Yes, Debbie’s still onstage. And she’s still giving tours of her complete asshole.

As yet, Jill Carroll has yet to speak for herself. Everything Debbie indicts her for is who she worked for and who tried to get her free. The fact that Jill enjoyed things about Arabs and their culture doesn’t preclude her liking other peoples and cultures too. Including Israel and America.

The marines who’ve worked with her have called her a consummate professional, as fair as any journalist they’ve worked with. If she turns out to have an opinion against the war or against Bush, that places her squarely with the majority in America, not on the fringe, as ultra-extreme Debbie tries to paint her. But so far, Ms. Carroll hasn’t made her opinion known.

Her professionalism and objectivity were unparalleled within the media community,” Capt. Patrick Kerr, a Marine public affairs officer who got to know Carroll last December, when she spent a month with a Marine unit in Western Iraq, said in an e-mail.

“I saw her in Husaybah, on the Syrian border, in early December shortly before I returned to the States. Aside from being very personable and down to earth, what really struck me was Jill’s bravery. She seemed to fit right in with the marines and Iraqi security forces,” he wrote in January.

The Monitor’s editor, Richard Bergenheim, says that “none of us - except perhaps her personal friends and family - know what Jill’s views are about the war in Iraq. But we do know that they did not color her reporting for the Monitor. She covered a wide spectrum of people in Iraq and that is part of what made her reporting valuable.”

And I don’t think she needs to provide her views on the war. Why? To satisfy her detractors? To ressure some supporters? Her job is to be a reporter, presenting a view as objective as she can. All evidence indicates she’s done so, well enough that she’s trusted on all sides, the mark of a skilled interviewer. So why get tangled in political gamesmanship? Because she had the misfortune of being kidnapped? I think she’s endured more than enough. And to those who want to attack her still, well, there’s miserable curs in every litter of neotyrants. I hope she ignores their mewlings.

And if Debbie’s making the case for guilt by association, I better show you the old membership in the Carlyle Group (Bush & the Bin Ladens, anyone?), the Texas oil execs with the Taliban, and that photo of Donny Rumsfeld shaking Saddam’s hand. Quid pro quo, heavy emphasis on the ‘pro’.

Debbie Sprinkles is so certain she’s captured a traitor that she’s blind to the fact that the only visible hatefulness there’s evidence of at her site comes oozing through her own words, not Jill’s.

On the other hand, great credit is earned by the more than a few conservative bloggers displaying balance and compassion, like this and this. Even Senator McCain, who’s come down on both sides of almost every issue, has rallied to Jill’s defense.

Next post: Debbie will go after Iraqi war orphans for choosing the wrong parents.