Jill Carroll via The Christian Science Monitor : I felt I was beginning to lose my self-control. One of my biggest problems was that I had let myself have hope. Numerous times, the insurgent leader, the black-eyed Abu Nour, had said my release was only a matter of settling details. Inevitably, my mood would soar – and then the release wouldn’t happen.

Then there were the videos. They had been astounded when my first hostage video, in which I had been forced to plead for the release of women at Abu Ghraib, had coincided with the freeing of five female prisoners by the US.

They kept wanting to film different videos with different demands aimed at different audiences. Sometimes I was pleading with the American people in general for help. Once I asked the King of Jordan to free Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, a woman who tried to blow up a Jordanian hotel Nov. 9, 2005. Another time I begged for aid from the leader of the United Arab Emirates. Later, I made one denouncing him.

While only four of my videos ever reached the outside world, I made nearly a dozen, including re-takes done when I didn’t cry enough to satisfy my mujahideen producers. And I dreaded making them, not so much because it’s scary to plead for your life in front of a camera, as because I recognized that each one was a guarantee I would remain in captivity for some time longer.

Of course, there was an even worse alternative – that the death threats and deadlines they mentioned would be real.

Part VI.

Part V.

Part IV.

Part III.

Part II.

Part I plus relevant links including Jawa and Christian Science Monitor archives here.

Pretty good read. Almost as interesting as the fact that UBL likes McGyver and reads Playboy is the fact that her captors often watched Tom and Jerry. Heh.

I’ve been catching some “heck” for following Jill’s story. I find it interesting and was flattered to be asked to blog it. Not by Jill Herself but by the Monitor. So if the trolls out there who have never met Jill think they deter me in any fashion they are mistaken. In fact the knowledge that I am annoying the “insert expletive here” out of them is quite satisfying. Yesterday Bill Roggio, who has actually met and worked with Jill, posted this.

Bill Roggio via National Review: After her capture and subsequent release three months later, the blogosphere was ripe with accusations and assaults on Jill's character. She was described as an insurgent, terrorist sympathizer, “anti-war” and anti-American. She was savaged for the video taken at Dulaimi’s headquarters on the day of her release, because she wore the hijab and said those who imprisoned her treated her kindly. Those who wrongly criticized Jill fail to realize that she was still in fear for her safety when she made the tape.

During my short time with Jill, nothing she said or did gave the slightest impression that she deserved the slanders attributed to her. Jill was honest, brave, and respected by the Marines who met her. I had the honor of joining the Marines of the 4th Mobile Assault Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, and the Iraqi Army on a raid on a small weapons cache on the Euphrates River. Jill joined us. She dismounted and walked the site with us, viewed the weapons cache (which can be dangerous, as the rounds can be “hot” or rigged to detonate) and even returned from the raid with the Iraqi troops on the back of an unarmored Iraqi transport, something quite dangerous with the high roadside bomb threat in Western Iraq. I insisted on traveling in an armored vehicle.

Hat Tip : Vinnie.

Posted by: Howie at 08:07 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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