Jill Carroll freed

*emeleel* · #1 03-30-2006, 09:34 AM

Hostage Jill Carroll was freed overnight:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/...oll/index.html

**theworm**[$] · #2 03-30-2006, 09:44 AM

It's such happy news!

I'm not sure about the quote from her friend that she was probably released because her captors saw how nice she is, but I'm so glad she's been released.

**drmomentum**[$] · #3 03-30-2006, 02:37 PM

Thank goodness.

**soxfan**[$] · #4 03-30-2006, 03:05 PM

Amen.

brian_igo · #5 03-30-2006, 08:06 PM

ms_n · #6 03-30-2006, 08:41 PM

brian_igo · #7 03-30-2006, 09:01 PM

Jill Carroll went to Iraq and put her life at risk so we could know what was happening. She is kidnapped and, thankfully, released unharmed three months later.

What better time for a bunch of men who haven't risked so much as a hangnail in their "journalism" careers to chime in on what she's really about:

John Podhertz at National Review:

Quote:

It's wonderful that she's free, but after watching someone who was a hostage for three months say on television she was well-treated because she wasn't beaten or killed -- while being dressed in the garb of a modest Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is -- I expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days.

Bernard McGuirk on Imus in the Morning:

Quote:

MCGUIRK: She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the — try and sneak into the Green Zone.
IMUS: Oh, no. No, no, no, no.
MCCORD: Just because she always appears in traditional Arab garb and wearing a burka.
MCGUIRK: Yeah, what’s with the head gear? Take it off. Let’s see.
…
MCCORD: Exactly. She cooked with them, lived with them.
IMUS: This is not helping.
MCGUIRK: She may be carrying Habib’s baby at this point.
…
IMUS: She could. It’s not like she was representing the insurgents or the terrorists or those people.
MCCORD: Well, there’s no evidence directly of that –

IMUS: Oh, gosh, you better shut up!
…
MCGUIRK: She’s like the Taliban Johnny or something.

Author Orrin Judd:

Quote:

American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity. "I was never hurt, ever hit," she told a Washington Post reporter. "I was kept in a safe place and treated very well."

May as well just come right out and say she was a willing participant.

**drmomentum**[$] · #8 03-31-2006, 12:26 AM

I'm feeling sickish.

**lynnzop**[$] · #9 03-31-2006, 12:38 AM

Quote:

drmomentum said

I'm feeling sickish.

Why?

**drmomentum**[$] · #10 03-31-2006, 03:22 AM

Preliminary diagnosis: wingnut allergy. But that probably belongs in the health forum.

ms_n · #11 03-31-2006, 04:33 AM

She wasn't harmed and well cared for, probably because she was an asset. They got, what, five women released for the one? I think they did pretty well and taking care of her served their purposes.

What is the article referring to exactly when it talks about financing their operations?

Quote:

"We have reason to believe and evidence to support that the terrorists and foreign fighters are, indeed, using kidnapping as a way to finance their operations," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch.

I can see hostages as a bargaining tool, but how would hostages finance terrorist operations? I probably should know this one, but I need someone to put it in black and white for me, please.

**drmomentum**[$] · #12 03-31-2006, 09:12 AM

Maybe some people are paying ransoms? I haven't looked into it, so I don't know if that's what they mean.

-JP

**theworm**[$] · #13 03-31-2006, 09:45 AM

that is infuriating!

Quote:

MCGUIRK: She’s like the Taliban Johnny or something.

why do this idiots get air time.
She was kidnapped! Thank God she is ok! She has grace - she said she wasn't mistreated - so now she's Taliban? And she wore the burka. Maybe she's trying to be respectful - I did see photos of her in one before the kidnapping. It's no different than me covering up when I go into a church or a non-Jew wearing a Yalmulka in a synagogue. It's respectful.
Some people insist on looking at everything in the worst possible way.

ms_n · #14 03-31-2006, 10:15 AM

Or maybe those were the clean clothes they provided for her and she was thankful. I'm just glad she is safe.

Redlass · #15 03-31-2006, 10:31 AM

Oh see, we have to make her a collaborator because heaven forbid we acknowledge that our enemies might be human and capable of treating people in a humane monster.

That doesn't fit with the agenda that they're monsters who torture and maim everyone they get their hands on.

Sorry, but we can't have someone messing with the images we've worked so carefully to create--that would be treasonous and worthy of a trip to Cuba.

**mjfrombuffalo**[$] · #16 03-31-2006, 10:48 AM

Well.

There's videos of her sobbing hysterically, but she says everything was hunkey-dory. There's accounts that she was told she'd be killed if she resisted when she was kidnapped (and her translator was shot to death in front of her), but she says she was never threatened. I don't know that there's enough evidence to make either side 100% certain, but I can't rule out some degree of captive/captor sympathy here. It's not that unknown a phenomenon. However, the zealousness with which some people are doing manic speculation about it is abhorrent.

**theworm**[$] · #17 03-31-2006, 11:01 AM

HER composure at this point should not even be a topic of debate. She's alive, she seems physically ok. Who cares what she wears? Maybe she was treated well. Maybe she's scared and afraid to say anything bad - it shouldnt be a topic for debate.

Her captors have shown what sort of people they are. They kidnapped people - not nice. They threatened people - not nice. They killed people - not nice. I really hope they did treat her well (though I'm not ready to decide that one way or another) but they certainly still look like monsters to me. But why would we want to send them to Cuba?

Redlass · #18 03-31-2006, 11:44 AM

Oh, what they're doing is definitely not nice. But we're at war and what they did is how people fight a war when faced with numeric superiority. And no, there's nothing nice about war.

But we've got this whole propaganda going that seems to rely on proving that our enemy are all terrible, horrible people and so unlike us that they need to be massacred off the face of the earth. The idiots who are going on that Jill Carroll is a traitor have to do so because she's not providing them with the fodder that she was subjected to horrible torment. I mean, we can't make it look like that "they" might treat their captors better than we have occasionally been accused of doing--whether in Cuba or in Iraq.

And the Cuba comment was referring to all the people that got swept off our streets and have been detained for years on end without any sort of trial because they might be traitors. Up till now, most people have figured they're safe from that sort of imprisonment if they don't have a Middle Eastern name or face, but maybe now we're going to start extending it to people who wear Middle Eastern garb.

Sorry, I'm venting my rage at wingnuts. And our government that has fostered this sort of environment by spewing hatred and ignoring our Constitution.

**theworm**[$] · #19 03-31-2006, 11:54 AM

Ah! now I get the Cuba thing! Thanks!!

*emeleel* · #20 03-31-2006, 01:21 PM

Weren't her initial remarks made when she was still in Iraq somewhere?

**AuntieEmma**[$] · #21 03-31-2006, 01:23 PM

Don't forget that the kidnappers killed Jill Carroll's translator -- they're definitely not some kind of new-fangled kinder, gentler terrorist. I would not say they treated their captives better than we treat ours in Cuba.

As for the foul stuff dribbling out of the mouths of McGuirk, etc., that's just beyond the pale.

As to how kidnapping fuels terrorism -- kidnapping is very common now in Iraq. We mostly hear about the Western journalists, but apparently most of the people being kidnapped are ordinary Iraqis. Some of the kidnappers are insurgents with an ideological agenda, and some are just gangsters taking advantage of the chaos -- and kidnapping is apparently so common these days that it has become a major source of revenue for both groups. So it would be fueling both terrorism and ordinary organized crime.

**AuntieEmma**[$] · #22 03-31-2006, 01:32 PM

I was googling to see if I could find a story to back up, and flesh out, what I had written above, about how common kidnapping has become in Iraq, and about how many of the victims are ordinary Iraqis -- and, ironically (and a bit spookily), the first article that I clicked on was one that was written by Jill Carroll.

It's from a year ago:

Quote:

Iraq's rising industry: domestic kidnapping

This week, Iraqi officials said they discovered the bodies of 50 kidnapping victims in the Tigris River.

By Jill Carroll | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – Abu Mohammed was chatting with a friend in an auto repair shop in Salman Pak two months ago when masked gunmen surrounded him and stuffed his 260-pound frame in their trunk and sped away.

He spent the next 10 days locked in a bathroom with a hood over his head, marking the passage of time by listening to his captors' prayers. A wealthy businessman who traveled daily from Baghdad to Salman Pak for more than 20 years, Mr. Mohammed survived after paying $60,000 to the kidnappers that he says were extremist Sunnis...

The violence over the past few months in Salman Pak set the stage for an uproar this week over allegations that as many as 100 Shiites were kidnapped by Sunnis in Madain, a village in the same area....

While the occasional kidnapping of a foreigner here makes international headlines, Iraqis are kidnapped regularly to little notice. Criminal gangs have turned it into a cottage industry. But in a more troublesome development, ideologically driven insurgents are using it to cleave ethnic groups in areas such as Salman Pak - already an uneasy mix of Sunnis and Shiites....

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0422/p06s01-woiq.html