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Just a few comments since you seem to have some doubts.

I wondered myself about why she is there and if she truly did speak Arabic fluently.

I have excerpted some of her comments in former writings.

It proves nothing really except that she had sympathy for the locals and not necessarily for the American occupiers.

You will notice however that she had been in Iraq since October of 2003.

1. "Yes, some new things are available now, mobile phones, satellite TV, new cars. But the thing that we lost is more valuable," says Basim Majid, the manager of an electronics store. "We are in the middle of chaos and there is no way back. I hope they use force to spread security."

Bassam Henna, who is unemployed, is discouraged. "Frankly, the time of Saddam was better in general," he says. "Not Saddam himself, with all his faults and all his mistakes, but in general, that time was better than now. If we are missing him, imagine what the situation is like."

2.Interviews with captured insurgents are televised every night at 9 p.m. on state television and has become wildly popular since beginning about three months ago. Prisoners, often with visible bruises and cuts, sit behind a table and confess the gruesome details of their crimes. An anonymous offscreen military or police commander harangues them and lectures them about what jihad really means. One has even taken to reciting patriotic poetry he wrote himself.

3. Mourning Marla
By Jill Carroll, Christian Science Monitor. Posted April 18, 2005.
Californian Marla Ruzicka was the head of an NGO whose blend of tenacity and optimism kept her in Iraq long after almost every other humanitarian aid organization had left.

Marla and her Iraqi driver died Saturday when their car was tragically caught between a suicide car bomber and a US military convoy.

Marla was more than a source for a story, she was one of those quiet cheerleaders that kept me -- and the Iraqis she touched -- going almost from the moment that I arrived here three years ago.

I first met her in Jordan, just before the war. A reporter friend told me that I should get to know this young activist who made a name for herself working for Global Exchange, the US organization that sent field workers to Afghanistan to count civilian casualties.
When she died Marla was traveling to visit some of the many Iraqi families she was working to help. Lately, she had been attempting to aid the relatives of a toddler whose parents were killed after the mini-bus they were traveling in was hit by what was believed to be an American rocket.

4.
Carroll was reporting in Iraq for the Christian Science Monitor. She has also worked as a commentator for news networks such as MSNBC. She has been in Iraq since October 2003. Before covering the Middle East, Carroll was a reporter in Washington, D.C., for the Wall Street Journal and States News Service.

As far as speaking fluently the Arabic language who knows?

I did read some where but will not look up the source that her good friend or sister said she was fluent in the Arabic language.

I wondered myself about why she is there and if she truly did speak Arabic fluently.

I seriously doubt it. She had been in Jordan for one year before going to Iraq. The Jordan Times is in english. I have visited Jordan. English is widely spoken due to the British influence.

I have lived in Saudi Arabia for five years. You just don't pick up Arabic. In the foreign service, diplomats are trained for six months in the US and then spend another year in Tunisa to learn Arabic. Even after that, you are no where near fluent. Whatever her friends may have said about her fluency, it is all hyperbole. How could they possibly know what her level was? From what I have read from her writings, Carroll had a rather inflated opinion of herself and her abilities as a reporter. She was just a stringer paid by the story.