east' of the country." Afghanistan, according to Haass, eventually became a war of choice. War on terror seen as pretext Excerpts from an April 2006 report compiled from sixteen U.S. government intelligence agencies has strengthened the claim that engaging in Iraq has increased terrorism in the region. Domestic civil liberties In the United Kingdom, critics have claimed that the Blair government used the war on terror as a pretext to radically curtail civil liberties, some enshrined in law since Magna Carta. For example, the detention-without-trial in Belmarsh prison: controls on free speech through laws against protests near Parliament and laws banning the "glorification" of terrorism: and reductions in checks on police power, as in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes and Mohammed Abdul Kahar. Former Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Menzies Campbell has also condemned Blair's inaction over the controversial U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition, arguing that the human rights conventions to which the UK is a signatory (e.g. European Convention on Human Rights) impose on the government a "legal obligation" to investigate and prevent potential torture and human rights violations. Unilateralism U.S. President George W. Bush's remark of November 2001 claiming that "You're either with us or you are with the terrorists," has been a source of criticism. Thomas A. Keaney of Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Policy Institute said "it made diplomacy with a number of different countries far more difficult because obviously there are different problems throughout the world." As a war against Islam and Muslims Since the war on terror revolved primarily around the United States and other NATO states intervening in the internal affairs of Muslim countries (i.e. in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) and organisations, it has been labelled a war against Islam by ex-United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark, among others. After his release from Guantanamo in 2005, ex-detainee Moazzam Begg appeared in the Islamist propaganda video 21st Century CrUSAders and claimed the U.S. was engaging in a new crusade: I think that history is definitely repeating itself and for the Muslim world and I think even a great part of the non-Muslim world now, are beginning to recognize that there are ambitions that the United States has on the lands and wealth of nations of Islam.Professor Khaled Beydoun of the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville School of Law states that the War on Terror exports Islamophobia to other countries, which utilize it to persecute and punish their