Pray For Jill Carroll's Release

Jill Carroll, one of the finest freelance journalists working in Iraq, was recently kidnapped in Baghdad. Her interpreter was found murdered. The Committee To Protect Journalists is appealing for her release. The Christian Science Monitor, for which Carroll has been writing regularly since February of last year, provides more details on the abuction.

Much of Carroll's reporting in Iraq dealt with the deteriorating security situation of which she is now sadly a victim. In March of last year she wrote: "Two years after U.S. forces rolled into Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein . . . an aggressive insurgency has stymied crucial tasks of rebuilding and providing security, disillusioning ordinary Iraqis who thought the U.S. presence would bring rapid change."

In an April essay it is clear that she was aware of the dangers faced by Westerners in Iraq: "Another measure of the strength of the insurgency is how safe is it to be a Westerner on the street. Foreign women try to disguise themselves in Muslim head scarves, and foreign men grow beards. Walking the street isn't safe unless one blends in completely and foreigners cannot travel outside of Baghdad."

In her written tribute to Marla Ruzicka, the humanitarian slain in Iraq, Jill Carroll revealed her sympathy for the Iraqis in saying of Ruzicka that: "She would point out, this happens to Iraqis every day and no one notices or even cares. There are no newspaper articles or investigations into what happens to them."