Okay, a lot of stuff going on here. First, there is a report that the three Japanese hostages reported on earlier will be released. Apparently, there was “mediation by the Islamic Clerics Committee – an Iraqi Sunni Muslim organization.” The hostage-takers revised their demand to having the Japanese people bring their case to their government to pull out their troops, which makes little sense in two ways: the troops are not there to fight, but to reconstruct, and there is little chance the Japanese people will press their government on the issue, by their request or otherwise. But the hostages will likely be released, so great news.

On the other hand, this seems to have started a trend. This group claims to have an American hostage, and may be one of six Americans–two soldiers and four civilian contractors–who are currently missing after an attack near Baghdad International Airport. This might be the same group that claims to have taken as many as thirty hostages, as they claimed to have killed American soldiers and have the bodies–though they claim to have killed four, not the two reported missing. “We are calling for the withdrawal of American and coalition forces,” they reported; “We have Japanese, Bulgarian, Israeli, American, Spanish and Korean hostages.” They threatened that “[i]f America doesn’t lift its blockade of Falluja their heads will be cut off.”

It looks like this will not be the end of the story, not by far. If they start taking more and more civilian hostages, this could become even more of a morass for the United States and other coalition states.