Hypocrisy, exhibit # 1256899912A

So it turns out the U.S. military has been holding AP photographer Bilal Hussein without charge for the past five months.

How in the world are we to expect Iraqis to trust the "security" that we are aiming to provide, or their own legal system if we sweep up thousands of Iraqi citizens and hold them without charge outside of the legal system that we expect every Iraqi citizen to respect? I understand that there are, and always will be, security threats, but arresting and holding people without charge is not a good way to win the hearts and minds of anyone.

We are sending Iraqis and the world a horrible message. We have (post-hoc) justified this awful war by claiming that we are going to stabilize Iraq and bless it with democratic institutions and the rule of law. Yet, we ignore those same principles in our own actions. We are, in essence, saying that the rule of law and due process is good policy for YOU, but as long as we're in your country, they don't apply to US. Acting above the system of law that we ourselves have put into place is not only incredibly patronizing (and Iraqis, having lived under colonial rule before, are no strangers to despising a two-tiered system), but it also demonstrates that the system's creators do not truly believe in their own creation. This is like the principal of a public school sending his kids to boarding school.

I have no doubt that some of the people swept up in these things might have ties to terrorist organizations. But if they do, the government (as in the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government)should be forced to put forth that evidence. Keeping all of this "confidential" does nothing but render any sense of justice a farce. If you want to win the hearts and minds of the people, put those who can be proven guilty on trial, and show the Iraqi people and the world the evidence against them. Acting just will win the war on terror, not doing our best imitation of the regime we claim to have justifiably replaced.