According to the NYT,
Abducted Marine Had Reportedly Deserted.
But according to the WaPo,
Corporal Held by Militants Not a Deserter, Marines Say.
Finally, CNN tells us he simply did the same thing as former Alabama ANG member George W. Bush:
Captured Marine Was on Unauthorized Leave.
Regardless of the murky details in this latest instance of a captive threatened with beheading, there's a common factor in three of these cases that's barely been mentioned. Like Nick Berg and South Korean Kim Sung Il, Wasef Ali Hassoun thought he knew his way around Iraq and could work with local Iraqis. Berg and Kim both traveled extensively around Iraq, had business and personal ties with Iraqis, and Kim spoke Arabic. Like them, Hassoun, a translator, apparently thought he knew who to trust, but there's a good chance he was taken hostage by the same people he trusted to get him to his native country of Lebanon. Let's hope his misplaced trust doesn't cost him his life.