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Time to leave

At dinner Thursday night, Frieda Morris, bureau chief for the NBC News team covering this awful tragedy, was comparing the arc of this story to the coverage of the Columbine High School Massacre, eight years ago Friday.

"Four days into Columbine," Frieda said, "most of us hadn't had a substantial catnap, let alone a full night's sleep; it was nonstop."  All of us at the table at what was essentially a team dinner knew what Frieda was talking about; during the day -- the fourth day of so similar a story of immeasurable grief following an act of madness -- there was a sense both in the press corps and across this vast university campus that the main storylines of the Virginia Tech massacre had been identified, explored and broadcast or written.

Read the complete posting on our special blog from Blacksburg, Va.

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The no-headlines war

Editor's note: This is a story you have to see to believe, and you will, tonight, as Mike continues his reporting from Iraq as part of the broadcast's 'On the Line' series.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Babil Province, Iraq -- I looked up at the cold, starlit sky and saw I was bedded down beneath the handle of the Big Dipper. It made me smile to see something so familiar, because nothing else about the night was. 

In a convoy of Bradley tanks and Humvees, producer John Zito and cameraman Bill Angellucci and I had been returning with an infantry company from a frustrating raid on a suspected al-Qaida stronghold in Diyala Province only to run into a nest of IEDs -- the dreaded improvised explosive devices that have become one of the signatures of this protracted war. One explosive had been touched off by Zito’s Humvee, and another, a huge one, literally blew the track off the 37-ton Bradley tank that was next in line, disabling it completely and blocking the narrow dirt road that was our way home. Amazingly there were no casualties or serious injuries, though a piece of flying shrapnel sliced the cheek of one of the Humvee gunners. When help had been summoned, those support vehicles ran into more IEDs -- we counted seven in all and were told later there'd been at least a dozen -- and the decision was made to stay put, keep a rotating watch of soldiers for protection, and wait for daylight when the rescue could resume. 

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Final goodbyes for the 3rd ID

Capt. Pancho Perez-Cruz took a moment to reflect for us. In a few minutes he would take off for Iraq by way of Kuwait, at age 30 already a veteran tank company commander with two tours under his belt. "Last night I was thinking," he said, "what would I say to my guys? Should we do a prayer, or not?" He said he knew many of his soldiers were nervous, and that he knew from experience what that feeling was like, especially for the rookies. "It's fear of the unknown, but it's all right to have that: that means you're living. That means you're alive."

They did the prayer. "We come to you today, Lord, a little nervous, a little scared," Pancho's first lieutenant intoned. "Lord, look afer our families, and give us the strength we need to do our jobs. Keep us all safe so we can all come home, amen." Pancho spoke to his men, huddled close around him. "Keep your head in the game, stay together, stay tight, and we'll be all right. Hoo-ahh?" As one they answered, "Hoo-ahh!"

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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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An ex-smoker's day of reckoning

I have to admit that when I woke up on Nov. 7, the day I was scheduled to have a Spiral CT (Computed Tomography) scan for lung cancer, my first thought was thoroughly melodramatic: Will I ever again begin my day free of any concerns about a serious health issue? I was lucky enough to never have been seriously ill, but the scan, I knew, was merciless. If I had a cancerous lesion or nodule tinier than a grain of rice, if I had evidence of emphysema, it would be right there on the screen in front of me. A specialist who knew what she was talking about would give me the bad news.

That specialist was Dr. Claudia Henschke of the Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan. She co-authored the report on early CT scans for high-risk smokers and ex-smokers. I certainly qualified -- 40 years of a pack of unfiltered Camels a day, but it took me 14 months after quitting smoking to decide to get tested. Without question I was afraid of what I might learn; and, too, I felt so good! Still strong, no symptoms at all of any lung issues. I could play hard, fast tennis against young guys, walk 36 holes on various golf courses, single-hand my 14-ton boat in heavy weather. But as the months went on, even though I wasn't tempted to smoke, the questions wouldn't go away: Had my decades of smoking set a time bomb in my chest? Had it already been ignited? Should I take the one test that could at least answer that last question?

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