Smearing of Jill Carroll shameful

When Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was freed from captivity in Iraq, and returned home to the States, she faced a number of attacks from right-wing pundits and bloggers. They took it upon themselves to presume that Carroll was some kind of traitor, or at the very least couldn't be trusted.

Rory O'Connor sums up this pitiful episode over on Alternet.

"It's a disturbing sign of our partisan-crazed media ecology that Carroll came under sustained assault from pro-war right-wing bloggers and talk radio hosts who attacked her for stating -- while under obvious duress -- that she had not been threatened during her confinement, as well as for wearing Muslim dress and sympathizing with her captors.

Anyone with a brain -- or even a heart -- would know, as Carroll pointed out once she was free, that "fearing retribution from my captors," she could not speak freely, that "out of fear, I said I had not been threatened," when in fact, she "was threatened many times."

What was Carroll's crime? Merely this: She is a suspected member of "the liberal media" that hard-up, hard-core supporters of this illegal, unconstitutional and unwinnable war -- from the White House down -- claim is allying itself with the insurgents resisting America's occupation of Iraq."