The Los Angeles Times ran a story yesterday in which it was revealed that 70-90% of the prisoners in Iraq were arrested by mistake. According to the article, “Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year ‘had been arrested by mistake,’ according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year.”

The story then goes on to detail some of the abuses the Iraqi prisoners have suffered while in custody. The truly amazing part, though, is that up to a staggering 90% of the prisoners aren’t insurgents, aren’t terrorists, aren’t suspected terrorists–they’re just people the military arrested “by mistake.” Ninety percent is quite a mistake. You couldn’t make that up if you tried. Scientists and statisticians would give anything to make 90%. Ninety percent would be like if you and nine of your closest buddies were going out for the night, and nine of you were arrested by the police, hooded, and had electrodes strapped to your genitals. I have no other way of conveying to you just how impressive 90% is.

But, as “President” Bush stammered in his April 13 press conference, he doesn’t make mistakes. Said Mr. Bush, “I hope I — I don’t want to sound like I’ve made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t — you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.” So the question is, if 90% of the prisoners detained in Iraq isn’t a big enough mistake for Bush to remember, how many more people need to be mistakenly arrested for it to stand out in his memory?

Of course, this latest revelation certainly takes a lot of steam out of the typical conservative response of, “They deserve it because they’re terrorists,” or, “We have to be hard on terrorists because there’s no other way of dealing with them.” Now it appears that most of them aren’t terrorists. They’re just normal people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don’t worry, though. I’m sure as soon as Bush finds a rank lower than private, those people will be held accountable for this.