NOW, THE KIDS

Yep, over a hundred children – yes, children – escaped from a Saddam prison today. They had been jailed because they wouldn’t join the Hitler, er, Saddam Youth. They are deliriously happy, along with their parents. They gave the G.I.s two signs: a thumbs-up and then they held their wrists together to signify that they had been chained up. On the same day, James Carroll of the Boston Globe asks this question: “Does your nation any longer know that it, too, is part of the human family? That that family is now warning of a fatal loss of trust in the ideal for which the American flag has so long stood? Are that flag, and all who have carried it, honored by what is being done under its sign today?” Carroll’s answer is no. Maybe he should usher those kids back into prison himself.