F: Is for Hollywoods depiction of F.A.C.T.

This weekend I saw the opening of "A Mighty Heart", the film based on the life of Daniel Pearl. This movie which was high on my list of to see,“cut” Daniel Pearl “from his own story”. Pearl is depicted as being warned by not one but three people, not to meet Gilani alone and yet he goes. It's like a bad horror plot. I find this ironic because Daniel Pearl's writing, Mariane's book nor any research I've done portrays him as a “reckless journalist.” What this movie tries and unsuccessfully accomplishes is creating a vehicle for Angelina Jolie, who plays Mariane. The performance is so heartless you end up not caring about anybody. It is natural to search for a compelling structure to make sense of tragedy. We tell ourselves that what happened wasn’t such a bad thing, that it has a redeeming value, that we can close our eyes to the horror and move on. How cheap and manufactured our quest for hero's has become. Lost in the PR machine is Daniel's death. What never gets answered is the WHY! Next year “the Pearl Project" at Georgetown University, will investigate to find some answers, because the F.A.C.T. is nobody knows. The movie refuses to make a statement. One thing that was found out in March of this year is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stated: "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan." Then he added, "for those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head. For those of you who do not know Daniel's fate, the hatred was so instilled that nine days after he was abducted Pearl was decapitated. His body was found cut into ten pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi. On February 21, 2002, a videotape titled "The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl" was released. The video showed Pearl's mutilated body and lasts three minutes and thirty-six seconds. The first part of the video shows Pearl stating his captors' demands. A caption in Arabic is shown along the way. Pictures of dead Muslims and similar scenes are superimposed around the image of Pearl. Other images shown are those of President Bush shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. On the image to the right, the text in Arabic reads: My name is (Daniel Pearl), I am a Jewish-American. A man then cuts his head off. A few more images, such as captives held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, are shown near the image of Pearl's head. The last 90 seconds show a list of demands superimposed on Pearl's severed head being held by his hair. One of the last lines states: We assure Americans that they shall never be safe on the Muslim Land of Pakistan. Why has our government never stated this?

The worst part of this movie is I walked out thinking Mariane Pearl was the coldest, most unfeeling human on the face of the earth. They show an interview where she is asked how she feels about her husband being murdered and they have her stating 10 Pakistanis also died. The movie lost me right there. I was wrong. That was Hollywood's depiction of her. Log onto www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories/mariane-pearl. She feels the same way all of us would if we lost somebody we loved. Angry! and that is a F.A.C.T.