Kidnapping is the biggest nightmare of every Western journalist in Iraq but both foreign and Iraqi reporters face many other obstacles that obscure the U.S. public's understanding of the war.
Jill Carroll, an American freelance journalist missing in Iraq, was the 36th reporter to be kidnapped since April 2004, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Six of them have been killed.
"This has been our No. 1 threat and our worst nightmare for almost two years," Jackie Spinner, a Washington Post reporter who escaped a kidnap bid outside Abu Ghraib prison in June 2004, told Reuters.
"They grabbed me as I was walking out," she said. "I was wearing a scarf and an abaya. One man grabbed my wrist and another grabbed my waist and they started dragging me off."
Fortunately, U.S. Marines noticed and came to the rescue.
She recounts the incident in her book "Tell Them I Didn't Cry," due out on Feb 1. The book describes Spinner's experience reporting, including the 2004 siege of Falluja. But much of it is about her Iraqi colleagues, from drivers to cooks, guards and translators, and about how much she depended on them.
