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to help preserve those ideals-that’s what we’re all about. You pick any man or woman on the street in the Middle East and give him or her the option of staying put or coming to America to start their lives over again with the rights and freedoms we identify ourselves by, and they’ll choose the good ol’ USA every time. They might burn our flag for the cameras, but throw a handful of green cards in the air and they’d cut each other’s throats to get their hands on them.”
    “I wonder what al-Jazeera would do with that footage,” said the president as he shifted his gaze and focused on his chief of staff.
    “Don’t get me started on al-Jazeera. We could be passing out blankets, medicine, and gold-plated copies of the Koran over there, and they’d still find a way to make us look like the bad guys.”
    “Too true,” replied Rutledge, “but lack of journalistic integrity at al-Jazeera is a conversation I’m tired of having. What did you want to see me about?”
    “I take it that was King Abdullah you were speaking with?” asked Anderson.
    The president nodded his head.
    “And the rumor you were referring to was that the man seen being beaten by our soldier was just a nobody, a fruit stall vendor, right?”
    Again the president nodded.
    “Well, that’s not a rumor any longer. He is a fruit stall vendor.”
    “That’s fantastic,” said the president, as he threw up his hands and stood up from behind his desk. “It couldn’t have been a terrorist off our most wanted list, could it? That would have been too easy. Heaven forbid we get an opportunity to bolster our credibility in the region by taking a known killer out of circulation.”
    “Even if the guy was a known terrorist, from a PR standpoint I still don’t think this is how we would have wanted it to go down for the cameras,” replied Anderson as he watched the president pace.
    “You know what I’m trying to say. Our credibility is so thin over there, all you have to do is hold it up to a light bulb and you can see through it. We talk about being a just nation-a nation that observes the rule of law, a place where people are innocent until proven guilty-but those are only words, aren’t they? And what speaks a thousand words? Pictures. And what pictures are being watched the world over by anyone who has turned on a television set in the last eight hours? A faceless American soldier beating the pulp out of an Iraqi fruit stall vendor. What a picture that made, straight out of Central Casting. A uniformed American GI and a typical local citizen complete with turban. “
    “It was actually a kaffiyeh, sir, not a turban. There’s a difference.”
    “I know there’s a difference, and you don’t have to tell me,” barked Rutledge. “I saw the footage.”
    “Of course. I’m sorry, sir.”
    “My point is that we can’t just talk the talk. We have to walk that talk-all of us. From the lowliest buck private all the way to the people working in this building. Damn it. Just when it seemed we were getting some PR traction in that part of the world, this happens.”
    Anderson waited a moment for the president to cool down and said, “There may be a piece of information that could work to our favor in all of this.”
    Rutledge stopped pacing for a moment and raised his eyebrows. “Really? Like what? Are you going to tell me that the attack was self-defense somehow? Maybe the fruit vendor was selling bad dates, because if he was, then this whole thing is okay, isn’t it? I mean, if this guy had the balls to sell bad dates, then the gloves understandably come off. God knows we’re not a nation that stands for bad dates, and heaven help any fruit vendor who tries to sell them to us.”
    The chief of staff knew that the president was only one step away from blowing his stack and decided to tread very lightly. “The fruit vendor’s stall was nowhere near where this incident took place. In fact, it’s completely on the other side of Baghdad. He