If you can't find 'em - buy 'em

True to form, the Bush administration denies this happened but evidence exists that in 2002 US aircraft dropped leaflets in Afghanistan, asking the Afghanis to,

"Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime." One leaflet said: "You can receive millions of dollars. This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life, pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

They apparently got some takers.

Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters" apparently included relief workers, refugees, and Arab businessmen. The tribunals looking into the classification of Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy combatants" have uncovered numerous examples of hapless victims of a naive U.S. government too flush with money.

This would lend some credibility to the allegations.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a former Qatar justice minister, leads a group of lawyers representing 100 detainees who were sold to the naive Americans. He says a consortium of wealthy Arabs are buying back fellow citizens kidnapped by Pakistani gangs before they can be sold to the Americans.

And here's why Americans should be worried.

Notice the pattern. Bush creates terrorism and then suspends our civil liberties in the name of his war on terror.

Fear trumps common sense every time. Pretty good way to create a police state.

[hat tip to Mycos]