[david_2000_13206]

Does this change anyone's opinion of Mohammed? Keep in mind: should he have said "no" to $500,000.00? Would you?

By David D. Kirkpatrick , The New York Times
Only 10 days after receiving political asylum in the United States, the Iraqi lawyer who led U.S. Marines to captured Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch has sold the rights to publish a book about his experience to HarperCollins for an advance of nearly $500,000.
The advance guarantees the lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, 33, a substantial nest egg in his new country. Rehaief, his wife and 5-year-old daughter were granted political asylum April 29.
Al-Rehaief, who speaks broken English, will write the book with Jeff Coplon, who was also the co-author with Capt. Scott O'Grady, an Air Force pilot shot down over Bosnia in 1995, of the best-selling "Return With Honor."
HarperCollins hopes that al-Rehaief, who has been treated like a hero by the Bush administration and the U.S. military, will provide the best account of the rescue of Lynch. She, too, is celebrated as a hero and will be the subject of television movies. Lynch has also received offers from literary agents and publishers, but she has said she remembers little of her capture March 23 or her stay in the hospital in An Nasiriyah.
Al-Rehaief has also received a job as an associate at the Livingston Group, a lobbying firm founded by Bob Livingston, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana.
David Hirshey, vice president and executive editor of HarperCollins, said that among the many books to be published on the Iraq war, al-Rehaief's could provide one of the few accounts from a foreign perspective that might attract a large American readership.
"You finally get an Iraqi protagonist telling his story, and, even better, it involved the rescue of an American," he said.
Hirshey said it was not yet clear whether the book would be written in the first person from al-Rehaief's point of view or in the third person, describing his experience.
Other researchers are working to fill in gaps in his knowledge of Lynch's captivity. Reflecting American readers' fascination with Lynch rather than al-Rehaief, HarperCollins has given the book the working title: "Rescue in Nazaria: The Untold Story of American P.O.W. Jessica Lynch's Harrowing Ordeal and the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Save Her." Publication is scheduled for October.
Al-Rehaief's perspective is expected to be resoundingly pro-American, people involved in the book deal said. He told the publishers that he saw Lynch in the hospital where she was being kept while visiting his wife, a nurse there.
He resolved to save her, he said, after seeing her slapped twice by her Iraqi captors. After a second visit to the hospital, he and his family narrowly evaded a visit to his home by Iraqi authorities. He eventually drew up a series of five maps to help U.S. Marines locate Lynch, Hirshey said. Al-Rehaief sustained a wound in one eye in the battle zone and is still undergoing medical treatment.
The book deal began when staff members of the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit group that seeks to help refugees, introduced al-Rehaief to Marvin Josephson, who is a member of the group's board of directors and founder of International Creative Management, a talent and literary agency.
"They were just saying: Is there some way he could benefit financially from his heroic actions?" Josephson said.
Esther Newberg, co-head of the agency's book division, negotiated the deal with HarperCollins, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., without offering it to other publishers.
Josephson said they offered the book exclusively to HarperCollins because of its successful publication of a previous book by Alma Powell, wife of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Josephson represented Colin Powell when he sold the rights to his own book.

http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~27...1378939,00.html

[cody evans]

He's going to need most of that money to hire security.

[FIREMAN]

The man's certainly entitled to his share of any financial pie cming out of this. So's Jessica, when she's able to make an informed decision.