Nic is under no illusions about the dangers ahead. This is major league bad stuff. I am as worried about him this time as I have ever been, in all our years together.

It could have been written as Nic headed for Egypt last week – a lifetime ago now – but it’s a 2004 diary entry, written as he headed to some other conflict in some other, embattled land.

In fact, it could have written in almost any time during the last 20 years. Egypt is just his latest heart-stoppingly dangerous pinpoint on the map. His office may be in CNN’s shiny, impressive London production center. But Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Darfur, Bosnia – Egypt! - these are the places he usually works, on the ragged outer perimeters of man’s inhumanity to man. FULL POST