I was locked up and mistreated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during America’s war in Afghanistan. Like hundreds of Guantánamo detainees, I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the United States military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake.

It was only the country’s centuries-old commitment to allowing habeas corpus challenges that put that mistake right — or began to. In May, on the eve of a court hearing in my case, the military relented, and I was sent to Albania along with four other Uighurs. But 12 of my Uighur brothers remain in Guantánamo today. Will they be stranded there forever?

Like my fellow Uighurs, I am a great admirer of the American legal and political systems. I have the utmost respect for the United States Congress. So I respectfully ask American lawmakers to protect habeas corpus and let justice prevail. Continuing to permit habeas rights to the detainees in Guantánamo will not set the guilty free. It will prove to the world that American democracy is safe and well.

I am from East Turkestan on the northwest edge of China. Communist China cynically calls my homeland “Xinjiang,” which means “new dominion” or “new frontier.” My people want only to be treated with respect and dignity. But China uses the American war on terrorism as a pretext to punish those who peacefully dissent from its oppressive policies. They brand as “terrorism” all political opposition from the Uighurs.

The View From Guantánamo

Click through.

What Iraq Was Like For Me | PostSecret

Mike the Usurper wrote:

Olbermann blasting Rummy and the administration, with the video available.

Full text of Rumsfeld's speech at the American Legion Convention is available. Here are a few excerpts:

We need to consider the following questions, I would submit:

* With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?
* Can folks really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?
* Can we afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply law enforcement problems, like robbing a bank or stealing a car; rather than threats of a fundamentally different nature requiring fundamentally different approaches?
* And can we really afford to return to the destructive view that America, not the enemy, but America, is the source of the world's troubles?

These are central questions of our time, and we must face them and face them honestly.

...

It seems that in some quarters there's more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

It's a strange time:

* When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up literally 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers who has been punished for misconduct -- 10 times more -- than the mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror;
* Or when a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our armed forces -- the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard -- as a "mercenary army;"
* When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists; and the once CNN Baghdad bureau chief finally admits that as bureau chief in Baghdad, he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in charge there so that CNN could keep on reporting selective news;
* And it's a time when Amnesty International refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay -- which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare -- "the gulag of our times." It’s inexcusable. (Applause.)

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world. (Applause.)

...

The good news is that most Americans, though understandably influenced by what they see and read, have good inner gyroscopes. They have good center of gravity. So, I'm confident that over time they will evaluate and reflect on what is happening in this struggle and come to wise conclusions about it.

...

The question is not whether we can win; it's whether we have the will to persevere to win. I'm convinced that Americans do have that determination and that we have learned the lessons of history, of the folly of trying to turn a blind eye to danger. These are lessons you know well, lessons that your heroism has helped to teach to generations of Americans.

Rumsfeld's Address at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention

Follow through for the full text. Selected excerpts are provivded below for those too hurried or too afraid to click through.

Terrorism, at a deeper level, is about psychology and the "propaganda of the deed." And as far as al Qaeda is concerned, it is also about economic warfare: Osama bin Laden personally has stated that one of the group's strategic objectives is to "bleed America to the point of bankruptcy."

There is a similar economic angle to attempts at protection against cheap missiles.

Officials naturally want to be perceived as doing everything possible to prevent future acts of violence; therefore, every threat -- no matter how seemingly ridiculous -- is treated seriously. Overreaction becomes mandatory. Politicians and executives cannot afford to be perceived as doing nothing.

This powerful mandate on the defensive side is met, asymmetrically, on the offensive side by a force whose only requirements are to survive, issue threats and, occasionally, strike -- chiefly as a means of perpetuating its credibility.

Terrorist acts do not have to be tremendously successful (in terms of physical casualties or damage) in order to be terribly effective.

One wonders why they even bother with all of the conspiracy, training, and preparation.

Al Qaeda measures its progress in the war of attrition not only by the number of American servicemen killed, but in terms of American treasure expended in furtherance of the war. In essence, bin Laden and his planners adopted a concept that is familiar to Americans: "It's the economy, stupid!"

Al Qaeda long ago took the risk-aversion factor into account, as it embarked on its war of attrition against the West. In such a war, what matters most is not how many times a fighter is bloodied and knocked down, but how many times he picks himself up and returns to the fight. It is dogged determination not to lose that can lead to victory. This is, in essence, how the Mujahideen won against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and how al Qaeda views its contest against the United States today.

Stratfor seems to left out the part about how much the Mujahideen relied on us for financing and supplies. Today, Hezbollah is similarly reliant on its sponsors.

Conspiracy may be cheap, but waging a persistent, violent insurgency is generally not.

When we recognize the futility of a force-on-force battle against a certain class of threat, we will walk back the cat toward the state sponsors, because we think we know how to confront them (and have the tools to do so). Is this a successful strategy?

Stratfor: Al'Q wins in London even though the attack was foiled.

I'm sure you were all wondering about the effectiveness of a premature pullout. Well, the verdict is in, folks.

Amid national debate about whether or not to stay the course in Iraq, President Bush today firmly placed himself in the “stay” category.

In case you missed this Doonesbury:

Sir, I've noticed that whenever you frame a debate, it always contains false choices. The "debate" you're willing to have is always between options of your own choosing.

Premature Pullout ‘Would Be A Huge Mistake,’ Bush Says

"We haven't lost, but we're losing [the war on terror]," says Marc Sageman, the author of "Understanding Terror Networks" and a former CIA case officer who served as a liaison to the Afghan mujahideen in the late 1980s.

"The old Al Qaeda is basically neutralized. Now the danger comes from self-generated groups, they stay at home and they don't need to contact Al Qaeda -- they know what Al Qaeda thinks. So in a way it's more ubiquitous and the theater of operations is now the whole world."

A new generation of jihad seekers

In case Spc. Ziegler is still reading ...

The number of roadside bombs exploded or found in Iraq rose in July to the highest monthly total since the war began, offering more evidence that the anti-American insurgency has continued to strengthen despite the killing of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June.

"The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels," said a senior Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak for attribution.

The new reports by the military and the intelligence community provide evidence that insurgent attacks and sectarian violence are at their highest levels.

This is a significant rise since the time of expectation that followed parliamentary elections in December.

The bombs planted in July represent a near-doubling from January.

Iraqi bomb numbers paint grim picture

Decius recently asked:

What the hell is this world coming to?

Well, it's coming to this: in Britain, at least, being a feminist probably means you're also pro-Hezbollah.

The peace movement lost a foe in Reagan but has gone on to find new friends in today’s Stop the War movement. Women pushing their children in buggies bearing the familiar symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marched last weekend alongside banners proclaiming “We are all Hezbollah now” and Muslim extremists chanting “Oh Jew, the army of Muhammad will return.”

For Linda Grant, the novelist, who says that “feminism” is the one “ism” she has not given up on, it was a shocking sight: “What you’re seeing is an alliance of what used to be the far left with various Muslim groups and that poses real problems. Saturday’s march was not a peace march in the way that the Ban the Bomb marches were. Seeing young and old white women holding Hezbollah placards showed that it’s a very different anti-war movement to Greenham. Part of it feels the wrong side is winning.”

As a supporter of the peace movement in the 1980s, I could never have imagined that many of the same crowd I hung out with then would today be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with militantly anti-feminist Islamic fundamentalist groups, whose views on women make western patriarchy look like a Greenham peace picnic. Nor would I have predicted that today’s feminists would be so indulgent towards Iran, a theocratic nation where it is an act of resistance to show an inch or two of female hair beneath the veil and whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is not joking about his murderous intentions towards Israel and the Jews.

On the defining issue of our times, the rise of Islamic extremism, what is left of the sisterhood has almost nothing to say. Instead of “I am woman, hear me roar”, there is a loud silence, punctuated only by remonstrations against Tony Blair and George Bush — “the world’s number one terrorist” as the marchers would have it.

Wimmin at War

Rattle wrote:

It seems that the key factor was cooperation between intelligence agencies in multiple countries.

Or, as Brian Ross put it to Charlie Rose (jump to around 6:40):

Ross: The US was brought in; the US was asked to use its elaborate electronic eavesdropping apparatus to run checks on the phone calls and the bank transfers, which I am told were _very_ helpful.

Rose: One more argument for the Bush administration in terms of --

Ross: well, it is, they do have that ability. Generally, what happens is, we spy on the British, and the British spy on our citizens. We exchange information, [and] nobody breaks their own laws.

RE: Big Talk, Little Will | Thomas Friedman | NYT

The disconnects between headline and article were just too great not to pass along. You'll forgive the sarcasm.

Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, of Multinational Force Iraq, said operations in and around Baghdad are designed to reduce murders, kidnappings, assassinations, terrorism and sectarian violence in the capital.

My, what lofty goals you have! Who needs kindergarten and women's rights when you can have a 50% reduction in the assassination rate?! Honestly!

Caldwell said the core conflict in the country has changed from an insurgency to a sectarian struggle.

In other words, the sovereign central government is firmly enmeshed in a civil war. "Keep up the good work!," says Caldwell. "Our job here is almost done."

Shiite death squads and Sunni terrorists in Baghdad are locked in a mutually reinforcing cycle of sectarian strife, Caldwell said.

If you look at my chart here, you'll see it's clear that both targeted assassinations and random violence are strongly on the rise over the last six months, and our analysts expect this trend to continue into the fourth quarter.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has launched a propaganda campaign that seeks to portray the terror group as a legitimate political organization and an alternative to the legitimate, democratically elected government of Iraq, Caldwell said.

You know, like Hamas and Hezbollah.

However, the group does not protect citizens, but kills them.

Ah, the old bait and switch. How many election cycles does it take to learn that everyone breaks their campaign promises?

Al Qaeda in Iraq is still bringing in foreign fighters to randomly kill innocent Iraqis.

If only we could get them to do something productive; we could certainly use the cheap immigrant labor. But it turns out these foreign fighters are rather lazy; they make a few killings, and then they think they're entitled to sit around all day sipping tea and reading classic literature.

The group has encouraged sectarian violence and sees it as a road to civil war.

Those fools! Here they are trying to build a road, and I've just told you we're already there! Why can't they see that?

Coalition Officials See Positive Trend in Baghdad | DefenseLink