Thought for the day: If freeing all prisoners in Iraqi prisons (except for the murders; they need permission from their victims' families) is Saddam Hussein's way of saying 'thank you' to the Iraqi people who gave him a '100% vote of confidence' last week, then what does that say about the Iraqi people's own impression of their legal system?

If freeing convicted criminals is seen as a good thing, even a reward, by free Iraqi citizens, doesn't that imply that those same free citizens must have viewed those imprisonments unjust in the first place?

The difference in how the Iraqi people react to their prisons being emptied and how US citizens would feel if our prisons were emptied demonstrates a key difference between how they view their government and how we view ours. We actually think our government is doing a good job by putting criminals away, and would be horrified if they were all released.

Okay, I confess: I'm baiting some of you a little bit. It's absolutely true that a lot of Americans think that a lot of people are in jail who shouldn't be, some for marijuana drug possession, others for prostitution, others for whatever your own pet injustice is. But this only furthers my point: If you think that marijuana users should be set free, then you probably also feel that the government was wrong to put them there in the first place.

So if you feel that all prisoners should be set free, then it follows that you'd think that the government was wrong to imprison all of them in the first place. (Except for the murderers. Apparently that's the only crime Iraqi people feel is deserving of imprisonment.)

In one act of 'belevolence to the Iraqi people,' Saddam has at once confirmed the injustice of his own regime.

And another thought: What aboue people committing crimes tomorrow? Do they get caught, tried, and put into the newly emptied prisons? Or is crime no longer a crime?