No Replacement For Displacement

Two emails

I've received two emails recently, one of which I responded to directly, the other I am going to respond to here. The first was from the wife of a Marine who is now somewhere in Iraq. She wanted to know if I had seen what unit Fox's Rick Leventhal was with, and if it was the same unit as her husband. I responded with what I knew(which admittedly, isn't much), and told her that we were pulling for her husband and his buddies, because they are fighting over there to keep us safe here. I'm much better at criticism than I am at expressing support, so I hope I got my point across okay.

The other letter was different. It was from a literary agent who wanted to know if I knew some way to contact Salam Pax. Here is my response:

No. I don't know any other method to contact Salam Pax. I don't email him, and I don't won't to jeopardize him by emailing him directly. I am certainly not going to engage in an activity that may be potentially life threatening for the sole purpose of you getting a plum contact to write a book. You might be shocked at this, but he is right now in the middle of a war zone, and frankly, I think his survival ranks a bit higher than you getting a prospective "best selling author". Your contact was slimy, your timing is abysmal, and frankly, you should at least think about the consequences of your actions.