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War Debate

On this Saturday of a holiday weekend we are following several big stories.

One day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution opposing the President's new war plan for Iraq... Senators are trying to decide whether to debate a resolution on Iraq in the Senate.

NBC's Chip Reid will have the latest from the hill... NBC's John Yang reports from the White House... and NBC's Jane Arraf reports from Baghdad.

Plus... travel troubles.   After the snowstorm in the northeast... some flyers are still stuck in airports this holiday weekend.  Jetblue has gotten the most attention... but other airlines canceled flights too... and some of those passengers are still trying to get out of town.  NBC's Rehema Ellis reports tonight from JFK airport in New York.

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The aftermath

While the all-time record for incoming e-mails may still belong to a series we did a few months ago on autism, the response to our series called "Trading Places" is without parallel in its scope. I don't think anything we've ever done has received more comment. We all have our own stories about being stopped on the street by complete strangers who feel the need to comment on what they've seen. Yesterday a FedEx box arrived from a photographer in Maine, who saw the segment on my father and wanted him to have some photos of the Maine coast. He was moved to do so, he said, because my father reminded him of his own. He began his letter to me by admitting he normally does not watch the network evening newscasts. He was just looking for local coverage of the impending winter storm! Tonight Tom Brokaw will talk about his mother's new life in an assisted-living facility, which he will contrast (noting, as we all have, that we're fortunate to be able to afford such care for our parents) to the hard life of another American family, raising kids of their own while caring for adult parents. The same quiet struggle is going on as we speak in so many American households.

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One Action, An Entire Movement

Editor's note updated, 7:35 a.m., Feb. 17: All those inquiring how to help, please visit the Web site of Airline Ambassadors International.

Nancy Rivard is the president and founder of Airline Ambassadors International and the subject of tonight's story, which you've already read about from correspondent Kerry Sanders and producer Mario Garcia. We invited her to blog about her organization for viewers who may interested in helping her make a difference.

In 1993, I delivered my first bag of aid to a refugee camp in Croatia. From this singular act spawned Airline Ambassadors International (AAI). Over the last decade, our members have been at the forefront of a growing movement called "voluntourism." Voluntourism offers a way for caring individuals to become positively involved in the global community by traveling To make a difference. Our members have traveled the globe, helping to lift children and communities out of poverty and, in the process, create lasting bonds of friendship and kindness throughout the world.

It was great to have Kerry and the NBC team join us on this trip to visit orphanages and projects we support in El Salvador ...as usual, everyone fell in love with the kids! Besides the hygiene, school and newborn kits, shoes and soccer balls, we also delivered the complete priority wish list requested by the CIPI orphanage director -- a new TV and DVD player, and furniture for the facility... and by the time we left... we had transformed the place with artwork!

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Our new series 'On the Line'

I remember March 19, 2003, the day the Iraq war started. As one of the correspondents in the NBC team heading into Iraq from Jordan, we were perched on the border and waiting for a secure enough opening to begin the race along Highway 10 to Baghdad. Once there, a few days later, we watched in those early weeks as looting and chaos battered the Saddam-less city while the U.S. occupation began to take shape. We drove around freely, worried mostly about avoiding the crossfire generated by the bandits and looters who all seemed armed and eager to shoot; there were stories everywhere.

Now, with the war about to begin its fifth year, those early days and weeks might as well have happened in a different country, so profoundly have the internal dynamics of Iraq and the war changed. NBC News continues to get great reporting from Richard Engel and our other colleagues who have either been embedded with U.S. military units or have risked venturing away from our workspace to find and report stories. One recent example, Robert Bazell, with his gripping reports on emergency medical treatment in the war zone.

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Early Nightly: 'Trading Places'

Brian anchors the broadcast tonight from New York, wrapping up an amazing week. Today's vlog focuses solely on our series "Trading Places," which has resonated with so many of you. Click here to watch.

And if you missed any of this week's series, here are some quick links:

Brian Williams

Tim Russert
Ann Curry
Dr. Nancy Snyderman
Tom Brokaw

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When it's hard to be objective

Editor's note: Mario produced tonight's "Making a Difference" story that Kerry Sanders already blogged about, below. Later this afternoon, Nancy herself will share a little about her experience as president and founder of Airline Ambassadors International.

Spend some time around Nancy Rivard and you quickly learn she is many things. Smart. Kind. Compassionate. And a little crazy.

Just crazy enough to believe that she could actually pull off her plan. Convince major airlines to utilize space on their planes to help people around the world live better lives.

The idea seems simple enough, but common sense is a rare commodity these days. To see Nancy's idea in action is remarkable. Perhaps more remarkable, her energy and her ability to actually make things happen.

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Flight attendant marries work to passion

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- It’s a long way from the comforts of first class, but Nancy Rivard, a veteran flight attendant, found a way to marry her work to her passion: helping the less fortunate.

Rivard, who looks a little bit like the actress who played Wonder Woman, is herself a wonder. I traveled with her to El Salvador where she, and her Airline Ambassadors, are changing lives.

The concept is simple: Use the empty space on planes already scheduled to fly, and deliver aid donated by Americans. I went with her team of a dozen to El Salvador, where she’s quietly been working for a decade. It’s mostly flight attendants, who use their privileges to fly for free, and then, once on the ground, take the aid and give it to those in the most need. Rivard told me “when I started doing one thing a month that was real, I began to get interest first from flight attendants, and then from airlines.”

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Station response to 'Trading Places'

Since Nightly News began its "Trading Places: Caring for Your Parents" on Monday, more than 2,500 viewers have shared their own personal stories about meeting the needs of their parents. Hundreds of the messages included photographs and some came with homemade videos. In addition, more than 1,000 viewers have e-mailed us, commenting on the series. This is a large response to an editorial project and a good indicator of widespread interest. Another is NBC station support for the stories.

If you watch KPNX in Phoenix, you’ll know that the station has joined Nightly News in focusing on the challenge of caring for aging parents with its own coverage. It has featured  a series about morning anchor Tram Mai and her mother MinhSon, who is recovering from 11 surgeries in the past eight years, three of them related to breast cancer. MinhSon lives in California with her husband and son, but Tram does what she can to assist her mother long distance from Phoenix.

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Passenger revolt

With all that technology does for us, it's amazing to consider that with the exception of the Concorde years, commercial aviation, as a means of transportation, is no faster than it was about 50 years ago. And as a slew of passengers learned yesterday, aircraft and jetways might as well be made out of brick. Somehow, some of our fellow citizens were forced to stay locked inside of immobile steel tubes for upwards of 10 hours at a time. The young, the old -- no food, dwindling water, clogged toilet facilities and no circulating air. In the United States of America in 2007. How many times are we going to allow this to happen? Someone has to answer for this, and if we can put a J-Dam through the dome of the Information Ministry headquarters in downtown Baghdad, we can figure out a way to get some air stairs out to a stranded aircraft and unload the passengers who would gladly walk through a foot of snow and whiteout conditions for the warmth, safety and freedom of the always-welcoming terminal at JFK Airport. The CEO of JetBlue just said on CNBC this afternoon that his airline did a "horrible" job. Hear, hear. We will cover the story of what happened to these passengers yesterday, along with the suffering still going on due to weather.

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Early Nightly is up

Brian anchors the broadcast tonight from New York, where he also delivered today's vlog.

Click here or on the image to watch.

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