Quoted: ...Hate to say it, but if a bunch of guys with kitchen towels on their heads broke in here, held me at gunpoint, and demanded I make a propoganda video telling the world that their struggle was just and right...well, guess what; I'm playing producer AND actor. Maybe even director, if the guy holding the camera can't speak English. As much of an internet bad-ass as I am, I have not been trained for that, and it's not my country that I'm fighting for in that instance...it's my own personal skin. I'm glad she's ok, back home, and has lived to say what really happened. Hopefully she'll be ok.

You honesty is refreshing.

My gut tells me, though, that you are probably orders of magnitude tougher than most of the shit talkers on this thread.

No man knows his breaking point until he's been there - and when you are talking about a non-combatant under no oath nor code of conduct, I don't fault anyone for singing like a canary.  Her sole responsibility to herself and to her employers was to get out of there alive.

What she said in captivity was no worse than what many reporters have said on their own free will and time.  The fact that she has now gone out of her way to denounce what she said puts her pretty well in to the "fair and balanced" category.  

Nobody who just experienced three months in captivity deserves the shit talking that she has received here.

Quoted: So now Jill Carroll is now being 'spun' as some sort of 'hero'…

Geez.

Give up already you crooked-toothed, cockeyed, limey bastard.     She's clearly not what you have claimed her to be, and she is something that you could only aspire to be.

She's American.

This thread has a dearth of clear-thinking and objectivity. I've noticed that being a civilian journalist seems to already be a mark against her, regardless of what evidence comes in.

What I've noticed (and I myself am guilty of this time to time) is that evidence or arguments to the contrary of a held opinion tend to be either totally ignored or attacked ad hominem. For a person to read multiple sides of an issue and decide logically is a rarity.

Quoted: You honesty is refreshing. My gut tells me, though, that you are probably orders of magnitude tougher than most of the shit talkers on this thread. No man knows his breaking point until he's been there - and when you are talking about a non-combatant under no oath nor code of conduct, I don't fault anyone for singing like a canary.  Her sole responsibility to herself and to her employers was to get out of their alive. What she said in captivuty was no worse than what many reported have said on their own free will and time.  The fact that she has now gone out of her way to denounce what she said puts her pretty well in to the "fair and balanced" category.   Nobody who just experienced three months in captivity deserves the shit talking that she has received here.

Exactily. She's under no obligation or other code of conduct, and as you said...what she said on tape, shit, people here say for free, unprovoked.

As for tougher...I doubt it. I hope and pray I never have to find out, cause if that day ever happens...we're in deep kimchee.

Her experience in this far outweighs anyone else's here. Quite frankly, she's the authority as far as I am concerned; who am I to say she's incorrect, and what her real feelings were?

I'm just glad we got one back.


My $0.02; I'm sure some chairborne ranger (just like me ) will be along shortly to flame me...

For the record.....

I frankly have no idea what her actual politics are, nor do I really care.

What I can say is that her writing for the CS Monitor has been completely impartial, despite what some here have claimed. That makes her an excellent journalist in my opinion. (Not that my opinion matters - the fact that she writes for the CS Monitor speaks for itself.)

Quoted: I can post news reports from the Gulf for the military press before they hit the streets… I wonder how I manage that? ANdy

Am I supposed to be impressed?

How again does this make you an expert on how people should react to and behave in captivity?

That woman has done more and seen more than any reading of someone else's new reports could ever make you or me understand.

The difference between you and me is I comprehend the difference between the ground truth and reported news, and I would never baselessly criticize someone who was put through something I have never experienced.

The name Ellsworth Toohey keeps coming to mind, though I probably spelled that wrong.

Better to have tried and failed than to have lived life vicariously through the actions of others, never having left the comfort of your living room save to go on a grocery run.

Teddy Roosevelt said it best, though:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

THEODORE ROOSEVELT (Paris Sorbonne, 1910)<

This is a civillian we're talking about... Not a Soldier - there's no 'Code of Conduct' binding her to do anything but stay alive & make it home....

She was told 'do this and we let you go', so she did it & got set free...

Quoted: Here's my buddy's latest article: www.csmonitor.com/earlyed/earlyWO0331a.html Jill Carroll forced to make propaganda video as price of freedom By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor CAIRO - The night before journalist Jill Carroll's release, her captors said they had one final demand as the price of her freedom: She would have to make a video praising her captors and attacking the United States, according to Jim Carroll. In a long phone conversation with his daughter on Friday, Mr. Carroll says that Jill was "under her captor's control." Ms. Carroll had been their captive for three months and even the smallest details of her life - what she ate and when, what she wore, when she could speak - were at her captors' whim. They had murdered her friend and colleague Allan Enwiya, "she had been taught to fear them," he says. And before making one last video the day before her release, she was told that they had already killed another American hostage. That video appeared Thursday on a jihadist website that carries videos of beheadings and attacks on American forces. In it, Carroll told her father she felt compelled to make statements strongly critical of President Bush and his policy in Iraq. Her remarks are now making the rounds of the Internet, attracting heavy criticism from conservative bloggers and commentators. In fact, Carroll did what many hostage experts and past captives would have urged her to do: Give the men who held the power of life and death over her what they wanted. "You'll pretty much say anything to stay alive because you expect people will understand these aren't your words," says Micah Garen, a journalist and author who was held captive by a Shiite militia in southern Iraq for 10 days in August 2004. "Words that are coerced are not worth dying over." Shortly before her release, her captors - who refer to themselves as the Revenge Brigade - also told her they had infiltrated the US diplomatic compound in Baghdad, and she would be killed if she went there or cooperated with the American authorities. It was a threat she took seriously in her first few hours of freedom. Carroll worked at the Wall Street Journal's Washington office in early 2002 when that paper's reporterDaniel Pearl was abducted and beheaded in Pakistan. "Many of her colleagues knew him and it was very emotional in the office,'' Jill told her father. "She had that memory in the back of her head while she was being threatened." In making their last video, Mr. Carroll says her captors "obviously wanted maximum propaganda value in the US. After listening to them for three months she already knew exactly what they wanted her to say, so she gave it to them with appropriate acting to make it look convincing." Jill Carroll will undoubtedly speak for herself once she's had time to recover from her ordeal and spend time with her family. But her friends and colleagues say she made it clear that she's no friend to those who kidnap or harm civilians. Those who encountered Carroll in a professional context repeatedly praised her fairness and compassion, as demonstrated by some of the thousands of letters the Monitor has received in her support. "Her professionalism and objectivity were unparalleled within the media community," Capt. Patrick Kerr, a Marine public affairs officer who got to know Carroll last December, when she spent a month with a Marine unit in Western Iraq, said in an e-mail. "I saw her in Husaybah, on the Syrian border, in early December shortly before I returned to the States. Aside from being very personable and down-to-earth, what really struck me was Jill's bravery. She seemed to fit right in with the marines and Iraqi security forces," he wrote in January. The Monitor's editor, Richard Bergenheim, says that "none of us - except perhaps her personal friends and family - know what Jill's views are about the war in Iraq. But we do know that they did not color her reporting for the Monitor. She covered a wide spectrum of people in Iraq and that is part of what made her reporting valuable." On the evening of March 29, her captors brought her written questions in Arabic, and asked her to translate them into English for the video. Though they promised her freedom in exchange for cooperating, she didn't believe them, as she'd been promised freedom many times in the past, she told her father. But that evening, during the first attempt at producing the video, the power went out. They finished up the next morning, shortly before she was dropped off in a Baghdad neighborhood and pointed to the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), which then contacted friends and the US government. Mr. Garen, who was forced to make a propaganda video by his own captors, says that "I said the US should 'stop the massacre' in Najaf - and they weren't my words, and I felt very uncomfortable saying them," recalls Garen. He says he tried to change some of the text he was fed but "that was very risky." Garen's book "American Hostage," co-authored with his wife Marie-Helene, recounts his experience, and in the process of researching it he delved into the methods and motives of kidnappers, particularly ones with political agendas. "The point of taking hostages is to get them to make propaganda statements," he says. "The job of a civilian hostage... is to stay alive." On Thursday, the International Woman's Media Foundation announced that Carroll had won its Courage in Journalism Award. Judy Woodruff of PBS and the Foundation's awards chair wrote: "Her courage and example are an inspiration to us all, especially at a time when journalists are under threat in many parts of the world, and particularly Iraq, for simply trying to cover stories vital for us all to know."

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: So now Jill Carroll is now being 'spun' as some sort of 'hero'… Geez. Give up already you crooked-toothed, cockeyed, limey bastard.     She's clearly not what you have claimed her to be, and she is something that you could only aspire to be. She's American. Why don't you fuck off and die you stupid all american cunt… What the fuck do YOU know about what i can 'aspire to'… I'll clue you on on my status you professional prick with fucking ears… I WORK FOR THE MILITARY! I work a newsdesk with 4 other guys for the UK 'Mil. One of us in IN Iraq, one of the others is heading out next week. And if being a spineless non patriotic propaganda producing shitstain like Jill Carroll is what I should 'aspire to' well I'm fucking glad I can't… WATCH MY LIPS!  THE ARAB PRESS AND TV WILL NOT REPORT OR SCREEN HER DENIALS OR RETRACTIONS: She has provided a couple of hours of gold plated propaganda footage to the insurgency the like of which I could only dream of coming across my desk… Her denouncing of the US is being aired 24/7 across the arab world and they are lapping it up.

GO VITO !!!

Words are just words.....

Now that she's out of harm's way, let's see her put her money where her mouth is.

Let her trade in her burhka and be the next "Dillon Girl"....holding an AR-15 with a sign that says:" I Got Yur Jihad right Here".

That would certainly be a way to defuse the coersed video.

Quoted: GO VITO !!!

He went all right. www.jobrelatedstuff.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=451268

DAMN ! This is some funny shit.....

Back to topic...

....nevermind...I guess he went home.

Enough with the childish name calling and personal attacks.