CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: As the year draws to a close, it's time to look back at the stories and the images that captured our attention. As CNN's Bruce Morton shows, we saw the good, the sad and the ugly. But most of all, we remember.</s>BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We remember seeing Jessica Lynch come home, not the hero some in the military tried to make her, but an honest, honorable young woman of whom Americans could be proud. Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart came home, too, after months with an itinerant preacher and his wife. Could she have run? Was she afraid? Drew Shodin (ph) didn't come home, we can only guess her fate. And through the year, young Americans came home to Arlington National Cemetery, a reminder that the costs of war are high. We remember nightsticks rising and flailing, beating Nathaniel Jones, just three years after the fires of race scorched Cincinnati. But Jones weighed 350 pounds, on the drugs and the tape may show he attacked first. A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just -- well, on MTV, maybe it's a lust for publicity. Who knows? We remember the fading prince of Neverland raising his handcuffed hands. Innocent until proven guilty, of course, and they've given him time to freshen his makeup. We remember most, I suppose, pictures of war because war makes for vivid pictures full of life and death. We remember fighting. We remember the suicide bomber and the bodies. We remember a flag over a statue's face, remember a statue coming down, symbol of a kingdom and a king that fell. And, finally, we remember pictures of an old man with a white beard who looked as if he yearned for a good nap. We do not remember at the end of this odd wartime year, we do not remember pictures of peace. Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.
Stories, Images That Captured Our Attention