Today, Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll released after three months of being held in captivity in Iraq by kidnappers. The National Review’s John Podhoretz responded by attacking her mental state:
It’s wonderful that she’s free, but after watching someone who was a hostage for three months say on television she was well-treated because she wasn’t beaten or killed — while being dressed in the garb of a modest Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is — I expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days.
This is a day that we should celebrate Jill Carroll’s courage. She put herself in danger to try to give the world a more accurate picture of Iraq. It is totally inappropriate to assume that her description of how she was treated is motivated by anything other than a desire to tell the truth.
Podhoretz owes Jill Carroll an apology.
UPDATE: Imus Executive Producer: Carroll is “The Kind of Woman Who Would Wear One of Those Suicide Vests, Sneak Into the Green Zone”
UPDATE II: Andrew Sullivan agrees JPod was out of line.
UPDATE III: Right-wing author and blogger Orrin Judd says Carroll’s comments prove “she was a willing participant” in her own kidnapping.
UPDATE IV: Powerline’s John Hinderaker joins in: “…I want to register a small protest against her statement, widely quoted in the press, that she was ‘well treated’ by her captors. This is a sentiment that one often hears from people who have been released by kidnappers; one gets the sense that the victims are grateful–understandably, perhaps–to the terrorists for letting them go.”
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