Posted on 08/13/2006 5:09:50 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
CERTAIN she would be murdered by the men who kidnapped her on a Baghdad street and fatally shot her translator, American journalist Jill Carroll begged her captors at one point to use a gun to end her life rather than a knife.
"Promise me you will use this gun to kill me by your own hand. I don't want that knife, I don't want the knife, use the gun," Carroll remembered crying hysterically to the Iraqi man who was watching her with a 9mm pistol at his side.
For the first time since she returned to the United States in April, Carroll has described her chilling, 82-day experience as a hostage in Iraq.
The Christian Science Monitor, the newspaper for which Carroll reported from Baghdad and now works as an editor in Boston, published the first installment of her 11-part series overnight on the newspaper's website.
Carroll, who was snatched on January 7 after trying to interview a Sunni politician, described how a sunny Saturday morning turned deadly as a group of men pointed their pistols at her and gunned down her friend and translator Alan Enwiya.
The men surrounded the 28-year-old reporter, shouted "Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!" and sped away on Baghdad's main road, according to the account.
Carroll wrote she was later grilled about how many American reporters lived in Baghdad and accused of working with US intelligence agents.
When Carroll asked her captors to shoot her instead of killing her with a knife, she said she had been held for six weeks.
"They'd given me a new hijab (headscarf), a new name (Aisha), and tried to convert me to Islam," she wrote.
As days turned to months, Carroll, who speaks Arabic and moved to Iraq to fulfill a dream of being a foreign correspondent, said she was interrogated, but, at times, was given a remote control to a television set where she watched the The Oprah Winfrey Show.
She said her captors also let her play with their children.
At one point, she said they served her from a platter of chicken and rice "that would have been fit for an honoured guest".
"We have no problem with you. Our problem is with your government," her captors told her as they prepared to release tapes of the journalist wearing a headscarf and weeping.
When Carroll first returned to the United States, she described her captivity as a horrific ordeal in a cave-like room sealed off from the world. She said she was threatened many times by her captors, whom she described as "criminals at best".
Just before her release, Carroll said she was forced by her captors to make a video in which she denounced the US presence in Iraq and praised the militants fighting American forces there. Carroll later disavowed those comments.
Carroll's parents and twin sister kept a public face on her ordeal through frequent, emotional appeals for her release on US and Arabic television.
On Thursday, the US military said it arrested four Iraqis suspected of being involved in Carroll's abduction.
I give drunk actors the benefit of the doubt, before I've know the whole story, when they mouth off about jews. I would hope thats's what good jews would do as well.
Is it possible some people are confounding this reporter with the woman who got run over by the bulldozer?
That may very well be. If so, it's more evidence of how thoughtless rage helps us defeat ourselves.
Jill Carroll was kidnapped, she says she was kidnapped, held against her will and has badmouthed her captors repeatedly since being released.
Mel Gibson went on an anti-semetic tirade that's apparently on tape while drunk. That is not disputed. I called him on it as a good Jew would
Two days later, when he made his explanation/apology, I publicly went on the record here saying it was the most sincere, most heartfelt public apology I had ever read. Not only did he make amends, but he asked what he could do to make it right and promised to do it.
I forgave Gibson and wished him well on his road to recovery right on this forum. THAT'S WHAT A GOOD JEW DOES.
Once again, the terrorists using their excellent technique of embedding children in target locations. Had any of these kids been killed in a rescue attempt, the press, including the Monitor, would have been serving up their usual judgemental crap about Bush not caring about innocent children.
Is there anything stupider than a journalist?
"Either these Muslims believed in the KORAN or they did not. The fact she admitts they tried to convert her says they do. Because if they didn't get a bribe and they didn't kill her then according to the Koran they commiteed a mortal sin."
The newspaper is run by a church with a tradition of praying about every little problem. Could her release be part of an answered prayer?
"I read the whole article. Jill Carroll still is anti-american/anti-military. Frankly, I don't care how well or how bad she claims they treated her (as she states in the article). IMO, if her story is indeed true, then she got what she deserved after speaking out against our troops."
Nice - she deserved capture?!?! As another poster has mentioned, these people have a bizarro sense of treating people. She has said that although she was given a tv, food, etc., they made it clear to her that she could have her head taken off at any moment. She has said that the continually told her that she was a 'guest' with them, but that she could have her head removed at any time.
That's pretty low.
Why is that low? They're saying that a woman is LYING when there is no evidence that she's lying at all. They're saying, basically, she deserved what she got..some went as far as saying she deserved to die. You tell me, is that Christian?
I can assure you that she is definitely NOT Muslim!
She did not fake this story/capture/release, etc. And she will not be selling her story. She is not doing other on camera interviews, she is not appearing on cable or network news (other than a brief spot on ABC News last night), she is not writing a book. She is extremely grateful to the soldiers, to the newspaper and her family.
Jon Carroll was shot at and missed, sh!t at and hit.
I doubt it. Does God do miracles for cult beiievers?
As I recall the New Testiment requries the recipent of the miracle to beleive in Christ not Mary Baker Eddy.
Poor misled deluded thing. She really believed that the head-choppers were really kind people. They let her play with their children.
Idiot. Those people would happily blow their children into bits and chop her head off. They are not of this world. They do not have DNA. These are subhuman vermin, recall the pictures of them standing up neatly in a row, cowardly hiding their faces, singing religious ditties while they move the knife to their bound and tied victim's head.
Absolutely.
Maybe he fought back. Maybe they had mercy on her because they thought they could negotiate for her release. Maybe she was handed over to people who weren't quite as crazy. You don't know, so stop acting like you do.
They did worse. Madw her watch Oprah. OhTheHughManatee
Naw. The header said "journalist." Jon Carroll is a crappy writer with rarely significant opinions. He's Mark Morford on horse tranquilizers.
No can do that, since she invited herself in that shithole of a predicament.
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