I'm not always a fan of Bill Safire's, but I find little in this column with which to disagree.

But won't the Iraqi people be driven crazy by pictures from Abu Ghraib prison and embrace the pro-Saddam terrorists? My Kurdish friends say that's nonsense. They remember the 5,000 innocents Saddam gassed to death in Halabja — nor have the Shiites forgotten his mass graves. Many Iraqis may be resentful of the current American protection, but most are not sore enough to wish us gone yet, or to submit again to Sunni rule.

Kurds and Iraqis are different people. Saddam gassed the Kurds, a despicable atrocity, but the Kurds were never "his" people. Not his tribe.

Also, ask the Turks about the Kurds.

That said, if any people on Earth deserves their own independent nation, its the Kurds. I read somewhere they are the world's largest ethnic group without a home nation. But that is impossible because it runs contrary to the Bush agenda.

In an ideal world (that does not exist) I would favor creation of an independent Kurdistan to include parts of Turkey and Iran and Kirkuk.

With regards to the Alleged abuse of prisoners...

I have a solution, Quick, Easy, and restores Iraqi Autonomy....

Turn the prisoners over to the everyday Iraqi citizen... I can virtually gaurentee that the prisoner problem will be reduced to the fugitives trying, begging, to get back into the relative safety of that prison.

Justice handed out by a formerly oppressed people does seem to be particularly quick and brutal, but perhaps this is whats called for in their culture for things to sink in....

Who was it that said, "Kill them all and let God sort them out.", or was that a saturday night live skit?

Danford is right, but there are some issues that need to be aired. First is the fact that there are two types of prisoners, regular criminals and opposing forces.

Letting the Iraqi's take responsibility for regular criminals would be a good start.

The others however may require interrogation which, regardless of the morons that caused the current problem, is still something we need to address.

How do the Geneva conventions reflect on what constitutes proper interrogation I wonder?

I think Iraqi civil police do control for the most part civil jails. And I believe the convention really only covers uniformed troops not terrorist. Between 1945 and 1947 Allied troops had to deal with bitter enders of Adolfs who terrorized Germans citzens. The press was not allowed to write anything about it as not to give them PR and when caught they were blindfolded and shot on the spot. The Brits also had a special hit team assigned to hunt down Nazi that had committed fowl things against british POWs. They even sprung a Nazi out of an American POW camp dressed as American officers, drove him down the road and offed him in the woods. Apparently he had shot some brit POWs in the same manner.

A quote from a Kurd when shown the pictures "why didn't you just shoot the baathist dog?"