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Gitmo in HinzSight a metaphor for why we are winning the War

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

Dave Hinz

"Thank you, I have been wrong about Americans." Now that is a phrase we don't often read in the newspapers anymore. More seldom still, do we hear it from detainees being held at Guantanamo in Cuba.

There was a must-read Op/Ed in Monday's Wall Street Journal from Rear Adm Mark Buzby, for the past year the commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. He was the man in charge, and what he saw there doesn't jive with the MSM portrayal of the facility.

This is not the story we see reported in the American mainstream press. It is a pity that the true story is not being told.

Read Dave's entire HinzSight take via the link above and Buzby's whole WSJ article via the link below, but Gamecock wants to focus on the money quote below and how it relates to other recent revelations and events in the Battle for Iraq and the Greater War against Islamic extremism:

Guantanamo Is a Model Prison (Really)

Joint Task Force doctors have performed more than 370 surgeries, including restorative eye procedures, and a recent back surgery that restored movement and avoided possible paralysis for a detainee. Shortly after, that detainee sent me a note saying "Thank you, I have been wrong about Americans."

Yes, millions of moderate Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan have discovered that they too were misinformed about Americans by their despotic leaders and by the leftist self-loathing American and foreign press.

The U.S. armed forces have been winning over the people Over There since they arrived. The people of Iraq know how Saddam operated Abu Ghraib, where torture meant excruciating pain, lost limbs and death. They see us punish American wrongdoers and they see us exonerate falsely charged Iraqis. They want us to stay until they can secure their own country. They vote at rates unheard of every chance they get, and their multi-cultural government, police and security forces are increasingly winning over the whole country from al Qaeda and Sunni and Shia militias.

Thanks God President Bush stayed the course, for only TIME in winning over hearts and minds made a successful surge possible. There never was a more troops panacea even if Turkey hadn’t betrayed us with all our forces at sea and in Kuwait poised to attack.

CIA Chief Hayden now reports we are winning the war against al Qaeda on the ground and ideologically in Iraq, Afghanistan and the great Middle East and Muslim world. They are being pushed into small enclaves where the locals, even in Pakistan are starting to fight back against their radical ways.

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda's allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group's core leadership.

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.

All that has changed, Hayden said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that coincided with the start of his third year at the helm of the CIA.

"On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally -- and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' -- as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam," he said.

The sense of shifting tides in the terrorism fight is shared by a number of terrorism experts, though some caution that it is too early to tell whether the gains are permanent. Some credit Hayden and other U.S. intelligence leaders for going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the tempo of Predator strikes has dramatically increased from previous years. But analysts say the United States has caught some breaks in the past year, benefiting from improved conditions in Iraq, as well as strategic blunders by al-Qaeda that have cut into its support base.

"One of the lessons we can draw from the past two years is that al-Qaeda is its own worst enemy," said Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism official who is now managing director of Kroll, a risk consulting firm. "Where they have succeeded initially, they very quickly discredit themselves."

Moreover, even Lawrence Wright, author of the seminal book on al Qaeda, The Looming Tower, who thought the Iraq War would increase UBL’s terrorists group and movement’s power, recently acknowledged that this has not been the case after all and that President Bush’s vision that all people, when given the chance, will choose liberty as opposed to despotic terror. See his latest article, THE REBELLION WITHIN in The New Yorker. Here is an excerpt:

Still, the core of Al Qaeda is much reduced from what it was before 9/11. An Egyptian intelligence official told me that the current membership totals less than two hundred men; American intelligence estimates range from under three hundred to more than five hundred. Meanwhile, new Al Qaeda-inspired groups, which may be only tangentially connected to the leaders, have spread, and older, more established terrorist organizations are now flying the Al Qaeda banner, outside the control of bin Laden and Zawahiri.

Muslims that get to see Americans up close and personal juxtaposed against the radical alternatives, love Americans and America’s mission. Would that liberals in Manhattan and Chicago could see the light even after 911s.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson