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Every afternoon, seven days a week, Ed Epley has a 5 p.m. appointment with the war.
They became good buddies during the war, the young American soldier and his invaluable Iraqi translator, an easygoing guy who could spot dangers in the shadows and calm jittery nerves in the streets.
When many Americans who served or worked in Iraq came home, they left behind Iraqi friends whose lives were at risk because of their U.S. connections. Some soldiers and others, frustrated with the government efforts to help the Iraqis, embarked on their own rescue missions. Here are two of their stories:
Her mansion in Iraq was bombed, her medical career and future in her beloved country dashed the day she found a white envelope on her car windshield. Inside was a single bullet. Wassan Yassin was marked for death.
On one of his first days in America, Hussein Albayati visited the Statue of Liberty.
Phillip Garrido's unspeakable private life began unraveling in a very public place: a college campus.
They are lawyers, factory workers, insurance adjusters, even an accountant and a dentist. All share the same dream: They want to farm.
He quit his job and drove his wife and their four young daughters across country, a 21st-century pioneer lured to these faraway farm fields by the promise of a life-changing deal with an older stranger.
Larry Roberta's every breath is a painful reminder of his time in Iraq. He can't walk a block without gasping for air. His chest hurts, his migraines sometimes persist for days and he needs pills to help him sleep.
At the end of the 81-year marriage, the Isaksons said goodbye by turning off the lights. The partnership was over.
To some he was an unflinching hero, to others a remorseless villain. As a late-term abortion doctor, George Tiller knew he had chosen a dangerous career, one that made him a lightning rod. His clinic was a fortress, his days marred by threats, but he refused to give up what he saw as his life's mission.
It's a rainy spring morning and Tamara Ogier plants herself at a table in a Spartan room in the Atlanta federal courthouse, computer and tape recorder at hand, ready to hear another day's stories of financial ruin.
A 5-year-old Mexican boy takes ill in his dusty village. He coughs, he sneezes, he gasps for breath.
His first glimpse in the mirror was largely a blur.
As a 10-year-old, Rollin Green was awestruck when he saw the line of hulking orange-and-silver robotic arms swinging with rhythmic precision during his first visit to an auto plant. But something impressed him even more:
Every year, the dedicated teacher would put together a bulletin board for Black History Month, honoring famous achievers.
More than 25 years ago, a visiting small-town judge stashed a tape recorder in his cowboy boot and came away with shocking evidence of bribe-taking and bagmen in Chicago's courts.
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama liked to boast that he was a tough survivor of the bare-knuckled world of Chicago politics. But the president-elect also has steered clear of most of its scandals, navigating a careful middle ground that has left him relatively unscathed in a city synonymous with corruption.
The words on the recording sound as if they were uttered by a mob boss. Instead, the feds say, it is the governor of Illinois speaking.
It was a tumultuous Monday morning in mid-September — two of America's financial giants were near collapse, the Dow was plummeting and the economy seemed to be in free fall — when Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, heard a staffer cry out in disbelief.
Crowds danced in the streets, wept, lifted their voices in prayer and brought traffic to a standstill. From the nation's capital to Atlanta to Los Angeles, Americans celebrated Barack Obama's victory and marveled that they lived to see the day that a black man was elected president.
"My presence on this stage is pretty unlikely," Barack Obama began.
In this corner of America known as the RV capital of the world, Todd Brink once made a good living producing the gleaming behemoths that cruised the nation's open roads. He was prospering. So, too, was the industry.
When Barack Obama arrived at the Democratic National Convention eight years ago, he was a politician in need of clout.
The chartered plane loaded with soldiers descended slowly in the summer sky as Sgt. John Kriesel watched eagerly on the tarmac, clutching a walking cane. He had been waiting for this reunion for more than seven months.
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