I can gladly report that James Bran­don, the British jour­nal­ist has been released and is safe. I couldn’t say any­thing about his cap­ture pub­licly ear­lier, because he’s a good friend of mine and I didn’t want to do or say any­thing that could scotch the nego­ti­at­ing process. Me and the rest of the journotribe here have been work­ing the phones all day on his behalf. I’m exhausted, but I bet he’s more tired than I am! At least he’s fine, and all is OK (well, as least as they can be in Iraq.) I’ve still got to file, how­ever, so this will be short.
Let’s also remem­ber the name­less Iraqis who go miss­ing every day never to return to their fam­i­lies sim­ply because they don’t have the ben­e­fit of being jour­nal­ists with friends at big mag­a­zines. I’m thank­ful for James’ safety, but I’ll be even glad­der when Iraqis no longer fear sim­i­lar abductions.