Picture of a U.S. soldier shaking hands with Hillary Clinton but not happy about it-Truth!

Picture of U.S. Soldier in Iraq Shaking Hands With Senator Hillary Clinton--But Not Willingly-Truth!

Summary of the eRumor
The eRumor includes a picture of a U.S. soldier shaking hands with Senator Hillary Clinton.
He is also crossing the fingers of his left hand, which the email says is a soldier's sign for coercion.

The Truth
This eRumor started circulating shortly after Senator Clinton made a Thanksgiving visit to the soldiers in Iraq in 2003.
There was a lot of speculation about what the picture really meant.
Was the soldier really indicating that he didn't like shaking hands with Hillary?
Was the picture doctored to make it look that way?
Was he sending some other kind of message with his crossed fingers?

The answer is that he did intentionally cross his fingers during the handshake and it did mean that he was not thrilled to shake Senator Clinton's hand.
After his discharge from the Army, the soldier posted a personal profile on Yahoo Personals as part of looking for introductions to single females.
In his profile, he includes the picture with Hillary and explains "The picture of me and Hillary Clinton was taken when she came to visit Iraq. I was actually ordered to shake her hand, and I never figured that my friends would circulate it all over the net. I AM NOT a Hillary fan by any stretch."

Updated 5/2/05

A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:

Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has already started her 2008 presidential campaign by aligning herself with the military and pretending to be tough on terror. Fortunately, the ultra-liberal Hillary has yet to brainwash all of the voting public into believers that her symbolism is really substance. Guess some folks will never forget that she was co-president for eight years in an administration that I QUOTE: "Loath the military"!
Absolutely the best picture EVER! (read the message below the photo)

The picture shows that this soldier has been thru Survival School and learned his lessons well. He's giving the sign of "coercion" with his left hand. These hand signs are taught in survival school to be used by POW's as a method of posing messages back to our intelligence services who may view the photo or video. This guy was obviously being coerced into shaking hands with Hillary Clinton. It's ironic how little she knew that he would so inform us about the photo---perhaps because she's never understood our military to begin with.