Get mail messages off iPhone read iPhone backup

I want to get the mail messages off my iPhone. Tried jailbreaking (in order to copy the actual files to my Mac), but it did not work and I had to restore.
Alternatively, is there any way to read and hopefully save the iPhone backup (~/Library/.../MobileSync) as plain files? Found some perl scripts pn the intenet, but they were meant for older versions of the backup.
Then there is PhoneView that gets SMS, notes, etc off the phone, but not mail messages.
I wonder why Apple made this so hard. I back up often, but how am I supposed to retrieve my data if I lose my phone, aside from buying a new one and restoring from backup?
Thanks
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.6.6)