Hearts and Minds
The American occupation government in Iraq is gradually becoming aware of how badly we are hated by the people whose country we rule. Not surprisingly, one of the grievances the Iraqis have is the large number of Iraqis being held prisoner, with neither POW status nor civilian criminal charges. NPR reports that even the U.S. knows these prisoners are innocent. So what could be better for public relations than a large-scale prisoner release?
In this case, one might ask what could be worse. Relatives were given no information by the occupation government, so they waited outside the prison hoping their family members would be among the 100 people that L. Paul Bremer promised to release. The prisoners weren’t released at the prison, though, they were driven away from it, so the families just had to follow the caravan. Finally the prisoners—60, not 100—were simply put off the trucks in the middle of a major highway. Now the Iraqis, whose loved ones are mostly still imprisoned, are even more ungrateful than they were before.