I’m sure everyone recalls the old NY Times story expressing astonishment and chagrin that, even as the crime rate was going down, prison populations were — for some strange reason — rising.

We have something like that today from the soi-disant “human rights” community. According to the Washington Post: “[H]uman rights organizations have concerns about a 50 percent increase in detainees because it is 50 percent more people at risk of having been arbitrarily detained or, worse, of being handed over to Iraqi officers who might subject them to torture.”

Yeah, I’m sure Gen. Petraeus is doing just that — he’s probably “profiling” too, don’t you think? He’s probably looking for people of Middle Eastern appearance to arrest. All that would explain how he and his troops have managed to work hand-in-glove with traditional tribal leaders and beat back al Qaeda in Iraq (which, as James Taranto likes to point out, has nothing to do with al Qaeda , an organization that has no interest at all in Iraq).