What Does It Mean To Kidnap 150 People?

By now we've all heard the news from Baghdad that dozens of people were "kidnapped" in a daylight raid at a major University.

Right off the bat, its important to bear in mind that estimates of the number of people taken range wildly, from 30 to 150. But still...

Is that even "kidnapping" as the word is understood? Its clearly a paramilitary, if not military, situation, showing that even the most despondent understanding of the chaos in Iraq probably doesn't even approximate the true conditions.

Depending on the actual size of the victim pool here, and there fate, we think this had the potential do become a defining crisis. The majority of media are still treating it like another daily atrocity, but as the scale sinks in, could this be something like the Black Hole of Calcutta, a galvanizing atrocity that (this time) argues against further intervention. Can a society of any kind be created in conditions like this?