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.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Killing someone who resists is not cold blooded killing.
Maybe they only thought he might resist, or maybe he moved his hand, or blinked.
In any event, if they had any reason, however stupid, they were justified and so they aren't cold blooded killers.
You make me barf.
I didn't say that killing him wasn't cold blooded. It absolutely was. All I am saying is that the people here who insist that it was a hoax or something unplausible are idiots.
I am sure it wasn't a hoax. They just don't kill those who are sympathetic to their point of view.
All she had to do is show them how she was anti-war and that it was all Bush's fault. She was home free. Got to play with their kids and everything.
Let's recap:
Publius said: I am not in the slightest interested in anything concerning this person.
Hildy replied: I bet you call yourself a Christian.
Psycho_Bunny said: That's pretty low.
Hildy said:Why is that low? They're saying that a woman is LYING when there is no evidence that she's lying at all
Helllooooo!!Could you please stop changing the subject and tell us why you made the comment "I bet you call yourself a Christian"?
Perhaps you are right on this. Though they seem to have no problem even killing their own people.
They are not stupid. The people they kill are not in a position to generate propaganda showing how nice and friendly they are.
She is continuing to generate good publicity for them.
They want the message out that they are invincible, and will be ruthless if necessary but will be nice to those who recognize what they want and will "play with their children".
They want dihimmies, which she was willing to do and she is keeping her end of the bargain.
"On Thursday, the US military said it arrested four Iraqis suspected of being involved in Carroll's abduction."
I hope they gave them rice and chicken (sarcasm)
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