It’s like a garage sale gone bad throughout much of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Furniture. Appliances. Mattresses. Knick-knacks. You’ll find all kinds of things set out on sidewalks throughout Iowa’s second largest city, unwanted by their owners. But these discarded items, some of them family keepsakes, are not for sale. Instead, they’re headed for the dump, the material victims if you will, of this month’s historic flooding in Iowa, which ravaged much of this state’s second largest city, with a population of 124,000.

Outside the house of Bonnie Pansegrau, friends and family clothed in white, full-bodied haz-mat suits with hospital masks covering their noses and mouths, toss out soggy piles of putrid smelling garbage. Next to the brown, slime stained washer and dryer sits stacks of National Geographic, which Pansegrau’s husband had collected with great care over the years.

In these piles, ironically, you could learn about natural disasters of generations ago, because Pansegrau had collected every edition of the magazine dating back to the early 1920s. The fact that these treasured, lifelong posessions have now become waste in a wasteland, gnaws at Pansegrau’s son, John

“Yesterday, I was having a really bad time,” Pansegrau told me, his voice cracking and eyes welling with tears as he shared a few minutes of time with me. “I’ve called every friend that I know, and they’re coming. But after a while, what do you do? You can’t just keep asking everyone to kill themselves to help. It’s horrific. It really is.”

Pansegrau’s mother evacuated her house last Wednesday. It was only two days ago, that police permitted her re-entry to launch her clean-up. Yet, many of her neighbors have yet to return.

Just a street away, Iowa National Guardsmen are enforcing an order to keep residents out of their homes. On these streets, puddles of brown, fetid water have yet to go away. And there is an unmistakable mark of muck and grime stained on homes, a vestige of the high water mark of the Cedar River, similar to what I encountered in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina.

Many Iowans have called this flood their Katrina. John Pansegrau says the TV images cannot convey the enormity of this natural disaster.

“I watched Katrina on t-v. And you’re like, Wow! That’s terrible. But you don’t sit and see what you’ve played with 45 years ago come floating out of a basement. You don’t grab stuff that your father collected all his life. You don’t have all your possessions, all your mother’s Christmas ornaments come floating out of the muck. You don’t understand it. I never did.”

“If somebody told you this was as bad as Katrina, you wouldn’t believe it until you saw it,” stressed Dan Warkel, one of Pansegrau’s neighbors. Warkel and his fiance Christine Knight have lived in their house for 5 years, where the floodwater of the Cedar River filled their basement and pushed a half-foot up into their first floor. Knight says, “We didn’t expect that much water.” They lost scrapbooks and “tons of pictures,” but characterize themselves as emotionally upbeat as opposed to others in this city who seem beat up.

When the Cedar River spilled over it’s banks last week, it submerged 3,900 properties over a 9.2 square mile area of 1,300 blocks in this city.

Warkel says the community response to this tragedy has been incredibly reassuring. He says he’s getting to bond with neighbors, whom he waved to over the years, but said little more.

When the clean-up is all over, he vowed there would be “a big neighborhood block party.” His fiance, chimed in with her own version of what their neighborhood should do. “Throw a garage sale,” she said, where it would free pickings for those Cedar Rapids’ residents who came across something they once owned. “No money. If it’s yours, take it.”

Clarksville is a historic artists town of about 500 residents. It draws lots of tourists, but on this day sightseers are put to work.  So are journalists. I learned how to fill sandbags yesterday (three shovel fulls is good). Today I learn how to place them. Just fold the open top under and place the folded side down and into (or on top of) the wall. No time to tie them off. The mighty Mississippi is rising fast.

The sound of generators fills the air. The hoses of the sump pumps are bloated, carrying all they can handle from the low side of a massive sandbag wall, up and over, blowing streams or river water back into the flooded Mississippi.

I’m sitting on top of a massive pile of the green, tan, and yellow bags, carefully placed here in brick-like fashion since last Thursday. The base of the wall appears close to 20 feet wide or more (I can only see the dry half) and the wall itself is at least 8 feet high. On the other side the swollen polluted brown water flows by just a couple feet below the top, with another foot-and-a-half to two feet expected before the crest comes sometime between Thursday and Saturday.

Female prison inmates fill more bags, alongside Army National Guard soldiers.  More than a hundred are in town, with humvees, heavy trucks and front end loaders. A block over, middle schoolers work a line, passing bags by ones and two’s from hand to hand to shore up the sides and raise the tops against the rising tide.

Around the corner, Mishel Hughes is giving haircuts, some of them free, in her Cuts Plus Salon.  Our cameramen pay for theirs.

We got up early again this morning and drove north from Quincy, Illinois toward a levee just breached in the farming community of Meyer. We covered at least 20 miles only to be stopped short by a police roadblock.

“Rick Leventhal with FOX News Channel,” I told the Sergeant after I pulled over and approached on foot.

“I’m sorry but I can’t let you through” he told me. “It’s too dangerous. The water is rising too fast.”

“What if we just drive to the water’s edge?” I asked. No dice.

“What if we just drive in, shoot some tape and drive back?” Nope.

“What if you escort us in?” Not happening.

“What if we rode in your car?” I pleaded. No again.

I understood he was doing his job. I thanked him and we climbed back in our SUV’s. We had to backtrack and cover another 70 or 80 miles south to the town of Louisiana, Missouri and then on to Clarksville for live shots schedule from 11a to 10p. Time was short. But as we headed back east towards the main drag we found a back road and turned north towards the breach. Just a few hundreds yards ahead the road was under water, along with fields of corn. Robert Lee shot some video while my producer Meredith and I tried to connect a live shot with our laptops. When that failed we quickly packed up and hit the road again.

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Downtown Louisiana, MO is a mess. The bridge over the Mississippi River to Illinois is closed. So is Route 79 which runs along the river, since now the river runs through it. At least 50 homes and 15 businesses are in or under water according to the chief of Police Jim Graham, who showed up while we shot Darin Davis and his wife and kids sandbagging his house on North Carolina Street between 3rd and 4th.

“We need help” he told me. “Volunteers are a must. We’re just going under fast.”. He pointed at his neighbor’s house. “They have about two feet before it goes over their wall. This guy here, he’s pumping like crazy. This is my best friend’s house. It’s, it’s bad.”

I promised I’d get the word out, we packed up and moved on to Clarksville, a whole ‘nother adventure.

By David Mac Dougall

“Sofa Talks” might sound like the old-school Saturday Night Live “Coffee Talk” sketch, but it’s arguably the single most important issue facing Iraq right now.

“Sofa” stands for Status of Forces Agreement – a deal between the US and Iraqi Government about what happens to tens of thousands of US troops stationed in Iraq, when a UN mandate to keep them here runs out at the end of December. The US Government wants to strike a deal by the end of July, but it’s such a complicated and controversial subject, the self-imposed deadline will not be easy to meet.

The Iraqi Government is single-handily shaping the agenda and public perception on this story. The US Embassy here in Baghdad has said little on the subject. The sticking points in coming up with an agreement both sides can live with are many:

How many long-term bases will the US be allowed to keep on Iraqi soil?

How long will the bases be here for? Is there a “get-out” clause if either side changes their mind about the agreement?

What will US forces be allowed to do here? Arrest people? Carry out unilateral military operations? Launch attacks on other countries from bases inside Iraq?

What happens if US troops commit a crime – which country has jurisdiction?

There’s been some progress however: on what happens to thousands of Iraqi prisoners currently in US custody; and making US contractors working in Iraq answerable to an Iraqi court if they break the law.

But despite these few points which have been hammered out, this issue really is firing up Iraqi passions. Muqtada al-Sadr - no stranger to organizing anti-US or anti-Iraqi Government protests - has encouraged his followers to demonstrate against any sort of long-term US presence here. And a final agreement will have to be approved by the Iraqi Parliament - potentially with a two-thirds majority. As we’ve seen with past votes and legislation, the Parliament can be an extremely cumbersome place to do political business, and there are never any guarantees of success.

We went out in one Baghdad neighborhood to ask residents what they think about the issue – here’s a short video with a couple of good responses.

Most people who go to strip clubs would rather not advertise the fact. They don’t want to be on TV, they don’t want to publicly rally for club causes, they just want to quietly slip in and slip out and go on about their business.

I say this because we just finished a shoot on a proposed “pole” tax in Pennsylvania. We managed to interview a club owner and club attorney and the state representative behind the legislation, but finding any patrons to discuss their support or opposition to paying an extra $5 to get in…? Not happening.

For some reason, the guys enjoying the midday and early evening shows in Allentown and Quakertown and Harrisburg, Penn. didn’t seem interested or motivated in talking to me, Maryam or Hollywood when we walked in. There was none of the aggressive “Hey, put ME on TV!” that we usually get when we show up anywhere with our camera and lights and microphone. Instead we got nervous glances and hunched shoulders and “what are THEY doing in here?” looks.

No worries. The compelling arguments from both sides — and the PICTURES — will tell the story quite well.

My first border story for Fox News six years or so ago brought our crew to this exact location. I still have a picture of us straddling the border while standing on a cattle crossing. The area has changed in recent months, a transition from a 4-string barbed wire fence, to a vehicle barrier which consists of metal pilings filled with cement. Both the Border Patrol and the Indian Nation agree that numbers have likely been cut in half, but that still leaves thousands of illegals and means thousands of pounds of drugs make it across here every day. Here is one of my live reports from today. We are streaming over our MAC computer to bring this live report. Can you tell?

And here are a couple of pictures I grabbed along this stretch of the border. It’s a tough find actually when heading from the north. We actually head south of Sells, Arizona and at a curve take a dirt road which heads to the cattle crossing and a legal/unguarded entry point into the United States. The area is rough and hot. The desert is unforgiving here as temperatures this time of the year seem to sear the skin. Triple digits are common, but water is not. I see tons of garbage that ruins the environment, almost all of it coming from illegal traffic. I have done that story several times before. While both sides of this issue, the Tohono O’odham and Customs and Border Protection sometimes disagree, they do admit that there is no simple solution. Here also is a picture of Keith hanging on to a truck to get a picture of one of our interviews in his element.

By David Mac Dougall

Today is the 20th time I’ve packed my bags for a trip to Iraq. By now, I should be an expert packer, but I’m not. I’m often guilty of leaving things to the last minute or simply telling myself “I’ll pick that up at Heathrow airport” and then forgetting what it was I needed to buy.

Apart from all the usual clothes, DVDs, books, toiletries and (seemingly) miles of assorted cables, plugs, adapters and chargers; I usually take out specific items requested by my colleagues at the Baghdad Bureau.

This trip there’s a “Starbucks Scotland” mug for Eric Stewart (who takes many of the amazing photographs which accompany my blogs). There’s also laundry powder for Anita McNaught and since I know she has cravings for dark chocolate too, I also packed a few bars (which hopefully won’t melt on the way to Iraq!) Producer-extraordinaire Nicola Sadler always enjoys British potato chips – and though I didn’t quite get round to buying any yet… I’m pretty sure I’ll pick them up at Heathrow airport…

The point of this blog, really, is to remind readers that it’s not just us journalists who appreciate a few creature comforts. Our military men and women serving in Iraq (and Afghanistan, and elsewhere) love to receive boxes in the mail too. In the scorching summer months especially, items like sun-block or extra toiletries can be really appreciated – or try sending something fun to remind them of home. Any parcel has to be addressed to a named individual, so ask around in your communities and it won’t be hard to get the name & address of someone in a war zone who would really appreciate something from home (just in time for the 4th of July!)

By Mal James

I sat up, shrugged the sleeping bag down and picked up my night vision camera which was next to me on the ground, filmed the Apache and Huey helicopters flying overhead hoping that they would launch another volley of Hellfire missiles, in the green eerie light that is night vision they circled like hawks seeking mice in a field, but they were in fact looking for remnants of the Taliban Insurgents that the Marines had been fighting for the last twenty four hours.

The choppers faded off into the distance and I put the camera down, and lay back down. Dawn was a few hours away and I was freezing cold, in a few hours time I would almost be passing out with heatstroke.

You know you are close to the frontline, Mal when you can sit up in your sleeping bag and film war, without getting out of bed? Dana said in the darkness of the night.

This trip has been one of the most grueling and demanding physically that I have ever done, in probably the most inhospitable place in the world. The Helmand Desert, known as the Desert of Death, average temperature 47 degrees Celsius, 126 degrees Fahrenheit. In the afternoon heat being in the sun is like feeling yourself being cooked from the inside. Add body armor and Kevlar helmets, and after a few minutes simply walking became a Herculean task.

Reflections, Looking back at my notes from the trip, what seemed important at the time becomes inconsequential with time. This truly was an embed back into the heart of darkness, where young marines as part of the new Afghanistan Surge were to take on the Taliban and Insurgents. What struck me throughout this trip was that not one Military person ever mentioned Al Qaeda or Osama Bin laden; the threat now comes from insurgents and the Taliban and is of course across the border in the Tribal areas of Pakistan that no one can go into.

Not one person ever mentions Osama Bin Laden, the Army and the Marines along with the other forty countries that form the coalition in Afghanistan have simply decided that Al Qaeda and Osama fall into the to hard basket and by ignoring them they will go away and hopefully the media will forget them too.

Keep Reading …

One of the hot-button issues in recent years between Israelis and Palestinians has been the wall separating Israel from the West Bank. In some places it’s quite an imposing structure, so it’s interesting to see a start-up company that can pretty much pretend like the wall’s not there, launching an Israeli-Palestinian joint venture.
The company is called Ghost, or actually G.ho.st, an acronym that stands for Global Hosted Operating System, and has offices in both Ramallah and the Israeli town of Modin.
Along with producer Ibrahim Hazboun and cameraman Chris Jackson, I visited both sides of the barrier to talk with the Ghosts. It’s not so much that they’re scaling the wall in Ramallah; they’re just passing right through it.

Here’s a video and a few photos from Ramallah:

I walked into a city municipal garage and saw a sea of people, some shirtless, all sweaty, working in unison in the hot, muggy Iowa summer. It looked like a desperate factory, with some people shoveling dirt into bags, and others tying them off, still others part of a chain link of people, each passing a bag down the line and into a waiting bulldozer. At other times, a pick-up truck would pull in and instantly dozens of bags would be flying in the air and into the back of the truck.

These people might make the difference between their town being flooded or saved. Over in nearby Cedar Falls, volunteers are being credited with helping save the town. Water came within inches of topping the levee. Here in Waterloo, we are near a floodgate on a tributary of the Cedar River. The floodgate has been topped and water has spilled out into neaby streets, edging up dangerously close to homes. Those sandbags we just saw at the municipal building are being brought by the dozer-load here, in a frantic effort to save this town. The volunteers say they will work as long as they need to.  More raing is expected.