Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the current conflict. I think Mr Gardner is a very courageous man, particularly given that he now has limited mobility after being shot six times by Al-Qa'eda fanatics. Read a little of his story below (first published in June 2008 from The Telegraph)
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BBC correspondent Frank Gardner: You can't keep a good man down
Four years after he was given up for dead by the al-Qa'eda fanatics who shot him six times in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Frank Gardner, the BBC security correspondent, is now routinely standing when he reports for the corporation.
"It is not quite as it seems, as I do always have to support myself with a hand on my Zimmer frame, which is usually off camera and, obviously, I have the callipers on," says Gardner, 46, who had to undergo 13 operations after he was paralysed in the shooting.
"It is actually very good for me to get out of my wheelchair from time to time as your organs tend to get a bit compressed if you stay in those contraptions for long uninterrupted periods.
"I don't find it painful to stand, but it would probably be wishful thinking to say I will one day be able to walk again. My spinal nerves were just too badly blasted apart when I was shot."
Gardner has led an active life since the shooting and managed to walk with some pain when he collected his OBE from the Queen in 2005.
In February he took the slalom challenge at the Italian resort of Courmayeur using a specially adapted chair called a "sitski," which he described as "basically a wheelchair without wheels."
He broke the story earlier this month of the top secret documents that had been left on a train from London Waterloo to Surrey by a "very senior intelligence official" working in the Cabinet Office.
Original Source: The Telegraph
George, Editor
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