Posted on 04/01/2006 2:57:46 AM PST by SkyPilot
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany - Smiling broadly, journalist Jill Carroll arrived Saturday under U.S. military protection in Germany, the first stop on her return to the United States after 82 days in captivity in Iraq.
28-year-old U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, left, is welcomed by Base Commander, Col. Kurt Lohide after she landed at the U.S. Airbase in Ramstein, southwestern Germany, Saturday, April 1, 2006. Carroll was a hostage in Iraq for 82 days and was released last Thursday. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
Gone was the Islamic headscarf and dress robe she had worn as a hostage. Instead she was wearing jeans, a bulky gray sweater, and a desert camouflage jacket.
Col. Kurt Lohide, commander of the 435th Air Base Wing, welcomed her to Ramstein.
"I'm happy to be here," she said.
Carroll, a 28-year-old freelancer for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was seized Jan. 7 in western Baghdad by gunmen who killed her Iraqi translator.
She was dropped off Thursday at an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab organization, and later escorted by the U.S. military to the Green Zone, the fortified compound in Baghdad protecting the U.S. embassy and other facilities. She was said to be reluctant to go to the Green Zone because her kidnappers had told her it was infiltrated by insurgents.
A U.S. Air Force C17 Globemaster brought Carroll from Balad Air Base near Baghdad to Ramstein Air Base in western Germany. Carroll was seated in the cockpit of the plane, which was also carrying several soldiers wounded in Iraq.
As the aircraft came to stop, she cast a bemused look at the bevy of television cameras waiting on the tarmac. That expression had changed to a big grin, though, by the time she got off the plane.
She was wearing the usual Western garb _ jeans and sneakers _ and carrying a flight bag. Her hair _ uncovered _ was pulled back in a ponytail. As journalists watched from a distance, Lohide escorted her to a waiting van.
Ramstein officials said she was taken to a hotel at the air base but was expected to leave for Boston later Saturday on a flight out of Frankfurt.
After she was gone, the wounded soldiers were brought out of the rear of the plane on stretchers for transport to the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
It wasn't clear why the kidnappers, who called themselves the Revenge Brigades, released Carroll. They had demanded the release of all female detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26, and said Carroll would be killed if that wasn't done.
U.S. officials did release some female detainees at the time, but said it had nothing to do with the kidnappers' demands. On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the United States is still holding four women.
Carroll has said her kidnappers confined her to a small, soundproof room with frosted windows but treated her well. Although her captors issued televised threats to kill her if American forces did not release women prisoners, she said she was never threatened or harmed.
On Friday a video posted on an Islamist Web site showed her speaking out against the U.S. military presence.
"Tens of thousands ... have lost their lives here because of the occupation," she said in the video. "I think Americans need to think about that and realize day-to-day how difficult life is here."
She said the insurgents were "only trying to defend their country ... to stop an illegal and dangerous and deadly occupation."
The Monitor's editor, Richard Bergenheim, said that Carroll's parents, who spoke to her about the video, told him it was "conducted under duress."
Read those and you'll understand why her hypocrisy in resented.
It may not excuse our delight in her rescue, but it explains why HER attitude is seen as (somewhat) hypocritical.
I treat journalists the same way that they treat the military. They're guilty until proven innocent. They're at war--against the U.S. military.
The initial pictures of Jill after her 'abduction' show her without glasses and looking quite forlorn, however there are many showing her smiling broadly with glasses during her captivity. Her glasses have nothing to do with her freedom.
Uh, thank you for that correction, I think.
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