The Carroll Conundrum

Jill Carroll was released yesterday by her captors after nearly three months. She was kidnapped on January 7. It goes without saying that her family is overjoyed at her release. However, there are serious questions that need to be addressed as to why the kidnappers would suddenly release her. It simply wasn't out of altruism.

There is far more to the story than meets the eye.

Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post takes a critical eye to Carroll's first interview and wonders why it would appear that Jill was providing a positive review of the kidnappers - as though she was providing a Zagat's guide review. Kurtz also cites to the Think Progress slam of John Podhoretz and the LGF comments I linked to yesterday.

And then there are the snippets of video that Carroll made while in captivity. They denounce the US operations in Iraq and praise her captors and insurgency in general. The video was shot over what appears to be two sessions and while she was more upbeat in the earlier session, she appeared to be going through the motions in the second. Considering that it is likely that her kidnappers threatened her with death, making those statements would have been a way of avoiding that fate - at least temporarily, though the kidnappers simply wouldn't care as they got her words on tape and would be able to use them as propaganda. Or, had she become a 'useful idiot' for the terrorists and insurgents, and her captors figured it was time to cut her loose because she had become more useful to them once freed? That isn't entirely clear and those questions will need to be addressed as well.

Newsbusters wonders why all the sudden secrecy over Carroll's release from various media sources; the same sources that had no problem releasing potentially harmful details about US national intelligence gathering techniques. They wonder if a ransom was paid and simply don't want people to know the true details and cite to an Editor and Publisher piece that states the following:

Cook would not comment, and other reporters in Baghdad said only that such speculation had been growing. "There are indications that [the demand] was for money, but we don't know if any changed hands," said Steve Butler, Knight Ridder foreign editor who had been in touch with his reporters in Baghdad today. He said learning too much about what occurred behind the scenes could be harmful. "These things are sometimes better left unresolved," he added. "It could harm the next one or close off options in the future if too much is known."

I would have to say that there would be damn good reason not to let people know that ransom was paid. It would mean that it would be open season on journalists in Iraq - knowing that the foreign media would pay for the release of their journalists, though this possibility has to be tempered by the fact that news of ransom paid to any of the kidnappers would quickly spread to other insurgent groups and thugs who want a piece of the action.

UPDATE:
As you've come to expect, Michelle Malkin has more, and includes an email from Rusty at the Jawa Report who counsels the following:

After devoting considerable time to the subject I've become a bit more sympathetic to the plight of hostages. Whether or not she was anti-American to begin with is irrelevant since she was a civilian operating in a war-zone. Her political views do not change the fact that her captors are savages operating outside the laws of war. I think we should give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when they are victims....

Once she's home if she starts acting like Giuliana Sgrena we'll call her on it. Until then, my advice to the blogosphere is to have some class.

That's sound advice.

Others blogging Carroll's release: The Moderate Voice, and Rantingprofs wonders what happens next:

If you read the transcript of the "interview" Carroll gave before her release, I don't see what about it is surprising. Her best chance of getting out alive was to make the argument that, as a journalist, she had credibility to tell their story to the American people -- but that wasn't going to work if they didn't think that her version of their story and their version of their story matched. She told them what they needed to hear from her and, keep in mind, she's a young reporter, not a soldier. She had hardly sworn an oath to die before giving the enemy propaganda material.

Now, however, she has given them propaganda material -- boatloads of it.

That's something you can't quite walk away from.

UPDATE:
Killgore Trout at LGF posts a story that Carroll was threatened before her release by her captors.

Jill Carroll's kidnappers reportedly warned her before her release that she might be killed if she cooperated with the Americans or went to the Green Zone, saying it was infiltrated by insurgents...

If you're fearing for your life, you have no idea how you'd react. The survival instinct kicks in, and you might say or do things you'd never have contemplated before. This may help explain how and why Carroll made those statements.