Torturing Jill Carroll

Why would pro-war right-wingers attack journalist Jill Carroll after 82 days as a hostage in Iraq?

You're abducted at gunpoint from a Baghdad street your friend and translator is killed before your eyes you're held hostage in isolation for 82 days in rooms where you can't even see outside and threatened with death. Finally, you're forced to make a propaganda video, saying things you don't believe in a desperate attempt to save your life.

And then, miraculously, it works you're finally released, reunited with your loved ones, and finally feel like you're "alive again "

"To be able to step outside anytime, to feel the sun directly on your face, to see the whole sky." As Carroll told reporters waiting for her plane to touch down at Boston's Logan Airport, "These are luxuries that we just don't appreciate every day."

A happy ending, no? A ray of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape of war, terror and torture, right? Cause to celebrate and rejoice, one would think? Instead, inexplicably, despicably, Jill Carroll came under vicious attack all over again -- this time by her own countrymen and peers, fellow members of the media.

Rory O'Connor examines this bizarre turn of events on AlterNet.