TOUGH POSITION: The televised plea of hostage Ken Bigley for the PM to save his life dramatized Iraq's continuing insecurity.
The grainy videotape showed 11 minutes of a blindfolded, sobbing man pleading for his life. "I don't want to die," said Kenneth Bigley, a British engineer taken hostage by Islamic extremists in Baghdad. Two American men kidnapped at the same time had already been beheaded on camera. Bigley appealed directly to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "You are the only person on God's earth who can help me. Please free female prisoners held in Iraqi prisons." Blair refused to bargain with the kidnappers, which made Kenneth's brother Paul bitter. "If my brother dies, his blood is on Blair's hands," he said....
