Iraqi adoption
Richard Engel’s story about Baghdad’s Alwiya Orphanage generated an incredible number of e-mail responses from people hoping to send help or even adopt one of the many children orphaned by the Iraq war.
For the time being, the U.S. State Department does not permit the adoption of Iraqi children. Click here for complete information on the U.S. State Department’s policy regarding "Intercountry adoption with Iraq."
We are still researching the most safe and secure way for readers to send money or supplies to orphans in Iraq. More information on that to come.
Here is an excerpt from the State Department web posting on "Intercountry adoption with Iraq" from April 2003:
"The Department of State has received many inquiries from American citizens concerned about the plight of the children of Iraq and wondering about the possibility of adoption. At this time, it is not possible to adopt Iraqi children, for several reasons.
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Reader outpouring
There was a huge response from readers and viewers to Richard Engel's report on Baghdad's Alwiya Orphanage. Please see the reader comments at the bottom of Richard's blog: Needed: Love for a Baghdad Orphanage. Richard plans to forward more information on the orphanage in the coming days.
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Fearing the day
When I heard the explosion at 11 a.m. Monday morning, I had no idea I was listening to my colleagues being killed. The blast sounded just like the two other blasts - booming, rumbling, base sounds like claps of thunder – I’d heard before 9 a.m.
Now that I know what happened, however, I can’t help but imagine the scene. I don’t want to. I can’t help it. I can see the aftermath, that evil kaleidoscope of smoke, blood, metal, soldiers and guns, all colored red with panic and blanketed with the lingering smell of munitions like a million struck matches.
We all fear that this day will come, the day when a bomb will tear a piece off of us.
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The loss of more ‘news warriors’
I heard the news about Kim, Paul and Jim - the CBS News crew that was attacked on Monday - in our "newsroom" while scrambling to complete a Memorial Day feature.
It was gut-wrenching. Literally, I got ill. Others at NBC Baghdad had similar, ''I'll never forget where I was that day" experiences. Correspondent Mike Boettcher just bowed and shook his head, stopped in his tracks.
No one could believe it, yet all of us could imagine the scene, vividly: a Humvee patrol stops at a police checkpoint - perhaps to verify that those manning weapons are REALLY police. Your FIRST reaction as a news team? Get out and videotape the moment, and do a "protective" stand-up in front of any activity, to explain the moment to the viewers. This is standard operating procedure.
And that's when the so-called VBIED, or "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device'' (military-speak for car bomb) exploded, killing Paul and Jim and seriously wounding Kim.
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Just another day in Baghdad
Today is just another day in Baghdad. Like any other day. Every day you come to expect the same news. It's no surprise to hear that one of your neighbors moving to another province, running away, running for their life. Looking for security and safe work, because many professions have been targeted by gangs or fundamentalists or the resistance or insurgents.
Today I gave my small daughter a lift to her school because the school bus driver had moved to Karbala province. I am not sure why he left Baghdad, but I suspect he was threatened by anonymous groups -- groups that only know the language of threats and guns.
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Needed: Love for a Baghdad orphanage
Thirteen-year-old Marwa never cried even when I asked her to relive the night her parents were executed in their home. It surprised me. I wondered how she’d become so tough so quickly.
"Where were you when the gunmen came?" I asked Marwa as we sat together in a classroom in Baghdad's Alwiya Orphanage where she now lives with her two younger sisters Alliya, 10, and Sora, 6.
"I was asleep upstairs when I head the shots," Marwa said. "I ran downstairs and saw my mother. She was shot all over and was dead. My father was barely alive."
Her father died two days later of multiple gunshot wounds.
I swallowed hard and asked what happened after that. 
"We lived with my uncle for about a year, and then came here."
"Why? Why did you have to come here?" I asked. I hated asking the question, but it bothered me that her uncle would send the girls to live in an orphanage. I wanted to know how Marwa rationalized it. She was very matter of fact.
"He couldn't afford to keep us, so he brought us here."
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Troops' reaction to Bush-Blair meeting
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Covering the 'wider story' of the Middle East
NBC News' Richard Engel was interviewed by mediabistro.com's TVNewser about his new assignment as the bureau chief for NBC's new Middle East bureau in Beirut. Click here for a link to the full interview : "Q & A with Richard Engel: About Covering the 'Wider Story' of the Middle East."
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Iraq's new 'take-charge' leader
VIDEO: President Bush and Tony Blair call new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a "take-charge guy," but how ready is he to assume security control of his country? NBC's Richard Engel asks him in an interview.Discuss (1 comments) Email this | Link to this
The ‘normal’ in Baghdad shocks
I've been back "in country" for about two weeks, and that's enough time, when covering Iraq, to numb the brain's synapses.
It's plenty of time to begin to forget any "normal" human reaction to the overwhelming sights and smells of the daily "butcher shop" that has become Baghdad: the parents, crazed with grief, swooning at the funeral of their 12-year old boy, kidnapped, tortured, shot in the head and chest, dragged through streets tied to the back of a car, and dumped in an empty lot...because he was a Shiite.
Or not to pause at the stench of hot, rancid blood basting the floor and walls of a restaurant that had been a "local" for Iraqi police one minute and a wreck of twisted metal and burnt flesh the next...
The horror - no matter how bad - no longer surprises you after two weeks of reporting here.
But I WAS surprised this morning, and that was pleasant. Buried deep below the fold of the daily al-Mautamar newspaper, a small headline followed by a single paragraph caught our translator's attention today. It read:
"THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH WARNS AGAINST USING CONTACT LENS SOLUTION..."
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Slide Show
- Life beyond the violence
Suicide attacks and murders due to sectarian conflict continue around Iraq. See how residents live their lives amid the attacks.
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