Failing Here, Failing There

You probably know that America has the largest per capita prison population of any civilized country anywhere. You also probably have heard one of the tragedies of incarcerating all these people is that if they weren't hardened criminals when they went in then they are likely to be when they are released. Prisons in America are a very effective training ground for new criminals. Apparently, the same thing is happening in Iraq:

Iraqi officials also struggle with a crowded system where prisoners can languish as long as two years before getting a trial. But they say the Americans have allowed militants to flourish in their facilities.

"It looks like a terrorist academy now," said Saad Sultan, the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry's liaison to U.S. and Iraqi prisons. "There's a huge number of these students. They study how they can kill in their camps. And we protect them, feed them, give them medical care.

"The Americans have no solution to this problem," he said. "This has been going on for a year or two, we have been telling them."

This is just another example why we are better off leaving Iraq immediately and another example of adding to the problems that the people of Iraq are facing that didn't exist before we got there. The longer we stay the worse it is going to be.