Jillrelease_1 Now, we have to believe that miracles can happen.  Jill Carroll, the journalist abducted and held by unknown gunmen for 82 days, was released this morning in Baghdad. Jill was delivered unharmed to members of the Iraqi Islamic Party.  Read about it and listen to the interview here. Give thanks and talk…

85 replies on “Jill Carroll Safe At Last”

  1. I do hope (unlike last week’s three released “Christian activists”) that Ms. Carroll will take the time to specifically thank the forces, including the US military, who expended so much time and effort seeking her. And that she also won’t send out verbal “hugs” to her captors who, I’m sure, remain murderous brutes even if they didn’t quite do the deed with her. As they’ve done with several others, nonetheless.

  3. I believe the reports show she is an Iraqi sympathizer who wants the US out of the country. Her interview done by Iraqi radio was played on MSNBC this morning and She didn’t sound mad or hostile toward her captors.
    I’m glad she’s safe but I hope too that she thanks all those who fought for her release.

  4. Cathar,
    You might want to dedicate yourself to the work of creating peace in the world instead of war. Your anger and hate will not make you more safe.

  5. I think “Jill” is now a fembot and is now being “released” to plant the seed for the next terrorist bombing in the U.S.

  7. Why do you find it so amazing that a person would choose not to hate people that abducted her? Its like love and forgiveness are evil to you.

  8. Ms. Carroll, I note from the WAPO story, hastened to add she was treated “very well.” And that her captors never hit her, nor threatened to hit her.
    Oh dear. I hope she realizes that they could just as readily have killed her without hitting her first, without even threatening to hit her. And that to be held captive by anonymous automatic weapons-toting thugs, under any circumstances (who even, charmingly, dressed her in Muslim garb when it became necessary to tape her statements as a way of working the media), doesn’t exactly qualify as being treated “very well.”

  9. Maybe she’s just scared to death of retribution to her or to her family. I think more is going to come about this story.

  11. lasermike, you might in turn wish to dedicate yourself to a world where people of any kind, let alone from the rarefied profession of journalism, are free to walk the streets without fear of kidnapping. Or didn’t that one occur to you?
    And cut the crap lines like “love and forgiveness are evil to you.” Who writes your tired wheeze, Phil Donahue? This is Iraq we’re talking about here, not the Oprah show, where executing hostages has virtually been a team sport the lastfew years. As it happens, I spent 19 wonderful months in Viet Nam, a place about which I had nothing but visions of “love and forgiveness” before I landed there, but damn if those kindly folks known as the VC and NVA still didn’t spend much of my time in country trying to kill me. These experiences, and a genuine attempt to understand the parlous realities of life in Iraq, make me strongly suspect that love and forgiveness are very alien concepts indeed to Jill Carroll’s captors and their ilk.

  13. Usually captives begin after a while to identify with their captors, lasermike, rather than hate them. But it seems to me that hate, or at least anger, would be a more appropriate response to abduction.
    I suppose Jesus would have reacted with forgiveness, but I don’t hold my compatriots to that standard.

  14. PS: Were I held captive for almost 3 months by thugs who fundamentally wish to stamp out Western civilization, lasermike, no matter how “well” they’d treated me, love and forgiveness might not be high on my list of priorities once I was able to get free or be freed. But leading US forces back to the lair of such creeps, if at all possible, would be. Probably not to share group hugs with them, either.

  15. And I can see forgiveness is an alien concept here too.
    The price of peace is to sacrifice your own life. Jill Caroll knew that.

  16. I’d like to speculate on perhaps another possible reason for her lack of comments. She may have had some hand in her release by “promising” not to condemn her captors and my simply be thinking of future hostages.
    So, not knowing what she went through, I’d be careful to read much into her comments or lack thereof.
    Now, since we (and our military) have made no such promises we are free to eliminate these thugs wherever possible.

  17. walleroo, the two guys I knew who were POW’s in Nam (it should go without saying they weren’t “treated well,” but in the realm of love and forgiveness wherein lasermike dwells, who knows?) both told me they never once identified with their captors.
    Nor have bikers I’ve known who’ve done hard time. Those guys couldn’t wait to get out and work up some more mayhem, actually. So the “Stockholm syndrome” doesn’t necessarily fly in the real world.

  18. And its more than possible that what she say is actually true and she wasn’t coerced to say anything.

  19. It offends me that you pronounce forgiveness to be an alien concept, lasermike. You are being sanctimonious in the extreme. Just as Jesus would be, though Jesus would be walking the walk, not just hogging the blog (sorry, couldn’t think of anythign better). Jill Carroll wasn’t there on a humanitarian mission. She was there to report the news for the Western media. She wasn’t Jesus, and neither are you.
    Anyway, as much as I love the guy, Jesus would make a lousy secretary of defense.

  21. Yes, it is totally true that I have fallen short. But when you start taking a persons honest expression of love, forgiveness, and peace as something weird or dark you have to start asking yourself what is wrong with yourself.

  22. lasermike, wake up and smell the cordite and the paraffin residue. DO not offer up hollow platitudes. Journalists (including a most admirable Italian who defied his captors right up until the final volley) have been executed in Iraq. Yet none of these executions have at all advanced the cause of peace, now have they?
    Ms. Carroll, by contrast, was luckier. That is all there. Her release neither advances or delays “peace.”
    Walleroo, in the Garden of Gethsemane, so we’re told, Jesus healed the ear of Malchus, the high priests’ servant, whose ear Peter had sliced off. That makes Jesus a very fine medical corpsman indeed (he certainoly would have been a CO as well). Yet it does not necesssarily mean Peter was wrong to try to defend his Lord. Merely outnumbered. Surely, too, to thus try and protect the Prince of Peace might be viewed as the greatest service possible to “peace” in general?

  23. Didn’t the captives release several videos of journalist Carroll crying while asking the Iraqi government to free the female convicts it had detained? That was the fundamental request of the terrorists who killed peace activist Tom Fox as well.
    I recall one video with the local hospitality team pointing a rifle at Carroll’s head while she read a statement.
    I’m delighted that she’s been released, but I’d like to know more about the backstory before making any conclusions

  25. If I’m not mistaken, Rail Paul, and I could be, the female “convicts” (I’d prefer another word) were in fact released almost a month ago.
    Loved!!! the phrase “local hospitality team,” too.

  27. Imagine being chained to a plumbing fixture, having to pee so bad you can feel it up to your eyeballs, knowing that asking your ‘captor’ to relieve yourself might provoke him into a killing rage. Now think about forgiving that mother f’er. No way.

  28. Unbelievable. Cather and Lasermike are still here typing like a couple of wash women in a laundromat. In fact I see all the villige idiots are still one here cstarling, right of center, notteham, walleroo, left of center and John Farrele, aka iceman.
    You all must be confined to house arrest or something of that naturee. I can’t see why a bunch of old bald guys would care to sit here and talk about gossip all day when the whole world is out there waiting for you to join it. Go out and make some money for God’s sake alreay. Do something constructive with your lives.
    Is it essex county you guys are in or is it rahway?
    You two must be getting paid to do this shit!

  29. Will my faith give me the strength to pray for the depraved soul of Spankie(and all of the other names he uses)?

  31. Spankie: How do you know were not all hedge fund managers and/or trust fund babies with unlimited wealth which allows up to spend all our waking house perusing Baristanet?
    Ta-ta, oh , I see it’s time for my lunch at the Maidstone. Perhaps we can take in a game of tennis tomorrow? Tennis at ten-ish?

  32. Spankie,
    You must refer to these people as “trolls.” The think they are a “gang.” They think very highly of themselves. Remember, they all LOVE to post about ANYTHING.
    They are blowhards, one and all.

  33. If you’re gonna blow you might as well blow hard.
    I find most of the posts on Barista to be very entertaining. It sure beats reverse engineering data feeds.

  34. My dear Miss M,
    Such a day, today. First of all, my staff forgot to awake me for my workout session and then my personal trainer, Tiffany, called out and said she has morning sickness…just what I need.
    Then my gulfstream IV failed inspection at Teterboro and I had to be driven around in the Bentley. You gotta do what ya gotta do.
    My personal tennis coach, Brittney, was having her ‘friend’ and just yelled at me unfairly all throughout the lesson. All that’s left for me is to schedule a massage and at 5th Ave Spa and settle for a dinner with Rege and Joyce and Elaine’s.
    Can you spare some Grey Poupon?

  35. I agree with Spankie. I am sick and tired of reading all the posts from the gang of regulars. Their sniping at one another is constantly clogging up this site and boring the hell out of me. I’m sure I speak for a lot of Barista followers when I say that I have had enough of their input. They have just about succeeded in driving me away from this site which I used to enjoy thoroughly and looked forward to reading.

  36. Spankie’s complaints about people posting on a message board are akin to complaining about drops of water in a rainstorm. What do you think a message board is for, pal?
    I’m guessing Spankie, You Are Losers, rrrrr and all the other mensa members didn’t fare well in some past discussion under other names or, like O’Reilly, got picked on by smart kids when they were younger and now feel the need to take it out on the world.
    What’s the matter fellas, lose all the cash on your BoDog account betting the Knicks game last night? Is njguido.com down? If this is such a waste of time and we’re all losers for killing down time at work by talking about community issues or global affairs, then what are you doing here posting? Dinks.
    As for Carroll, people said the same thing about the pope when he forgave his attempted assassin. We live, by and large, in a world that embraces impunity and lacks empathy. Most people don’t have much sympathy for anything beyond their own skin or sphere. To take hostages in the first place, a captor likely has exhausted the options he or she sees available to them.
    Read Terry Anderson or Connor McPherson’s accounts of being held by Hezbollah. Read what the hostage takers tell them. They are violent people, to be sure, but a series of events has made them these violent people.
    The journalist’s role is to remain objective and hear both sides of the story. My guess is Carroll, as a journalist, did something most hostages wouldn’t do — she likely asked questions. Her captors didn’t seem dumb either… they were fully aware that they had taken a journalist and knew they could use her to get their story out there. To her credit, Carroll didn’t become their mouthpiece.
    Cathar, to comapre Carroll to a POW is misguided. The POWs you described, in the eyes of their captors, were enemy combatants. If they weren’t POWs, they’d likely be shooting at their captors or killing their captors’ comrades. People like Jill Carroll and Terry Anderson aren’t POWs, they’re civilian hostages, and as such it is in the captors’ interests to keep them as alive and well as possible. Otherwise, their bargaining chip is lost.

  38. “They have just about succeeded in driving me away from this site…”
    Hey, fellow trolls, we’re not trying hard enough. No slacking off now.

  41. notteham, to so casually dismiss the experiences of former POW’s is misguided. And if it’s in the interest of jihadist crazoes to keep journalistic prisoners alive as long as possible (it is not, what do jihadists care about Western journalism when their chosen mission is to stomp on Western civilization, especially the wussy side represented by such out of date organs as the CSM?), then you really should try telling them that. In person, even.
    Because the heartless rats have sure as hell killed enough captive reporters already. (Not to mention a few politicians in Holland, hundreds of Britons and Spaniards, etc.) Despite your assurances that they shouldn’t and won’t. So much for bargaining chips. They’d gladly kill you if you gave them half the chance. That’s what you don’t seem to get.

  42. Attention all Baristaville,
    I donated a pint of Troll blood today. Make sure you don’t need any A+ blood or you might turn into a conservative right-wing gun toting Dick Cheney hunting partner.

  44. I am pretty sure they hire Mazie to “sniff out” all the republican blood. Any that she doesn’t take home is then moved to a different shelf and only infused in patients with sufficiently stiff spinal columns.

  45. I’m not dismissing their experiences, I’m dismissing your ill-suited comparison. Civilian hostages are not prisoners of war. They are not treated the same way as enemy combatants and your failure to draw the distinction between civilians and military personnel in this argument detracts from it. Also, your “jihadists” do very much care about Western journalism… at least according to Donald Rumsfeld and Ann Coulter, who say Western Journalists aren’t reporting enough of the good things and are “giving comfort to the enemy.” How can they give comfort to people who want to destroy them. You can’t have it both ways, Cathar.
    Last I checked, Daniel Pearl was the last U.S. reporter held hostage and killed in the mideast, and not by Iraqis. I can’t “assure” anyone they shouldn’t kill hostages, it’s just good practice not to. As we saw with Pearl’s killers, it accomplished nothing.
    There have been a great number of journalists killedd during the Iraq war, but not so many as hostages. Most are dying in the field alongside the soldiers they cover. More than 100 journalists have died on the job in hotspots all over the world in the last year, all without the benefit of being able to defend themselves. Conflict has taken the lives of European, African, Asian, American and even Mideast journalists . An Al-Jazeera journalist was among the first killed in Iraq… by U.S. fire. A rescued Italian journalist’s escort was killed and she herself was injured when U.S. troops opened fire on her car at a checkpoint. They didn’t express anger or outrage at U.S. forces. They knew they had placed themselves in harm’s way and accepted the consequences of those actions. It’s not as if they were taken off Broadway in broad daylight. I’m reminded each day of the perils of being a journalist in the midst of conflict:
    https://www.ifj.org
    I’m sure many imbeds, including Carroll, have grown sympathetic toward the soldiers they cover as well. Even if the soldiers don’t return the favor:
    https://www.thenation.com/doc/20040112/rozen
    The fact is that bullets and bombs don’t discriminate and journalists, activists and contractors face the danger of being killed by either side of this conflict. Take, for example, the two journalists killed in 2003 when an American tank shelled the Palestine Hotel. It was accidental, but avoidable.
    But, you’ve done a good job of speaking to a lack of sympathy or empathy in our world today. Both are qualities that are necessary in journalists who seek both sides of the story — they need to be able to stand in the shoes of both sides they cover and let the voices of the people they cover, not their own judgements, tell the story.
    At any rate, I’m glad to see Jill Carroll alive and her humanity intact.

  46. “let the voices of the people they cover, not their own judgements, tell the story.”
    Sure would be nice if Good Morning America, The Today Show and the NY Times would follow the above sentiment. Instead of trying to create news in their own view. Just give me the news and let me decide my own opinion.
    It’s Miller Time.

  47. The last thing any of us want, Iceman, is to hear the unedited voices of the people, unfiltered by intelligence. Trust me.

  48. Why are you getting up that early to watch GMA and Today? Those shows are as much about journalism as the Bloomberg ticker is about entertainment. Turn it off and read a paper — or check out the BBC.

  49. I’m not talking about regular people who can’t name the 2 senators from our state. I want seasoned reporters who can cut through the chaff and give us the salient facts.

  51. Ok, Mr Marsupial, you win.
    Did you see Charlie Gibson interrogate John McCain on GMA the other day? He kept badgering McCain trying to tell him what was in his Immigration Bill was not what McCain said it was. It’s gonna be a long season for any Rep’s running for the Pres. The mainstream media won’t accept anything less than what fits their agenda.
    I’m going out for an adult beverage at the local tavern and argue bias in the media. Now pass the pint.

  52. notteham, you’re getting icky. And all “earnest” on me. As I wrote once before, this might work on some gamine you’re trying to impress, but not on somebody who’s been at least halfway round the block. And you’ve got this godawful lecturing tone.
    Jihadists don’t care a journalist’s ass about Western public opinion. They also don’t see that there’s any such thing as separation between church and state. Have you ever even read the Koran? Particularly the suras about the duties incumbent upon jihadists? These characters take this nonsense seriously. It’s duty, their killing. They don’t want to get along with anybody else. What part of the word “butchery” don’t you understand?
    As I recall it, too, that Italian reporter’s driver tried to run a check point. On my watch I’d have thus had the same reaction, one driven by the self-preservation reflex.
    Worst of all, I pick up from your prose that you somehow see yourself as kin to reporters in Iraq. Well, then go leaf through a book about war correspondents by Philip Knightley called “The First Casualty.” As you do, too, keep in mind that you’re a scribbler somewhere in suburbia.
    I especially found annoying your apparent despair that I have no “sympathy or empathy” for journalists (into which classification you include yourself). Kid, you have no idea whatsoever either of my own professional credentials or what I think on this issue. But as for Ms. Carroll’s “humanity” remaining intact, you release the average soul from 3 months of imprisonment by Islamic crazoes and the first thing they just might want to do is rip their captors’ gonads out and dance on their hearts. That’s my view of genuinely intact humanity.
    And where oh where do you get off straightfacedly chiding Iceman for watching morning TV and telling him he should read a newspaper or watch the BBC? You mean the BBC that now runs “PBUH” after every mention of Mohammed? That BBC? You mean those pages full of chic angst over foreign policy known as the New York Times? Who are you? Where are you, for that matter? I really do recommend you try a stint in the Army before you get too old to enlist, it will give you a widened perspective beyond any journalist’s about true life and death issues, even in basic if you don’t ship out to the Mideast. (You’ll also, I’m sure, find lots of fellow troopers who share your love of Kanye West.)
    But until you do, can it. Because you haven’t been and you sound like a humbug opining otherwise from a safe distance.

  53. To judge Jill Carroll’s statements is to play the role of a fool. Most captives upon release go through a debriefing by the military or State Department and are cautioned about what they should say lest it interfere with other negotiations. In a few decades when the documents from this period hopefully will be declassified, you may learn what really happened today.
    P.S. How many Trolls saw Condi Rice declare on Sunday that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Apparently the Bush administration doesn’t put as much credibility in Saddam’s former comrade Georges Sada’s claims as Mr. Hannity and his sheep do.

  54. Just remember everyone, unless you support the Bush Administration with all your heart and everlasting soul, you are aiding the terrorists and you hate America. What is more, you obviously don’t know as much as the denizens (Cathar, et al.) of this website who are infinitely better informed than you.
    I wonder if Cathar goes to church with Scalia?
    Oh, and Jill Carroll: screw her for not getting herself killed by the evil doers. Why is she trying to make the terrorists look good? It only demoralizes our tr– excuse me, our heroic troops. John Kerry must have put her up to it. She’s probably a Liberal, too.

  55. buycopy, I doubt very much that released journos who’ve been prisoners someplace hang their vebal fire upoon release pending vetting by the DOD. The simple truth today is that they think too much of themselves as a class. (There’s some of that in notteham’s post, too, the sense that he “knows” he’s privy to both feelings and information that we groundlings lack.) They become the story themselves, in their own minds, far too often. This works equally well whether we’re talking of Geraldo Rivera or a WAPO embed. Iceman alludes to this in his mention of Charles Gibson above. Somewhere along the way, too many reporters have convinced themselves they’re “the best and the brightest” (no matter that Halberstam himself has mainly written hack-like, wrongheaded books since those heady days). My money, by contrast, is on both your “average” Iraqi who just wants to get through life on a day-by-day basis with jihadists waving AK-47s in his face and the American soldier.
    So it’s not going to take years and years to figure this one out, really.

  57. All these posts & no one has even mentioned that the fellows who abducted Jill Carroll killed her translator during the abduction.
    Let’s take just a moment to remember Allan Anwiya, his life cut short at 29, before we return to gutting each other.

  58. You know what, for a guy who did one stint and out, you sure do pull that Army card a lot, old man.
    Your hatred of “Islamists” borders on fanatic. Here’s an idea… get up off your Lake Mowhawk barstool, pick up a gun and go over and fight. You talk a good game from your nest in suburbia, sir. I don’t join the army because I have ZERO desire to take life or have mine taken, which is obviously a standpoint YOU will never understand.
    I have read the Koran and, much like its troublesome cousin the Bible, it’s open to various interpretations, not just the one some radical or someone who wants to kill that radical ascribes to it.
    As for where I do my scribbling… they’re still finding remains from Sept. 11 about two blocks from me… you know, the area you probably got to see on television. I watch the BBC Web site because it doesn’t have any interest in America’s interests and it’s not spun by the American left or right, thus your little rant about the Times is irrelevant.
    I’d suggest you, sir, pick up a notebook and go into the field in nothing but a helmet and vest as many journalists do. I’d suggest you do so before you’re too old to hold a pen. I suggest you see, for yourself, how it’s a life and death issue on both sides and how a combatant’s worldview is skewed by the government that handed him or her their gun (“just following orders,” remember?).
    Until YOU do that, sir, you know nothing about journalists and what they do. Mch as you don’t care for my work with the ACLU or my work as a journalist, I don’t give a damn about your old war stories… IF you ever fought in one. Perhaps you would be the first to open fire on Italian escorts who were hauling ass away from armed captors, but it wouldn’t be out of self-preservation if that car wasn’t coming at you. They fired without knowing whether the occupants were armed, what they wanted and without bothering to check the ITALIAN TAGS on the cars.
    I think Jill Carroll, Terry Anderson and Connor McPherson have proven a lot about the “average soul.” They tell me that killing is nobody’s “duty” (neither “Jihadists” nor Marines) and that forgiveness, while the harder and less travelled road, is the righteous path.
    You want to spill blood so badly? Let the Armed Forces have you back, so that you can be a robot following orders and killing “Islamists.” However, after actually having friends and family serve over there and seeing some of them not come back, I can tell you that isn’t what it’s all about. I don’t know what army you were trained in, but it’s a relic.

  59. welcome back, guido santa, we’ve missed your passion. i love the free and open exchange of ideas and am glad your back.

  60. oh, yeah, notteham,
    no response to crank’s post:
    “All these posts & no one has even mentioned that the fellows who abducted Jill Carroll killed her translator during the abduction.
    Let’s take just a moment to remember Allan Anwiya, his life cut short at 29, before we return to gutting each other.”
    Did he commit suicide cause he felt guilty abou the US liberation?

  61. I followed crank’s advice to take a moment to remember the translator.
    I ran the photo of the translator in the paper the day it happened. It was one of the most disturbing images from the war I can remember. Like I said, these are violent people. I haven’t said anything to support what they’ve done.
    That’s kind of a flip comment in relation to the translator’s killing, but to that I would say… liberation? What liberation? The Iraqis are free from Saddam, but not from violence, fear, poverty or exploitation. The violence between the sunni and shia is evidence of that. If an Iraqi has breathed a breath of free air since the war began, it is because he or she has left Iraq.

  62. “If an Iraqi has breathed a breath of free air since the war began, it is because he or she has left Iraq.”
    You’re naive…there are many stories of Iraqi’s going to school and starting business’ etc yet the mainstream media doesn’t want those stories exposed. They might give the US people good news and that doesn’t suit the Libs agenda. The Dems only want to publish stories to make the US look bad to the world.
    Sure it’s time to leave, I agree but we are doing something for the people, it’s not all bad like Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric wish was happening.

  63. “forgiveness, while the harder and less travelled road, is the righteous path”
    Sorry, my soup came through my nose when I read that one…
    Between notteham and lasermike, it’s been one helluva day for Jesus. Hallelujah!

  66. “When can we expect a book deal for her story?”
    Pssh, forget her life story, I want to hear Cathar’s.

  68. How can I write this after a line from “The Jerk”?
    I hate to say this, but Iraqis were going to school and owned businesses before the U.S. arrived. Remember when the University was looted early in the war? That was an educational facility.
    There are eight provinces where the rule of law has ceased to exist, and where not even U.S. troops can maintain order. There are more provinces where order exists ONLY because U.S. troops are present, and even in these places there are pockets of resistance. It can be argued that peace has come to the Kurdish territories, but at what cost. Even Fox News acknowledges that Iraq remains in a state of extreme mayhem. If the mainstream media is covering Sunnis blowing up a Shiite mosque, it’s because it’s an indicator of just how fragile the coalition government is and how real the divisions between Sunnis and Shiites have ALWAYS been.
    You can keep turning the dial until you hear something you like, but even the rosiest picture of Iraq — written by the most right-wing of Republicans — is a fairly grim picture. The administration itself has stopped pushing the “good news” argument, perhaps because it’s been incapable of creating any “good news” of its own.
    Remember that air assault that was launched on the war’s third anniversary? It was strange to see that the insurgent killings actually remained fairly steady afterward.
    You can’t stop an insurgency through military force.

  69. “You can’t stop an insurgency through military force”
    Do u have any solutions? And Notteham, I’m not being contrary, but what is the point of your post? Is it that the Iraqi’s are no better since we freed them from Saddam or that they would be better under his autocratic rule where he used ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to quell dissent?

  70. My point is that the Iraqis are no better off than when Saddam was captured. While they may not have access to chemical weapons, the goals of the radical sects of Sunnis and Shiites are the same… drive the other side out by any means necessary.
    My solution is this… work with the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who actually want peace by 1) Helping them build a stable government, including coercion when they do things like, oh, quit organizational meetings after 30 minutes. However, fundemental differences between Sunni and Shia may prevent this from ever happening. If that is the case, serious consideration should be given to the Balkanization of Iraq. It’s a country of three waring people hemmed in by artificial borders imposed by colonists. Let the natual borders take shape — with the Kurds in the north, the Sunnis in their triangle and Shiites in the south. Don’t force them all to live together if it won’t work. 2) Restoring the judicial system. In Iraq right now, the only person on trial is Saddam Hussein. In the meantime, there are no shortage of war criminals and petty criminals who are making life there hellish. However, Sunnis and Shiites have very different ideas about who is and isn’t a war criminal (Saddam and Al Sadr, for instance). 3) Stabilizing the borders. The Syrian border is a joke and the Iranian border is being ignored… a bad thing considering that Shiite militants are making their way in through Iran. Again, a touchy subject because of things like pilgrimages, but an Iraqi force at the border would help.
    I don’t think Iraq as we have known it can continue to exist. But just as Prussia, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia gave way, so to may Iraq. The administration seems to view such an idea as a failure, but it may be the only way to achieve workable peace in the region.

  71. Thank god Jesus is not on the scene anymore. Imagine the grief that dude would be catching for that “forgive them for they know not what they are doing” mumbo jumbo. Talk about sympathizers. (Probably a Liberal, too.) I guess he should have yelled “get me off this cross and let’s kill those sons of bitches now!”

  72. I saw a bumper sticker once that read, “Jesus, Please Save Me from Some of Your Followers.” Very fitting in this case.

  75. The Balkanization of Iraq–has a ring to it. How, though, would you prevent Turkey from annexing the Kurds and Iran, the Shiite province? And what about all those Sunnis and Shiites all mixed together in the heartland–would you force them to move to different sides of a line, like choosing up basketball teams? Sounds like a job for American troops… I guess we’d be around for a good long while under your plan, too.

  76. “What kid of soup are you snorting walleroo?”
    Vegetarian chile–and those kidney beans are big!

  77. notteham, I have decided you’re an idiot. A young one, hovering near 30, likely, so therefore saveable. But currently and prominently an idiot. A particularly petulant one, at that.
    As it happens too, kid, I know a bit about journalism. You in your beardless sagacity of course assume that I wouldn’t and couldn’t, but as it turns out I do. (It also consists of more than writing music reviews, which I somehow sense is your specialty.)
    You’re an angry child. I recognize some of that because I used to be that way myself. Albeit a long, long time ago. Then a few people, both literally and figuratively, kicked me in the teeth and I began to grow up. It helped.
    But I never, unlike yourself, ascribed virtue to myself because of my claimed heightened sensitivity or even, boo hoo, “work” for the ACLU (don’t try impressing me with that one, kid, it’s never worked and it never will). And your view of me as sitting on a barstool at Lake Mohawk rumbling through pints is way off the mark. Try not to call me a “robot, “either, because, again, you presumptuous whelp, you clearly know nothing about me.
    Yet I will say this as a reminder of how unfinished you are: I have seen much younger men and of much more promise than you indicate die way too young. That alone makes me wearier than you can ever be in a moral sense.
    There’s no wisdom in you, no willingness to admit that. Ten years from now, if you can find it, you’ll dig up your post above that gives your opinion as to how Iraq can be resolved and you’ll say to yourself, abashedly, how could I have taken myself this seriously? And why would anyone else in the world give a rat’s behind about my “solution” for US policy in the Mideast? You’re impetuous, and you sputter in outrage. But you’ve got no cool and you’re nowhere near as smart as you imagine, and you’re not at all a grown-up.
    So come back in a few years with some some gravitas and maybe we can have a dialogue. But not here again and not now, because you don’t get it. You’re too sure you’re right, you’re too impressed with your own youth. Which is way overrated.
    But that, too, is something you may never get. You’re hardly a “worthy opponent” and your pallid stabs at making personal attacks at me are just third-rate. So now we shall do everyone else who reads this site a favor and not bother to further respond to each other. You’ve got no class, notteham, and it’s going to take a lot of work on yourself to get it. Go now and try to grow up.

  78. Wow, I guess Notteham has struck a nerve! It’s especially surprising since having nerves would mean cathar is a living thing. Don’t stop now, troll on!

  79. A bunch of posters back in the middle of this thread were wondering if you guys were finished. One of them said coming to this site was something he/she used to enjoy. I’ve only been visiting for a few weeks, and I’m starting to feel the same way. I mean, how does the Jill Carroll story devolve into name calling? And God forbid anyone disagree with the Baristaville Mafia. I followed the thread where walleroo eviscerated a middle schooler for not using Spellcheck.
    Some of you guys are twisted, some are just stirring the pot, others think they are funny, but mostly you are just the cat’s meow! NOT
    I get the fact that there is a crew that moves from thread to thread, altering and shaping the discussions as they see fit. What about the rest of us?

  81. So when you guys get together in the real world do you all talk to each other like you do on baristanet? And do the topics stay here or do they make it to your conversations when you’re face to face?

  83. I am currently consulting in the DC area and on the block I work on in Arlington there is an area called Freedom Park that has a memorial to journalists killed as a result of their careers. It’s incredible how many journalists and photographers have given their lives over the years to report the news to us. Some of them have died while reporting every day news items but the majority were killed reporting on war and organized crime. The list of those killed can be found at https://www.newseum.org/scripts/journalist/main.htm.
    If you happen to be visiting DC, take a trip across the Key Bridge to visit this memorial. Not as moving as the Vietnam Memorial, but close.

  84. plenty of monuments for those who get killed in the “line of duty”–just hate to think that some die because of a shill- which is my gut feeling about Carroll-but then it is My gut on this one-I’d like to be proved wrong.

  85. I don’t believe Carroll was kidnapped. Since when do terrorists reset deadlines like that? Why would they waste time and resources on a woman when women have no value in their society? And how convenient that she couldn’t identify where she was held, or by whom. And why was she wearing that lovely get-up? And wasn’t it lucky that she was set free right downtown? I don’t buy her crap for a minute–watch and see–she’s a phony. Did she run out of money and so decided it was time to give up the ruse? This stinks to high heaven.

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