With the release of tens of thousands of prisoners this week, Iraq has signaled a change in it's decades old "catch and release" policies. President Saddam Hussein granted amnesty to most of the prisoners in the country including convicts and political prisoners alike. The amnesty is being viewed with suspicion by most of the world and is widely thought to be a multi-faceted political ploy.

Some experts say the release of many Shiite Muslim political prisoners is a gesture of good will to the Iranian government, while others note that the release also included many Kuwaitis and Kurds which could show Hussein's willingness to work more closely with his other neighbors as well. But most Middle Eastern policy analysts believe that this move is a law enforcement training exercise based tightly on the Western sport fishing philosophy known as "catch and release."

Catch and release fishing is a simple principle that encourages fishermen to release at least one fish every time they go fishing so as not to deplete fish populations too quickly. Some say this is what Hussein has done to his criminal population.

"Think about it," says Dennis P. Sweeney, a leading international law enforcement analyst, "You spend your 23

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year tyrannical rule administering 30 year prison terms for petty thievery, then you lock up anyone who ever talked bad about your government and some folks who might be involved with people who might have spoken bad about your government and what do you end up with? A police force, an army and a specially trained security force all very, very bored. It is not conducive to keeping your tyranny going if all the guys that you've armed and trained have no one to hunt. Next thing you know some lieutenant in the security force finds out you've been trying to convince his sister to join your harem and bang, bloody coup. Saddam is smarter than that, unfortunately."

"Well he would have been a lot smarter to start this catch and release thing 10 years ago," counters Vin Sparano who is on the Board of Directors for The Catch & Release Foundation. "The parallels are amazing. First you are fishing for bass, which would symbolize your murderers and thieves, then you over fish them so you start telling yourself spot and crappy will make a fine dinner, this symbolizes your garden variety political prisoner, then you realize your lake is empty and all you can do is eat the earthworms you use as bait, which in Saddam's case symbolizes death at the hands of his own men. Of course, I wouldn't recommend serving earthworm on your next fishing trip or the death at the hands of your own men thing could end up being more than symbolic."

Sparano also noted that Iraq has basically taken and re-written The Catch & Release Foundation's philosophy statement even producing a working draft sent to him by the Iraqi government.

The first paragraph reads as follows:

It was once a widely held belief that angling extremely lengthy incarceration had little or no effect on fish criminal populations. Today we realize that our fishing resources law enforcement opportunities have been seriously depleted. Even our seemingly limitless ocean Kurdish reserves have proven to be vulnerable to over fishing killing.

Some experts suggest that Hussein hinted at his move toward conservation by lowering his "mass prison execution" quota in the late 1990's which they say has given him this cache of 10,000 or so prisoners to release back into the hunt.

At least one Iraqi prison guard, speaking under condition of anonymity, confirmed that Iraq originally had a much tougher catch and release program and that Hussein's new approach was first met with skepticism within the prison system.

"We laughed when we first heard of the amnesty," said the guard. "Iraq's old catch and release program dealt strictly with the head of a prisoner. First you would catch it in a basket then you would release it into the incinerator. I guess we should have believed the rumors, now I'm out of a job. I was just getting good at beheading with only one strike too, now where am I going to get free hats?"