Charlotte Dennett, freelance journalist and former reporter for the Beirut Daily Star, reports this story in the current March issue of Vermont Woman .
The story that most of the mainstream press has not told the American people about Jill Carroll's kidnapping has been told by one "lonely Associated Press writer by the name of Charles Hanley..."
Television networks, for instance, have pounded us with stories about the desperate plight of Jill Carroll, and the pleas of her family and friends, as well as stories about her natural affinity for the Iraqi people and her sympathy for their situation. They have also told the American people about the kidnappers demands: release of all women prisoners in Iraq.
What the networks and most of the mainstream press have not reported is that the United States military has taken captive two wives of suspected insurgents as "bait to get the insurgents to turn themselves in."
This puts an entirely different light on the kidnapping of Jill Carroll, doesn't it? There is greater context to the story than simply a journalist kidnapped.
As Dennett reports, Iraq has become an awful killing ground for journalists and Jill Carroll may become yet another fatality in the long list. But the least our television and other mainstream news outlets can do is give us some greater understanding of why Jill Carroll, in particicular, may have been taken. Knowing about the Iraqi wives of suspected insurgents being held by the American government as bait is important information that Americans ought to know about.
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