speakingcorpse writes:

None of this article makes sense unless you remember that today the media were invited to the prison for a tour. The prison population had to be drastically reduced before the tour. So half of the prisoners were simply removed. They were removed by being loaded onto buses and being driven to an abandoned quarry four hours from the prison. The buses were followed by the cars of the prisoners' family members, who picked them up, in some cases. Some of the prisoners dropped off at the quarry had nowhere to go, so they asked for rides back to Baghdad. The media tour made it necessary to get rid of a lot of prisoners as quickly as possible, and this was how it was done. Why was it so important to get rid of the prisoners? And why take them so far away? Read the account of the media tour and you will see that even the prisoners that were there caused serious "public relations" inconveniences. It was essential for the CPA planners to get the prisoners as far away as possible from the reporters. They had to be released, or the prison would be revealed to have been an overcrowded hell-hole. But if they had been outside of the prison and nearby, they would doubtless have accosted the reporters (as did the prisoners who remained incarcerated, from a distance). And unlike those who remained incarcerated, the newly freed ones would have been able to talk in detail to the reporters, who would have broadcast their stories to the world. So they were removed to the quarry.

Now: what does it say that half of the prison population could be summarily released, on a day's notice? It says that they didn't belong there in the first place. And that the leaders of our brave men and women knew it.