This is James Brandon’s (a Brit reporter in Iraq) first hand account of being abducted and then released. And here is the Belmont Club’s comment on it: "There’s a particular kind of exhilaration that people who have come out whole, not just physically but morally whole, from a deep crisis, justifiably feel. Yet ’to have no secret place wherein one stooped unseen to shame or sin’, as Guest once wrote, is also to be aware of how near one came to failing the test. Really brave men understand cowardice better than most. Brandon’s account unconsciously mirrors the bravery, ruthlessness, modesty and humanity of a man who has seen the Elephant, and rode away on it."