palerobber wrote:you seem to be turning this on its head. no one claimed Abdullah was Bruce Willis. if anything it's Uchtdorf's bio that paints him as Bruce Willis. what this news report and the wikipedia article both confirm is that Uchtdorf could not have played the principle role his bio gives the impression of because the principle actors were the Kuwaitis. it's not at all implausible that Uchtdorf played a minor role (though i haven't been able to find any contemporary news account that mentions him by name or position) so i would be inclined to just take his word for it, but then he undercuts his own credibility by overstating his role in the bio.
Your analysis is spot on.
The problem is that bio says his mission was to "negotiate", not facilitate, assist or aid in the negotiations. The bio later says, without any clarification that his mission "was successfully accomplished," leading the uninformed and gullible reader to believe that he had successfully negotiated the release of the hostages.
To be fair, however, the bio said he was to negotiate "in every setting possible." Since there was probably no setting in which he had the opportunity to negotiate with the terrorist, his mission can accurately been labeled a success even if someone else had negotiated their release, and he played no role.
So the bio, from a PR standpoint was extremely well written, in that it was both completely accurate and totally misleading.