Coming clean about possible professional mistakes |
Since watching NBC's Brian Williams recant his cool war story about being shot down in a helicopter, I've been doing a lot of personal soul-searching. The result is I still can't find it but did come to the sobering realization that I also need to stop living a lie. Most of you are familiar with my reports from the battlefield during the Iraq war, and many of you have read my Pulitzer-winning account of capturing Saddam Hussein. The years that have passed since those events have brought a clarity that was perhaps obscured in the heat of battle, allowing me to recollect memories of certain events more clearly. Here are a few things that I may have misremembered because of the fog of war known to accompany the heat of battle in certain climates like the one I was in: I might have misspoke when I wrote that I saved Tel Aviv by peeing on the guidance system of that scud missile. I probably was just peeing on a tree that looked like a missile. I could have been dreaming that I personally killed Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay with kung fu and throwing stars. If so, it was an extremely realistic dream that would have fooled anyone. I've never jumped a tank over a camel I may not have been the one who actually found Saddam hiding in that little hole, but I certainly would have been if I was in the area - of that there is no doubt. Finally, the recent remission of my PTSD has me thinking I may have been at the Club Med in Cancun instead of Iraq. If so, it was purely unintentional and I apologize. |