Editorial: Some good news from Iraq

Friday, March 31, 2006 | 7:09 a.m.

American journalist Jill Carroll reappeared in Baghdad on Thursday as suddenly and unexpectedly as she vanished when Iraqi insurgents kidnapped her Jan. 7.

Carroll, a freelance writer for the Christian Science Monitor, and her translator were abducted as they traveled to an interview with a Sunni Arab official. The kidnappers immediately killed the translator, then held Carroll captive for three months. They demanded that all female detainees in Iraq be released by Feb. 26 or Carroll would be killed.

That date came and went with no word of Carroll's welfare. But sometime early Thursday, Carroll's kidnappers released her on a Baghdad street near the Iraqi Islamic Party's offices, where workers notified American officials.

And the thousands of relatives, friends, colleagues and strangers, who had prayed for Carroll's release, rejoiced.

Carroll, who spoke briefly on Baghdad television shortly after her release, said she "was treated well" by her captors. But other journalists covering the three-year-old Iraqi war haven't been as fortunate. As President Bush's approval ratings plummet - largely because of his handling of the war - the president and his supporters have launched a verbal offensive on the journalists who are covering the Iraq conflict.

Journalists have been accused of misleading the American public by failing to report the "good news" coming out of Iraq. They have been called cowards who merely report whatever hearsay they pick up in the lobbies of their hotels.

But the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international press freedom organization, reports that 67 journalists have been killed trying to do their jobs in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. The group also reports that of the 39 journalists who have been abducted, six were murdered and 31 were released. Two remain missing.

One of the 10 journalists to die in Iraq so far this year includes Atwar Bahjat, who was reporting from her hometown of Samarra on Feb. 23 when insurgents abducted her and two television crewmen. Their bullet-ridden bodies were found the next day.

Christian Science Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim said that through such people as Carroll, we "will know something of the courage it takes to find the truth in a place like Iraq." Thankfully, this young woman has lived to tell us about it.