Marine honored for tracking Jill Caroll's abducters (Jacob Cusack)

Jill Carroll

GRAND RAPIDS -- For a man some might call a hero, Marine 1st Lt. Jacob Cusack is remarkably frank about the fog of war.

Cusack, credited with a key role in the arrest of the alleged kidnappers of American journalist Jill Carroll, recalled his first significant action in Iraq.

A roadside bomb exploded nearby, he recalled, and he attempted the kind of roll he had often seen in movies. He stumbled, half-tripping on the strap of his weapon.

"That was hideous," he remembered thinking. "Did anybody see that?"

Cusack, 24, spoke at a luncheon in his honor Thursday at Cornerstone University, recounting some of the details of the operation that led to the home where Carroll was allegedly held.

Carroll, a Christian Science Monitor reporter, was kidnapped in Baghdad in January and held captive west of Fallujah before her release 82 days later.

Cusack pieced together scraps of intelligence that led him to believe he had identified the house where she was held. On a raid last spring, he and other Marines entered that house, where he found $3,600 in sequential U.S. bills, a scrap of paper with Carroll's name on it and a secret door above the shower. "Not too many Iraqis have a trap door above the shower," he said.

The raid led to the arrest of four suspects, including a member of the Mujahadeen Shura Council, according to Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, who announced the arrests last month. Though military officials credited Cusack for his role in those arrests, Cusack said they "could have attached a dozen other names" to the operation.

In his eight months in Iraq, Cusack said he learned that the reality of war has little to do with the Hollywood version.

Movies teach us to expect evil to look evil, he said. The insurgents don't always fit the cliche. "They are often ordinary people...who come to do these horrible things."

He recalled the capture of an insurgent known as "Amed the Butcher" for his acts of brutality. He came upon this man on a raid on his house where he wondered: "Who is this overweight, slightly balding middle-aged man with a pregnant wife and a good-looking family?"

Cusack is a graduate of North Hills Classical Academy in Grand Rapids. He entered the Marines in 2003 after graduating from the University of Notre Dame on an ROTC scholarship.

In addition to intelligence work, Cusack also led an 18-member sniper platoon during his tour of Iraq. Although being a crack shot is helpful, Cusack said he looks for another quality in a sniper: a strong moral compass.

"If you do not have that, you will lose it very quickly over there."

Read the rest at the Grand Rapids Press