Now that they see the US paralyzed with guilt over the prison abuse story, Iraqi tribal leaders are pressing their advantage and demanding that all Iraqi prisoners be freed. And they want to get paid too.

The leaders from the Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province, from where many detainees come, said the gesture needed to be large enough to offset the enormity of abuses which have shaken the upper reaches of the U.S. administration.

“We need a measure that is as big as the affair that has happened — it needs to reflect the size of the problem,” Mamouon Sami Rasheed, vice chairman of the provincial council, told Bremer during a meeting at U.S. headquarters in Baghdad.

“We would like to see the release of all detainees, apart from those so far indicted and found guilty of some crime, and also compensation paid to all those detained in Ramadi and Falluja,” he said, referring to al-Anbar’s two largest cities, where U.S. forces have battled fierce guerrillas resistance.

Rasheed’s call was seconded by the chairman of al-Anbar’s provincial council, Sheikh Amir Abduljabar Ali Suleiman, the nominal head of the province’s largest, most powerful tribe.