New York Police Department officials are dismissing video of a "Taliban suicide-bomber graduation" as "part of a media blitz intended to spread Taliban propaganda and raise the profile of the organization" rather than a real threat.

In a special analysis distributed this week to NYPD commanders, the department's counter-terrorism division also downplays the Taliban's capability of carrying out suicide attacks in the U.S. and Europe, as the Taliban commander suggested, saying they do not have the needed networks in the West and have no experience carrying out such attacks.

"This video is likely part of a media blitz intended to spread Taliban propaganda and raise the profile of the organization," said the analysis. "The Taliban recognize the benefits which come with being portrayed as part of the global jihad, given the additional funding and recruitment such an impression engenders."

The video was first aired Monday by ABC News, who said it was acquired from a Pakistani journalist with links to the Taliban.  Parts of it have since been aired and discussed elsewhere.

In the report, ABC stated, "Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained bu ABC News.  Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al-Qaida/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9."

The NYPD analysis suggests ABC may have misinterpreted what was said at the ceremony.  Instead of calling for suicide attacks inside the countries who have been sent to fight the Taliban, the analysis suggests "though threatening attacks abroad, [Taliban leaders] may in fact be sending bombers to attack specific allied military units in Afghanistan.

"All the countries threatened with attacks have forces operating in Afghanistan, and the Taliban has recently carried out suicide attacks in parts of Afghanistan which rarely saw such incidents, including a recent attack against German forces in the Northern part of the country."

As for the Taliban's capability, the NYPD reported: "In the past two years, the Taliban have demonstrated their capability to carry out large numbers of suicide bombings, although it is not believed that they have the network or operatives to carry out such attacks abroad."

While noting that Taliban does have ties to al-Qaida, the analysis added, "Taliban [is] unlikely to send bombers abroad for attacks though al-Qaida involvement may demonstrate intention to carry out attacks in West … There are no known instances of Taliban operatives carrying out attacks outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan; however, the involvement of al-Qaida in this instance may mean some of these recruits are being groomed for attacks abroad."

On tonight's broadcast we continue the series called Wounds of War. We are following some of the troops we first saw treated in combat hospitals in Iraq earlier in the year as they undergo treatment in the United States.  I want to add a personal note here.  The opportunity to cover this story in the detail I've been allowed  has been, and I look forward to it continuing to be, one of the greatest privileges of my career.  The bravery and sense of duty of our troops as well as the dedication and compassion of the doctors, nurses and medics who care for them far exceeds anything I could have imagined before I witnessed it all personally.

Of course know there are problems. In today's dispatch of my regular column appearing on MSNBC'com's health page, I detail the twin curses of the enormous numbers of brain injuries and the lack of preparedness for the long-term care of all sorts of wounds that so many veterans will require.  The system is simply overwhelmed.  I also point out why former Senator Bob Dole, who is co-chair of the commission set up to address these problems, should have the motivation to make things right.  We'll be watching.  I look forward to following these soldier's and medic's  stories for the duration of  the war and long afterward

The arrests this week of key operatives of an Indonesian terrorist group is significant, says a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, but neither of the men were responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesia, the December 2002 bombing of a Bali nightclub that killed 202 people, including five Americans.

The two -- Abu Dujana and Zarkasih -- were grabbed this week and identified as the leader and military commander of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian terrorist group blamed for the Bali bombing. However, the official said the U.S. does not believe the two men were part of the planning or execution of the attack. 

"It's a serious setback," said the official.  "I can tell you we're happy they're off the street.  It's a significant event."

The significance he said is two-fold: first that the two were even arrested, and second it shows that the Indonesians are "commited to fighting terror."

"I became the emergency head ... in 2005," Zarkasih, 45, said in a videotape shown to reporters in Jakarta, adding that the selection followed a police crackdown that crippled the organization in recent years. The capture of Dujana -- who as head of Jemaah Islamiyah's military unit had been Indonesia's most wanted man -- was announced Wednesday. Authorities had mostly referred to him as the group's top leader, but said Friday, after intensive interrogations, that Zarkasih held that post.

"From 2005 until now I was head of the military wing [of Jemaah Islamiyah]," said Dujana in another videotape Friday.

U.S. officials said the two men may have known about the Bali attacks in 2002, but were not believed to have been part of the planning or exeution.

Jemaah Islamiyah has long been linked to al-Qaida, mainly through a link between its former leader, Hambali, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. KSM, the architect of the 9-11 attacks, arranged for al-Qaida to provide more than $50,000 to Jemaah Islamiyah to cover the cost of the Bali bombings. Hambali himself was captured and turned over to U.S. authorities in Thailand on Aug. 11, 2003.  He is now awaiting trial at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo, Cuba.  (The Pentagon recently posted audio of Hambali's initial hearing at the base.)

After the Bali attack and a subsequent attack on the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 18, the U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism community expressed doubts that the Indonesian government was prepared to prosecute Islamic militants in Islam's most populated country. In particular, the U.S. was angered by the lenient sentence given Abu Bakar Bashir, the country's leading Islamic militant. 

Asked if the U.S. had pressured Indonesia to carry out these arrests, the official said that Indonesia is a "willilng partner" in the war on terror but added that the U.S. has indeed "encouraged" the South East Asian nation to do more. 

Since the J. W. Marriott attack, Jemaah Islamiyah has not had a lot of success in carrying out attacks in Southeast Asia, having been thwarted in several plots.  Their most recent successes were triple suicide bombings on restaurants in Bali in 2005.  "They have not shown a lot of prowess", said the official.

We have the very exciting news tonight about progress in the embryonic stem cell field. This work holds the chance of creating these amazing building blocks of life without destroying embryos.  It is important to note that hasn't happened yet.  This work is in mice only.  The step to humans could be easy or difficult, but the scientists won't know until they try it. 

One big stumbling block is that the method used to insert genes into mouse skin cells uses a type of virus that can make the cells cancerous.  There are other technical problems as well.  And it is important to note that despite all the hope about Parkinson's, diabetes and other diseases, nothing has been successfully treated yet with embryonic stem cells.  And many scientists say that the efforts to find out whether the cells work have been hampered by the federal governments restrictions on funding.   

Viewer's seeking more information can look at a press release from MIT's Whitehead Institute , a press release from UCLA, and one of the original research papers.  For one prospective on the ethics debate check out Arthur Caplan's analysis. Read the complete news report.

Watch Robert's report from the 'Nightly News' broadcast

Many of you have been seeking further information after our broadcast story Monday night on the implication of new research that suggests up to 100,000 breast cancer patients received drugs that did nothing to combat their cancer, but put them at risk for heart failure and leukemia.

Here is an analysis piece I have written for MSNBC.com that delves further into the subject.
Click to read

With Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to target missiles on Europe if the U.S. goes ahead with antimissile plans in Eastern Europe, what is the status of the world's nuclear arsenals? One would think that with the Cold War over for more than 15 years, the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russia would be limited.

Not so.

Estimates by the Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS) put the number of nuclear weapons still operational in the two countries at more than 10,000 -- enough to destroy all human life many times over, but less than what it was during the height of the Cold War.

According to the most recent FAS estimates, completed in the last month:

--The U.S. has 4,663 strategic nuclear weapons, that is, weapons capable of striking Russian targets, and 500 tactical nuclear weapons, for a total of 5,163.   
--Russia has 3,340 strategic nuclear weapons and 2,330 tactical for a total of 5,670. 

The two nations account for about 95 percent of the world's nuclear stockpiles. In addition, both countries  have inactive stockpiles, roughly 10,000 in Russia and 5,000 in the U.S. Moreover, there are thousands of plutonium "pits" -- the core of nuclear weapons -- stored here and there.

And while each have plans to further downsize their nuclear forces, both are also working on new warhead designs and new missiles. Here's a handy list of who has what worldwide.

Google Maps new feature, "Street View," has a predecessor in the intelligence community. Street View incorporates stills taken by Google staff into their well known satellite photo/map format.

The CIA has been doing the same thing for years, to help their officers familiarize themselves with cities and other areas they had never visited and that may be closed to Americans.

The CIA would take satellite photos of an area and then create 3D videos. They'd also add to the experience by inserting stills their foreign agents had taken at ground level, or that the agency would have acquired elsewhere. Officers about to visit a new city could then sit in front of a screen and take a "virtual walk" down a street they had never visited, using a joystick much like a teenage boy would with a video game, crossing streets and turning corners.

The technology has existed for nearly 15 years. CIA visualization specialists talked with NBC's Jamie Gangel and me back in 1993.

Six men described by federal prosecutors as "Islamic militants" were arrested on charges they plotted to attack the Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible," authorities said Tuesday.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official tells NBC News do not lose sight of the role the Internet played in inspiring these prospective jihadis. The FBI affidavits note that among the materials used in organizing, training and proselytizing the jihadis were al-Qaida training videos, the video wills of two 9-11 hijackers, and videos of U.S. soldiers being killed in Iraq.

The leader of the group is described as smiling while watching the deaths of the U.S. soldiers.

"You know the world has changed when videos shot in Iraq and Afghanistan can be an inspiration for a bunch of Albanians in Cherry Hill, N.J.," said the official.

He noted that the Internet also helped in the recruitment and inspiration of jihadis who planned  terrorist attacks in places like Singapore and England. 

"The guys in Singapore, all middle class, were all recruited off the network of jihadi Web sites," he added.

What is missing and needed, he added is, a "countervailing message" from moderate Islamists.   

"Where is the countervailing message from Islam on the Internet?," he asked.  "They aren't going to believe anything we in the West have to say.  It has to come from Islam."

After touring the combat hospitals of Iraq with Robert Bazell, cameraman Craig White, and soundperson Susan Becerra, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to say that none us have ever before seen the amount of severe trauma we witnessed in our two week trip. Since returning back, the lasting impression for me is the somewhat surprising roller coaster of emotions felt on a daily basis. I'm not talking about the simple up and down reactions to each day's event, but a rather more forceful pulling and tearing of emotions to levels of extreme highs and extreme lows.

Two images have been seared into my mind:

The first is a beautiful little Iraqi girl who was rushed into the Baghdad emergency room our first few days into the tour. Robert will feature her in his story on Wednesday. The victim of a mortar attack, she looked like a rag doll, carried into the hospital with a mangled leg hanging off. Her face was eerily devoid of any emotion at all.

The little girl appeared to have very little chance of surviving, and though the hospital sprang into action, a feeling of gloom descended upon almost everyone. We followed her to the operating room, and watched as doctors amputated her left leg.  Hours later it become clear that the girl was going to survive. More and more hospital workers turned up to check on her condition. Grim faces in the hallways began looking hopeful. Later, a feeling of collective giddiness took hold of the ward. A tiny life was being saved. It's difficult to describe the precise moment when feelings of despair and bleakness morph into something close to euphoria.

The following day I was called down from a rooftop camera position by Maj. William White, head nurse of the Baghdad ER.  Usually a Zen-like force of calm and stability, he appeared slightly frantic, and motioned for me to come quickly. He put some surgical gloves on me, told me not get any blood on myself, and asked me to give him a hand moving a badly wounded Iraqi civilian from his gurney to a bed nearby. The wounded man's leg resembled the twisted truck of an old tree. His head trauma was so severe (there's no delicate way of putting this) that a good deal of its contents had spilled out onto the gurney. We slowly moved the man together, watching him expire. 

The moment, as always, was interrupted by the sounds of helicopter rotors overhead. More wounded were coming in. White rushed back inside. The entire experience lasted no more than three minutes. Running back up those stairs, I wondered how White and others could deal with the sheer volume of these experiences. I felt a bit like a tourist. If a single three minute experience could take such hold of me, what does a year feel like here? White works 12 hours a day, six days a week, for 12 months straight. "When it doesn't affect you anymore, it's time to get out of the business," he says. How many dead, dying and severely wounded will he come across in that time and how much can the human mind handle?

The combat hospitals around Iraq deal with a constant stream of severely wounded soldiers, civilians, children. Not the drip, drip, drip of a faulty faucet, but the constant flow of a tap left firmly on. It can seem endless. All the while, these professionals push on. The people we spoke to all seemed to have their own defense mechanisms firmly in place, tailored coping strategies for emotional survival. However, the drastic ups and downs were clear for everyone to see from day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour. I can only speak from my limited window of experience, but at times it resembled some sort of a bipolar existence. Moments of deep despair (a mass casualty incident involving 20-year-old Americans or an innocent mangled child) could be followed almost immediately by feelings of exhilaration and hope (the saving of that same child's life, for instance).

As you watch "Wounds of War" this week, spare a thought for these doctors, nurses, medics and Medevac pilots who day in and day out deal with a seemingly endless flow of wounded, and the roller coaster of emotions that comes with it. It's a white-knuckled ride that few, including those who spend a mere few weeks there, can ever really appreciate.

Above photo by NBC's Craig White.

Editor's note: If you missed part I in our "Wounds of War" series, click here to watch. Correspondent Robert Bazell also wrote today about head wounds in Iraq, the No. 1 injury of the war. Click here to read that.

In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush talked for the first time about the threat of Shia extremism, placing it and the leading Shia extremist group, Hezbollah, alongside Sunni extremism, and al-Qaida, as threats to the United States.

Speaking of al-Qaida, the President stated: "These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah, a group second only to al-Qaida in the American lives it has taken.

"The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale." (Click to read the full transcript of Bush's speech.)

What's going on here? Is the U.S. planning an attack on Hezbollah?

The ability of Hezbollah to resist the Israeli Army, leading to the resignation of the Israeli Army's chief of staff, has indeed given Hezbollah new status. Moreover, the administration believes that the Shia militias in Iraq are now as much a problem as the Sunni extremists and they have modeled themselves after Hezbollah. And of course, behind it all, the administration sees the hidden hand of Iran. (Iranian officials at least publicly admit to "influence" with Hezbollah, but not "control" over it.) 

But there is division within the administration over how far to go in threatening Hezbollah. No one disputes the threat, with many administration officials believing Hezbollah is a more capable terrorist group than al-Qaida, IF it mobilized against the U.S. Many see even Hezbollah's military commander, Imad Mugniyah, as a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, because of Bin Laden's isolation and Mugniyah's open power in Lebanon.

A key part of this dispute is whether to go after Mugniyah, who apparently has taken on the nom de guerre of Jawad Nouredine. There are those who would like the U.S. to be more aggressive in pursuit of him, before he comes after the U.S. Mugniyah is believed responsible for the Marine Barracks bombing in 1983, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 two years later, the kidnappings of western hostages, the torture and murder of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley and the hanging of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins. He even met with Osama Bin Laden in 1994, according to Bin Laden's then security chief. Mugniyah operates believing that the U.S. will not cross a "red line" and try to take him out, secure in the knowledge that the U.S. never "paid him back" for the Beirut Marine barracks, as one official put it. 

Some in the U.S. government believe if the U.S. went after him, it would indeed be crossing that "red line" and inviting a Hezbollah attack against U.S. interests or more likely, the U.S. homeland.  This side believes that there is no need to go after Mugniyah or Hezbollah, that they are well aware that if they attack the U.S. homeland, the consequences would ultimately be a second front in the War on Terror, something no one wants.

U.S. officials are providing more details about the impending resignation of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and nomination of Adm. Mike McConnell.

The White House has been trying for more than a year to get Negroponte to take the No. 2 job at State and have McConnell replace him. On at least two, and possibly three occasions within the past 18 months, the White House approached each man about taking a new job.

The White House had grown impatient with Negroponte, believing that he had added a layer of bureaucracy to the intelligence community without adding much product. In particular, say officials, they did not believe that he was willing to butt heads with those who reported to him.  Several issues they had hoped he would resolve were not being dealt with. Moreover, the DNI payroll had grown to more than 1,500 and the director's office was seeking a permanent headquarters building either near the State Department or in the Washington Navy Yards.

Both men were initially reluctant to take on their new jobs.

Officials say Negroponte feared it would be seen as a demotion. The DNI job is a cabinet level position and the Deputy Secretary of State job is not. 

The decision to give Negroponte at least nominal control of Iraq policy within State assuaged that concern. (One official also speculated that Negroponte may have been promised the Secretary's job when and if Condoleezza Rice stepped down for whatever reason. The official noted that the first President Bush appointed Lawrence Eagleburger Secretary of State in the final days of his administration, rewarding Eagleburger for his years of diplomatic service, including as deputy secretary.)

Admiral Mike McConnell

McConnell, who has been successful in the private sector, was not opposed to taking the job but wanted certain assurances. The elevation of Bob Gates to Secretary of Defense helped persuade him to take the job.  In 1992 when McConnell was director of the NSA and Gates the director of the CIA, Negroponte and McConnell liked the the idea of working with Gates.   He quietly visited the President in Crawford over the Christmas holidays to finalize the decision.   McConnell's appointment came with a strong recommendation from Vice President Cheney, for whom he had worked while at the Pentagon during the Gulf War.  Unlike Negroponte, McConnell is an intelligence professional.  The White House thinks his experiences with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Office of Naval Intelligence and National Security Agency will permit him to move quickly on issues that they thought Negroponte had avoided.

NBC's Robert Windrem offers on our sister blog 'Hardblogger' his commentary on one of the most searing images of Saddam Hussein's brutal reign, and also one of the first: a purloined Ba'ath Party video of the new Iraqi president watching as his henchmen arrested party members at a 1979 party conference in Baghdad.

Read the blog entry