Marines Arrest 4 In Carroll Kidnapping

(CBS/AP)  U.S. Marines who arrested a man accused in the kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll said she was held in a home within sight of a sprawling U.S. military base in western Iraq.

Marines said a May 19 operation about 2 miles outside the Taqqadum logistics hub netted the first of four Iraqis accused of kidnapping Carroll. U.S. officials believe she was held in the suspects's residence and other homes.

Carroll, a freelance journalist for the Christian Science Monitor, was released March 30 in Baghdad after 82 days in captivity.

The U.S. military said Wednesday four Iraqi men had been arrested in the kidnapping but had not decided what legal action to take against them. Her kidnappers, a previously unknown group that called themselves the Revenge Brigade, had threatened to kill Carroll if all female detainees in Iraq were not freed.

U.S. officials did release some women detainees before her release but said the decision was unrelated to the demands.

After the breakthrough raid, U.S. forces captured three more suspects and freed two kidnapped Iraqis in hideouts where Carroll was thought to have been held. One of the homes was booby trapped and full of explosives.

Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment said independent tips led them to a cluster of homes near an abandoned train station just outside the Taqqadum base about 50 miles west of Baghdad. A one-story home in a relatively peaceful neighborhood that Marines often drove by matched their intelligence reports.

"Where it's at, there's a mosque, a school. It blends into the neighborhood. It's like any other house," said 1st. Sgt. Chris Reed, 32, of Kirkland, Wash., who helped arrest the first suspect.

In other developments from Iraq:

Three U.S. soldiers were killed Wednesday in Iraq's restive Anbar province, north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The soldiers assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division "died from enemy action," the statement said. It gave no other details.

A U.S. Army helicopter crashed in Iraq's western Anbar province, leaving two crew members missing and four injured, the U.S. military said Wednesday, as Iraqi and U.S. reinforcements move into the capital in a bid to stem sectarian violence that threatens civil war. The four injured were in stable condition.

The ongoing violence in Baghdad has prompted U.S. commanders to reinforce troop strength in the city. Over the past weeks, a force expected to number nearly 12,000 has been assembling here to try to take the streets back from Sunni and Shiite extremists. A U.S. statement Tuesday said about 6,000 additional Iraqi troops were being sent to the Baghdad area, along with 3,500 soldiers of 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

On Tuesday, in a hearing for U.S. soldiers accused of raping and murdering an Iraqi girl and killing her parents and 5-year-old sister, testimony painted a picture of a demoralized unit, drained emotionally after the deaths of comrades. On Monday, prosecutors said GIs drank whiskey and hit golf balls before murdering the girl.

Gunmen on two motorcycles assassinated Col. Qassim Abdel-Qadir, administrative head of an Iraqi army division in the southern city of Basra, said a police official who did not want to be named for security reasons.

Gunmen opened fire Wednesday on a group of men selling black market gasoline in western Baghdad, killing three of them and wounding one, police said.

About 1,500 violent deaths were reported in the Baghdad area last month, deputy Health Minister Dr. Sabah al-Husseini said Wednesday, providing figures that showed a steady increase in killings since the beginning of the year. Those figures did not include members of the U.S.-led coalition.

Romanian President Traian Basescu arrived in Baghdad to meet Iraqi and U.S. officials and visit some of the country's 890 troops stationed there. Basescu was received by President Jalal Talabani and will meet other key U.S. and Iraqi officials.

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[soochow35]

I am extremely pesimistic about the situation in Iraq. We were wrong to go in, and now that we're there, we've no idea how to get out without tremendous loss of life.
There must be a dramatic change in Washington in order to bring this country back to where it should be -- as the competent, trustworthy leader of the Free World!