Muslim residents. And this from a man who, it turned out, was a board member on Luton's Police Authority. He apologized for not being able to put us in touch with one of the families whose homes had been raided (at 4 in the morning). The police, he said, had told the families not to speak with the press. But he did recommend a middle aged widow named Naseen Imdiaz who ran a Learning Center for other Muslim women in Luton. We met Nasreen, and never looked back. She described how frightening it was for Muslims to walk the streets. Since the bombings, the whites taunted them, calling them terrorists. Her brother, Bishar, told us (also on camera) that the local politicians would only lie to us. That, in fact, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, despite the efforts of those like Nasreen, had only deteriorated. The story was coming together nicely.

Over the years, I've never ceased to be amazed at how, no matter how lost this reporter feels, a Mr. Malik appears to guide me through it all. If ONLY our Sheikh of Luton could have stopped the rain!

Editor's note: You can read & watch Jim's story as it aired on Friday's broadcast here. 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared today that the war on terror is not only being fought on the battlefield, "but in the newsrooms -- in places like New York, London, Cairo and elsewhere." At a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld outlined a strategy for the U.S. to become more aggressive in conducting "information warfare" in the modern era of satellite TV and the Internet.

Rumsfeld defended the practice of paying to place stories in Iraqi newspapers. He called it a "non-traditional means" to counter disinformation by the enemy, and said that critical press stories about the operation had a "chilling effect" and brought all initiatives to a stop. Rumsfeld said "while the enemy is increasingly skillful at manipulating the media, the U.S. advantage is "truth is on our side -- and ultimately truth wins out."

Rumsfeld criticized the U.S. media which he says "seems to demand perfection from the government, but does not apply the same standard to the enemy, or even sometimes to themselves." He cited as an example the erroneous claim by Newsweek of desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay.

Rumsfeld stressed that the government be more aggressive in "strategic communications" (which some, even in the military, say is synonymous with propaganda), and to do that the government should consider the possibility of new organizations and programs similar to Radio Free Europe and the United States Information Agency, which he called "valuable instruments" during the Cold War.

Editor's note: Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski recently returned from an embedded reporting trip to Iraq.

The NBC crew and I were already on our way to the Air Force battlefield hospital at the Balad Air Base when in the distance we saw the Blackhawk medevac helicopter coming in for a landing. What we didn't know was that it carried ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt. Both had been seriously wounded by an IED -- improvised explosive device -- military jargon for one of those increasingly sophisticated and deadly roadside bombs. Vogt's reportedly recovering nicely. A week later, Woodruff remains in a medically-induced coma at the National Naval Medical Center outside Washington, his long-term prognosis still uncertain. What is clear is they both owe their lives to the men and women at Balad. 

The Air Force hospital is a sprawling complex of medical tents. In Iraq, unfortunately, it gets plenty of business. All day and night, the most seriously wounded soldiers and Marines arrive at Balad -- 1,100 per month -- many suffering critical head injuries from those IEDs. What happens here is nothing short of remarkable. Some of the most complicated, and in many cases risky medical procedures, are performed as a matter of routine, often under mortar fire, in the middle of a war zone.

Of the 30 military physicians on staff, two are neurosurgeons. In fact, brain surgery is conducted almost daily. It's the only battlefield hospital ever to be equipped with not one, but two CT-scanners, to quickly locate elusive chunks of potentially deadly shrapnel lodged inside the brain and body, saving precious seconds between the time the injured first arrive and they're whisked into surgery.  But it's the medical staff, both Air Force and Army, who account for the 96 percent survival rate at Balad.

Col. Jill Sterling, a Medical Squad Commander from the Air Force Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio, told us that she felt honored to be treating the U.S. servicemen and women, badly broken by the war, and that her current tour at Balad has been the epitome of her medical career. "We're really making a difference," she said. "We're saving lives." Soon, the sound of approaching Blackhawk helicopters carrying more wounded Americans rose up outside the tents. When I turned to Col. Sterling she was already gone. There were more lives to be saved.

An NBC News crew and I are spending a couple days in one of Iraq's most dangerous cities, Samarra.
In the heart of the Sunni triangle, just south of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikirt, Samarra has long been a safe haven for insurgents. In a critical test of U.S. efforts to improve the combat performance of Iraqi security forces, an entire battalion of Iraqi Special police (about 800 commandos), was sent into Samarra two months ago to take over for the incompetent, and some say corrupt, regular police force. 

But those commandos are not alone. A 10-man team of U.S. military trainers known as a Special Police Training Team, or SPTTS (pronounced SPITS), is embedded with the commandos to provide training, logistical support, even airstrikes if necessary. The program is considered the key to improving Iraqi security forces and allowing U.S. troops to start coming home in larger numbers.

How's it going? The local police chief was fired Sunday.

On the drive here in a military convoy we were reminded of the most dangerous weapon facing U.S. troops -- improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

On Iraq's well-traveled Highway 1, we were stopped as a U.S. military explosives team examined what was thought to be an IED. It was a false alarm. But just south of Samarra we drove up on a U.S. military convoy struck by an IED, smoke still rising from the damaged Humvee. Two soldiers were hurt and rushed to the nearby military field hospital at Balad. Medics declared their injuries were not life-threatening. The Humvee was heavily damaged, but the up-armor saved the soldiers' lives. The two-inch thick bullet-proof glass held, but was so spider-webbed the windows looked as if they were covered with heavy frost. The blast pattern from the bomb indicated it was one of the more sophisticated "shaped charges," which intensifies the effect of the blast in a single direction. 

In short order the military cleared the road, and traffic, backed up for miles, proceeded as if this happened every day. Unfortunately, on Highway 1 north of Baghdad, it pretty much does.

U.S. intelligence officials are feeling some sense of vindication today after a Pakistani tribal leader acknowledged that last week's hellfire missile attack on the village of Damadola near the Afghanistan border killed four, maybe five foreign militants. For nearly five days villagers had claimed that only innocent civilians, including some women and children, had been killed when three CIA Predator drones struck three separate targets.   

At the same time, those officials now say it appears highly doubtful that the airstrike killed the ultimate target in the attack, Osama Bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They expect by the end of the week, al-Qaida will release at least an audio if not videotape of Zawahiri thumbing his nose at the U.S. and condemning the U.S. for killing innocents.

And despite earlier reports that the FBI would compare Zawahiri's DNA to human tissue samples recovered from the attack site, U.S. officials now tell NBC News they have no tissue samples to test. According to one U.S. official, "We'd have to go into a clearly hostile area and start digging up graves. That's just not going to happen."

So if Zawahiri wasn't killed, who was? U.S. counterterrorism officials claim those killed were high-level members of al-Qaida, some Egyptians, with especially close ties to the Egyptian-born Zawahiri. The officials expect the Pakistani government to publicly identify those al-Qaida members within the next several days.

This attempt to kill Zawahiri is the latest in a recent string of attacks against suspected al-Qaida and Taliban targets in the remote and rugged reaches of western Pakistan by both the CIA and the Pakistani military. While this increasingly aggressive campaign has scored some modest victories within the past couple of months, Zawahiri's apparent escape and the deaths of civilians will most certainly provide added ammunition for America's enemies in the region.

By weight, here are the Thanksgiving vittles that will be served up to American military forces in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan tomorrow.

TURKEY BREAST             174,912 pounds
TURKEY THIGH                31,853 pounds
WHOLE TURKEY               27,560 pounds
CORN BREAD STUFFING    28,768 pounds
SEASONED STUFFING        25,758 pounds
BONELESS HAM               311,280 pounds
BEEF RIBS                      306,480 pounds
BEEF ROUND                     33,880 pounds
SHRIMP                         211,128 pounds
CRAB LEGS                      95,920 pounds
PUMPKIN PIES                   32,570
FRUITCAKES                    101,040
EGG NOG                          17,040 gallons

Pentagon officials say preparations are well underway for the military and National Guard to respond if needed to Hurricane Wilma.

A Defense Emergency Operations Center will be established at Tallahassee, Fla. by tomorrow. The Pentagon has named a Defense Coordinating officer, who will serve as a liaison between state and federal agencies, the National Guard and NORTHCOM, the command in charge of homeland defense.

Homestead Air Force Base in South Florida will serve as the FEMA Mobilization Center. The Corps of Engineers has pre-positioned units in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.

Plans are being made to relocate the 21st Combat Support hospital, a portable medical facility, from Louisiana where it was used to treat victims of Hurricane Katrina to Florida if needed.

Officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon say they have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about in her published claim over the weekend that she was given a "security clearance" when she was embedded with a WMD military team in Iraq.

According to the officials, they know of no instance or circumstance when a reporter has been or would be granted a security clearance for any reason, and don't know that she was given one when she was embedded with the U.S. Army's 75th Exploitation Unit that was tasked with finding Iraqi WMD immediately following the end of major conflict in the spring of 2003.

Normally it takes at least three months of background checks, etc. before anyone is granted a "SECRET" clearance. There are cases where someone is granted a temporary short-term clearance, for a day, for example, but that is usually extended only to military, DOD or civilian contractors who need to be cleared for specific information on a specific project. Miller had indicated she thought her "security clearance" may still have been in effect during a meeting with Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby after she had returned to Washington.

While embedded reporters are often granted access to classified briefings on the grounds that the information can not be reported, Pentagon officials say no military commander or officer has the individual authority to grant a security clearance.

Pentagon officials say they are continuing to check whether Miller had been granted a security clearance of any kind.

The first deliveries of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of international relief are beginning to reach Pakistan's remote villages, if only just. On the op-ed pages, Pakistan's intellectuals are debating why so much devastation could befall a country known to straddle one of the Earth's main fault lines. The trickle of relief agents has become a steady stream of visits by UN, Western and Asian dignitaries, all seeking to be seen waving their organization's flag high over the miserable ruins.

It's called 'Week Two.' The breaking story is out of the news rundowns, and the world's media starts to reassess its presence. Many journalists, including this reporter, headed home. But quite a few of us, it seems, are still scratching our collective heads, sensing we've just covered something unique-even those of us who 'do' disasters for a living--but not yet able to nail down what made it so.

Hence, this blog posting.

In the past week our NBC News team camped out in the heart of the quake zone (there were no roofs safe enough to sleep under), filing stories for Nightly News along the way. In that time we got an up-close, ground-level look at the 80 percent destroyed city of Muzaffarabad, a view very different from what helicopter flights will give you. We drove along a long part of the quake's axis, some 80 miles, from Muzaffarabad to Ghari Hajibullah to Manserha to Islamabad. And once the road was cleared, we made it up to what had been inaccessible mountain villages, like Danna, high above the Jehlum River Valley. It was still a just a snapshot of the total picture -- even the long drive was a fraction of the 1,500-mile Himalayan fault line that convulsed in at least three South Asian nations. But it's certainly enough to convince me that I've never seen anything quite like this kind of concentrated devastation before, not even in Mexico City back in 1985, when an 8.3 monster quake destroyed thousands of buildings and killed more than 20,000.

Walking through Muzaffarabad, just eight days ago the thriving capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, was like moving through a German town in WWII after a Dresden-like firebombing, except there were no bomb craters. No carbonized bodies. Only building after building spewing out their bricks. Sometimes whole city blocks were pancaked just like the homes of Muslims and Croats, after Serb demolition experts systematically blew them up during the 'ethnic cleansing' of Yugoslavia's civil war. But again, THIS felt unique. It looked, and smelled, like a war zone just after battle. But the people were still HERE, amassed and dazed, in the streets. It was as if, warned of impending house-to-house combat, 100,000 of Muzaffarabad's city folk chose to stay and watch, rather than run for their lives.

Take the New Orleans death toll and multiply it by 50. This kind of catastrophe, we all know, usually happens in poor, backward countries like Afghanistan, where towns molded from baked mud fold like so many sand castles hit by a huge wave. But a WHOLE city --think of it. A regional capital full of hospitals and schools and government offices is now a city-full of rubble. Whatever the causes behind this catastrophe, be it shoddy construction, endemic corruption, or just plain denial, its aftermath, for me, had all the elements of a nightmare: I think of the medical staff in Muzaffarabad's main hospital- 90 percent destroyed and trying desperately to save patients in a makeshift M.A.S.H. on the hospital grounds even while, within earshot, their own family members were screaming for help from beneath the rubble. I think of all those first responders, like the ones the media beat to the Gulf Coast calamity. Those in charge of emergencies here -- the Pakistani Army, the police, local government officials, ambulance drivers and fire fighters -- most of them were killed within seconds of the tremor. 

So it wasn't difficult for us to beat those first responders to places like Danna, the village some 6,000 feet up in the Kashmir Mountains. Old men, their faces still caked with blood and their wounds beginning to fester, approached us, seeking help. We were the first 'Westerners' they had seen since the quake and of course they assumed we were aid workers. Nassem Khan, an elderly man who spoke good English after years of work in Saudi Arabia, seemed to sum up the anger in Danna:

''Where are our commanders?'' he screamed at us. ''Where is the aid? You come up, why can't they come up and help?'' The short answer (unlike in New Orleans): many of them were dead.

I'll take away numerous images from this assignment, but one will haunt me for a long time to come: a little, nameless Kashmiri boy on a stretcher, just choppered into Muzaffarabad's sports stadium that served as a field hospital. A beautiful boy, no more than three years old, with large hazel eyes and hardly any skin left on his small battered face. He lay there and stared at me with those eyes, already beyond pain, beyond tears. No doubt in shock, but, somehow, beyond that, too. He just stared, expressionless. Motionless. And I looked back, helpless.