HELP THE EVILDOERS AND YOU GET TO LIVE (via Tom Morin):

Anatomy of a Hostage Crisis: The drama may be over for German hostages held in Iraq for more than three months, but the Berlin government is still taking heat from critics who say that paying ransoms will create an open season on Germans in the Middle East. (Ralf Beste, Juergen Dahlkamp, Holger Stark and Steffen Winter, 5/08/06, Der Spiegel)

Even after the hostage drama in Iraq had come to a happy end, Reinhard Silberberg, the head of the German crisis task force that led the operation vowed to stand by the concessions his government had made while the hostages were still being held. The German government plans to withhold any information about the "details of the effort or the exact circumstances of the hostages' release," Silberberg said last Tuesday.

There are good reasons behind the government's reluctance to make the information public. The official take is that the authorities want to avoid putting ideas into future hostage-takers' heads. But there are also two other reasons the government is less willing to discuss. Although no one doubts that the rescue of German hostages René Bräunlich and Thomas Nitzschke was a success, it came at a steep price. Indeed, the ransom the German government paid for the release of the two men exceeded the $5 million it had paid for archaeologist Susanne Osthoff's release in Iraq in December by several million.

The terrorists only release hostages if there's been a deal, either after or before they were taken.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 10, 2006 8:21 PM