The increase is also due to the fact that many of the prisoners are among those who were released by Saddam Hussein in the days before the US invasion and are only now getting back into the prison system. These are not folks who are wrongly imprisoned, but those who raped, killed, kidnapped, and caused mayhem previously. Yet, MSNBC takes an ominious tone with the fact that the prisons are growing - which means a corollary is taking place - there are fewer criminals walking the streets.
Five months ago, the military said it was holding about 4,300 prisoners in Iraq. The growth in the prison population has come amid a lingering insurgency in Iraq and despite the formal transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government last June.
The number of U.S.-held prisoners in Iraq declined last summer after international outrage over abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Revelations of abuse have continued since then; on Friday, the Army released documents detailing a half-dozen prison abuse investigations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Abu Ghraib has nothing to do with a growing prison population. The mention of Abu Ghraib is a tangential one at best. The fact is that better policing of Iraq has netted more criminals, including those released by Saddam. The same thing happens in the NYT, when the paper claims that NY prison ranks are swelling while crime is decreasing. The fact is that the two statistics are related. If more criminals are in prison, there are fewer criminals on the streets to commit crime. So, the streets are safer - and Iraqis are seeing that as well.
Always looking for dark clouds instead of the silver linings.
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