they continue to profit... by selling kids the same lies... to get them to use... the same deadly products. don't be big tobacco's next victim. on our broadcast tonight on our broadcast tonight from texas, the progress report on our broadcast tonight from texas, the progress report on congresswoman gabby giffords, about to make a big move and a reality check on what she faces now in the coming days and months. together again. here in texas in this room, the first president bush and his inner circle, together one last time to talk about the decision to go to war 20 years ago now. and lost and found. the incredible end to a kidnapping case. cold for years, until a young woman followed her gut and found her way back home. "nightly news" begins now. captions paid for by nbc-universal television

good evening from college station, texas. we're at the george bush presidential library at texas a&m where just a few hours ago in this very room, a group of men who helped to write the history of the world 20 years ago now met for what could very well be the last time. president george h.w. bush and his circle, his commanders, all at one table, at one time. we'll show you some of that just moments from now. but again tonight, we begin in tucson, arizona, and again tonight another positive progress report on the recovery of congresswoman gabby giffords. leaving the hospital tomorrow, actually coming to houston for rehabilitation, we begin tonight with nbc's kristen welker in tucson. kristen, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. the congresswoman's husband said he chose that rehabilitation center because it is top-notch and close to where he lives and works. the astronaut, like this community, now preparing for the next phase of his wife's

recovery. on a day when religious leaders gathered for a prayer service at the crime scene, mark kelly announced his wife is ready to be moved to houston for rehabilitation. >> she's a strong person, a fighter. i mean she is a fighter like, you know, nobody else that i know. >> reporter: kelly says his wife is so tenacious, she is trying to speak, and has shown other encouraging signs. >> she'll smile at me. she'll do a couple things that she'll only do around me, like pat me on the face. >> reporter: giffords' surgeons share kelly's optimism. >> she is beginning to stand with assistance. she's scrolling through an ipad. these are all fantastic advancements forward. >> reporter: more than 900 miles away in houston, doctors at memorial hermann hospital are preparing for giffords' arrival. >> it's got an outstanding world class reputation. the doctors and nurses there are among the best at treating

penetrating head injuries, like gabby has been dealing with. >> reporter: 12 days after the tragedy, this community continues to mourn together and heal. and congresswoman giffords prepares for a new phase in her own healing, with her husband by her side. >> every time i interact with her, there's something quite inspiring. she'll be walking, talking, and in two months you'll see her walking through the front door of this building. >> reporter: now, the congresswoman will leave this hospital at about 9:15 tomorrow morning. she will travel by ambulance to davis munson air force base. she will be escorted by a group of vfw motorcycle riders who are volunteering their time to escort her for the flight to houston. on that flight with her, her husband, surgeons, two staffers and her mom. she will land at hobby airport in houston. brian. >> everybody is thinking about her on this journey.

kristen welker covering the story for us in tucson tonight. thanks. and now to the extraordinary gathering right here in this room a few hours ago. the commanders of what the pentagon back then called desert storm, the first gulf war. the first major military effort of the post-vietnam era, over half a million americans served in the conflict, rappelling the iraqi invasion of kuwait with that u.s. coalition of 34 nations riding to victory. it's been 20 years. the war stopped short of taking baghdad, short of taking saddam hussein, and i asked former president bush about selling the war effort to the american people. >> this is the war historian washington post journalist rick atkinson. bush careened around looking for a rationale, trying to find his voice on the issue. he hopped from rationale to rationale. he wanted to make it appear as though this was not a

blood-for-oil swap. there's the word "oil." mr. president, do you think americans would have responded if you'd said, look, here are the stakes, we've got a nation that runs on this black liquid. yes, this is for our vital strategic interests, if you want to call it oil, call it oil. >> i think that -- i think that was vitally important, but i don't think that was the whole message by a long shot. it was immorality of a big country, fourth largest army in the world, taking over a member state of the united nations and just brutally taking it over. so i think there was that moral question as well as the question of economics. >> what about saddam? you also chose, your call, to personalize the war. and the media, of course, picked right up on that. bush versus saddam. he's dead now. been executed.

how often do you think about him? >> not so much any more. i mean he's a bad guy. we've seen that in a lot of other ways since then. but it was -- it wasn't as personal with me. it was just the whole idea that they went in there and took over this other country. >> you know, i think it was appropriate to use all the arguments, because we were doing the right thing. and so there's nothing wrong with using an economic argument, or using an argument about how this guy was, how he brutalized his own people and the people of kuwait using morality arguments. use them all, because we were doing the right thing. >> mr. president, the decision to end the war where you did when you did, tell us about that. >> well, we had an objective. the objective was to kick this guy out of kuwait. and we did it. and we formed a coalition to

help achieve that. and so it didn't enter my mind that we ought to do more, that we ought to go on further. now we're in charge, we ought to kill him. that wasn't the objective and that wasn't the way in which he formed an unprecedented international coalition. so when people came to me and said "it's over, we won," that was fine. that was enough. >> did any of the gentlemen at this table advocate going further? to baghdad, to saddam? were you present when anyone of senior rank did? >> no. >> no one did. >> and mr. vice president, of course this things us to one of many elephants here in this sizeable room, and that is, true or false, question you've answered before, the way gulf war one was executed and when and where it stopped, led almost by definition, to gulf war two. >> well, i guess i would take exception to that, brian.

we were -- a lot of the advice we got when we got through gulf war one was that saddam hussein would never be able to survive that kind of defeat. he did. >> did you try to ferment anything from inside? any real attempt made to do that? >> no, i don't think so. i don't think there was a serious effort. there may have been something going on in the succeeding administration. >> secretary baker is confirming there was in fact an effort. >> diplomatic. there was some other efforts that weren't successful. >> but, again, the objective as the president said wasn't to get saddam, the objective was to liberate kuwait, and that's what we did. >> there was an intervening event between gulf war one and gulf war two, it's called 9/11. it's fundamentally changed the calculus with which you use to measure saddam hussein and what his capabilities might be.

>> secretary baker, you warned of an occupation force, general, you warned of an occupation force, general powell, you warned of an occupation force. of course it's been years. 50,000 kids still there. >> i think one of the key aspects of the second gulf war is that when you take out a government, which is what we did, you become the government. we understood that, and we talked about it a great deal. and it was because of that, that president bush decided to go to the united nations and see if we could not get a diplomatic solution to this problem. there was not unanimous agreement within the second bush family over that, but we did it. and it was the right thing to do. and we gave saddam hussein, just as jim did many years earlier, a chance to avoid this. but the risks, we felt, were too high at this point just to let him slip away from this and let him continue to violate the u.n. resolutions.

>> mr. vice president, on the subject of disagreements, they go all across this table, they're all throughout this room and in the air. gentlemen at this table have said that's not the dick cheney i knew. he's unrecognizable to me. it was the transition between gulf one and gulf two and all the changes. the nature of gulf two that was seen as an elective war in the wake of 9/11, have you made peace, if not with some of the men at this table with whom you haven't enjoyed casual conversation heretofore until today for years and do you feel the need to? >> i prefer to think of it as a truce, brian. >> we have agreement on that from everyone? >> yes. we're going hunting, jim and i are. we haven't invited anybody else, but the two of us are going to go. no, i -- clearly we had

differences on subsequent policy issues. from my perspective, and i looked at saddam hussein differently after 9/11 than before 9/11 as colin pointed out. but i reached the point and i think where a lot of the controversy concerns me is that i was in the bunker, in the white house on 9/11 and watched as the world trade center was destroyed, the pentagon was hit, 3,000 americans were killed. never before have i seen an attack like that on the united states. and i was bound and determined, as was the president i then worked for, that that was never going to happen again on our watch. >> and mr. president, some of these troubles must have troubled you. here you have this incredible, indelible role of the bush family in u.s. history. you're right up there with the adamses, and yet on your son's watch some of the relationships broke down, including some involving your best friends.

>> such as? >> well, forgive me, general scowcroft was in disagreement with the policies of your son, president george w. bush. >> no problem. everybody has got his own opinion so it didn't bother me. i was out of it all by then, so i just, you know, support our son as president. the fact that others disagreed with him on different policy issues, it goes with the territory. so i didn't make a big federal case out of any of that. >> you just sat in houston, kennebunkport. >> let the president do his job. >> watched it on cable until you had to turn it off. >> that's right. that became easy at times. but, you know, you can't -- you can't worry about that. you can't worry about differences. they're bound to happen, bound to take place.

>> former president bush 41, this extraordinary gathering of these men here today organized by the george bush school of government and public service. we'll hear more from them a bit later on in the broadcast. here we are talking about iraq, which remains in the news. at least 50 people killed in a second day of bombings there. the latest attacks along the route to a religious festival in the holy city of karbala. still ahead on tonight's "nightly news," the young woman who solved her own kidnapping case and the heart-warming scene that came next. ♪ . am from chicago. i'm a mom of 3 daughters. pan can really put a kink in my day

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we're back now from texas with some other news of this day, including a family reunion that was delayed for two decades and it finally happened after a young woman just couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right about the people who always claimed to be her parents. the story tonight from nbc's rehema ellis. >> reporter: it's a rare picture, a joyous family reunion after a kidnapping kept them apart for more than 20 years. >> i just always believed that she would find me. >> and she did. >> i couldn't believe this was real. i looked at her up and down and then just started to grab her. >> carlina white, now 23 years

old, was stolen from her family days after her birth in 1987. it was a mother's nightmare. >> i want my baby back. she didn't have to do that to me. >> joy white had taken her infant daughter to a new york hospital for treatment of a bad cold. authorities say that's when the baby was kidnapped by a connecticut woman who had lost her own baby and was posing as a nurse. >> didn't nobody know because she was pregnant and she came back with me. >> a break in the case came from carlina herself. she became suspicious when the woman who raised her couldn't produce her birth certificate. carlina started searching for information. >> i just, you know, started typing in yahoo! and google like different articles, like anything that pulled up 1987 with any child missing. >> last december she contacted the center for missing and exploited children, and the new york police department reopened her cold case files. >> she sees a photo of carlina

white and she says, wow, that looks like me. >> reporter: this week, dna confirmed it. now authorities are looking for the woman who carlina white says raised her in an abusive home. but today her anger has been replaced by joy. a miraculous reunion. a kidnapped child back with her loved ones finally in a true family portrait. rehema ellis, nbc news, new york. and up next here tonight, the non-fiction, real-life mob in a predawn dragnet. the feds say they pulled off a big one this morning. b/

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and the life you want to live. the nation woke up to word of a massive mob round-up this morning. the predawn sweep targeted seven reputed mob families in new york, new jersey and new england. 130 people were arrested. one arrest is expected to be made in italy. the fbi is trumpeting the raid, saying the charges will range from simple bookmaking all the

way to extortion and murder and involves some senior members of the reputed crime families. first lady michelle obama has taken her effort to get americans to eat better to where people buy their food in the first place. she has announced she's working with the nation's largest retailer, walmart, which promised today to cut prices on fresh fruits and vegetables and to reduce fats, sugars, salt, eliminate transfats in some of its own store brands by the year 2015. tonight back east they're girding again for a quick strike of a storm. the midwestern winter storm moving into the northeast. snow we're told will stretch from an inch in washington or so north to boston, up through maine. new england will again get 5 to 8 inches plus. our friends at the weather channel tell us a lot of cities in the northeast are already over their yearly snow totals on average. on wall street today, stocks dropped early, then bounced back and ended up pretty much where

they left off at the end of yesterday's trading. the dow finished down just two and a half points. when we come back here tonight, more of our extraordinary conversation here at the george bush presidential library with men who made history. how are those flat rate boxes working out? fabulous! they gave me this great idea. yea? we mail documents all over the country, so, what if there were priority mail flat rate... envelopes? yes! you could ship to any state... for a low flat rate? yes! a really low flat rate. like $4.95? yes! and it could look like a flat rate box... only flatter? like this? you...me...genius. genius. priority mail flat rate envelopes. just $4.95. only from the postal service. a simpler way to ship.

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as we mentioned, in this room here, this was a historic day here in college station, texas. and in fact this day, january 20th, is a big day in recent american history as well. it was 50 years ago on this day back in 1961 president john f. kennedy was inaugurated urging us all to ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. the kennedy legacy was honored today in a ceremony in the capitol rotunda in washington. on this day 30 years ago, 52 u.s. embassy workers in iran were freed. they had been held hostage for 444 days, caught in the middle of the iranian revolution. they were released pretty much exactly when ronald reagan placed his hand on the bible and was sworn in at his inauguration.

tehran snubbed the outgoing president carter. and two years ago on this day, the nation's first black president, barack obama, took his oath of office. back now to our conversation here today in this room with former president bush and his war council. everyone at the table took pains to point out they get along as a team, always did, which led to a lighter moment at former vice president dick cheney's expense when he said he's going hunting next week with james baker. here's more of the conversation. >> he heard a lot of bad news. he'd get upset at times with everybody probably around this table. i never heard him raise his voice. he always had a very calm manner about him. >> these guys are friends, so they're putting a good shine on it. but i try not to get mad or yell or scream or make the table do it my way.

it's better to lead by bringing people along. >> well, i guess you guys are off to go hunting. >> next week. >> and i'm told your heart pump can also take a joke. so do you have any reservations when you get a hunting invitation from vice president cheney? >> i extended the invitation to him. but i have some good body armor that i'm going to wear. >> very well. >> former vice president we found to be in good humor. we've already heard from many viewers who want to see more of this interview. you can see more tomorrow morning on "today." also on "dateline" this coming sunday evening. we'll have the entire interview at noon eastern time on sunday airing on msnbc. of course we'll also have more on our website, nightly.msnbc.com. for us for now, that is our broadcast for this thursday night. thank you for being with us. i'm brian williams reporting tonight from the bush presidential library at texas

a&m in college station, texas. i'll look for you the same time tomorrow night. good night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com