Posted 07 November 2007 - 01:33 PM
Hello Matt:
Yep, am still a curse to this board:) Check in at least a couple times a week to see what's going on, but have not left my mark for a while:) In any case, I remembered the furor over that piece, though not the details that you listed. It should be remembered that it is an Arabic trait to change stories to suit the particular person listening, probably a survival technique burned into them after thousands of millenniums of conquerors and such. When I lived over there I heard the same story, for instance, about how a dress that my girlfriend coveted was returned, expressed in numerous shades, each one embellishing more than the previous one. I do remember the BBC, the grandstanding issue, and also that Jessica herself came tolerably close to saying that the grandstanding (the BBC did credit Jessica's heroism or those going in to get her) was not that far off the mark, and that the BBC is noticeably against the war, as are a majority of the British people. In any case, no matter what CNN, Fox, BBC, CBC, said in their respective pieces back then, I still wonder how it was that with all those Fedayeen around that place, the doctors managed to save Jessica's life at all. How the Fedayeen let them for one thing is still a mystery. Here they are, fighting Americans all around the city, using the hospital as their command center, and they have a badly wounded blond-haired captive that somehow survived those three hours, in their midst and women in uniform, a woman in any kind of authority for that matter, is definitely against what they believe in. I know that they wanted to take Jessica to Baghdad, but for what, especially in her condition. I have never got over wondering about that.