Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Baghdad
Saturday, Sept 27, 2003

6:35a.m. An explosion gets me up. Time to get up anyway. Didn’t sleep so well last night.

Haythem was supposed to get back from Nasariya and the marshes yesterday, but no sign of him. He was returning there for two or three days to follow up on stories he’s writing for Iraq Today, Baghdad’s major English-language weekly. In Nasariya he’s been interviewing the hospital staff who were caring for Jessica Lynch.

In a recent Stars and Stripes there are two letters from soldiers in Iraq annoyed that Jessica has gotten so much attention. What about the soldiers killed or captured with her? Sorry, guys, but it does help to be photogenic and the object of an army media hoax (the staged rescue). We hear that Jessica’s book is soon coming out and that movie rights have been bought. [Later. Haythem is back. He says Iraq Today has turned down his Jessica Lynch story. They tell him it’s old stuff.]