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SWJED
12-04-2005, 07:14 PM
On Tiger Hawk - Tehran 1979: A Christmas carol (http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2005/12/tehran-1979-christmas-carol.html).


Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) has published an excellent article in the December issue of The Atlantic recounting the experience of the American hostages in Tehran during Christmas 1979. The Iranians had arranged for a "Christmas service" for the hostages, complete with all the trimmings and "Islamic" Christmas decorations, and flew in three American clergymen with impeccable "anti-imperialist" credentials, including the famously blowhardish William Sloane Coffin.

The point of the service, and Coffin's visit, was superficially to promote the allegedly generous circumstances of the Americans' captivity, but practically to promote the benificence of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime. Bowden calls it the "captivity pageant."...