Murat Kurnaz

During the four- and-a-half years he languished in American prison camps in Afghanistan and Cuba, Murat Kurnaz claims to have been beaten, locked for months in isolation cells, dunked under water, sexually humiliated, and hung from the ceiling by chains, claims the Pentagon denies.
But investigators eventually decided not to hold him any longer on suspicion of being a terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda, and in late August, he was released, the result of secret negotiations between the United States and Germany, where he was born 24 years ago to a Turkish family.
Now back home in Bremen, absolved of any German inquiry, he is struggling to make sense of his odyssey. He blames not just his American captors but also the German government, which according to internal German intelligence documents turned down an offer by the United States to send him home in late 2002.
“The first time, the Americans kept me in Guantanamo; the second time, the Germans did,“ Kurnaz said during an interview, speaking English, which he learned during his captivity at the camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “They did the same as the American government.“
His account pointedly calls into question Germany’s role, suggesting the Germans decided to abandon him because he was a Turkish citizen, though born and living in Germany, and even contributed to his ordeal. With these charges, the Kurnaz case has ignited a political firestorm in Germany, raising questions about whether this country has sacrificed its principles in supporting the American-led campaign against terrorism.
Kurnaz’s troubles stem from a poorly timed visit to Pakistan in October 2001, a month after terrorists rammed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The next month he was pulled off a bus in Pakistan, and by January 2002, sent to an American prison in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan.
While there, he said, German soldiers slammed his head on the ground and kicked him, to the laughter of American soldiers watching. The German Defense Ministry said there was no evidence its soldiers mistreated Kurnaz. The ministry had denied its soldiers were even active in southern Afghanistan but later conceded they had been there and had had contact with Kurnaz.
“I was born in Germany, I live in Germany,“ he said. “It’s hard to see something like that from Germans, to be treated like that by Germans. You think the government of your country will help you.“
A stocky man with flowing reddish brown hair and a bushy beard, Kurnaz described his experience in a matter-of- fact tone, leavened with flashes of mordant humor. Only when he talked about Germany did his speech become halting, the words measured out painfully.
“The soldier grabbed my hair and pulled back my head,“ Kurnaz recalled. “He asked, ’Do you know who we are? We are the German force, K.S.K.’“ The acronym refers to an elite army unit.
NYTIMES.COM

“So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion ... it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth.“

That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War. But until recently, the “hard bruising“ truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington.
One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “mission accomplished,“ the insurgency is “in its last throes,“ and “back off,“ we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples.
Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.
Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war’s planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it ... and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.“
Last week, someone leaked to The New York Times a Central Command briefing slide showing an assessment that the civil conflict in Iraq now borders on “critical“ and has been sliding toward “chaos“ for most of the past year. The strategy in Iraq has been to train an Iraqi army and police force that could gradually take over for U.S. troops in providing for the security of their new government and their nation.
But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition.
For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don’t show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.
Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.
And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.
Now, the president says he’ll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.
This is a mistake. It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.
These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.
And although that tradition, and the officers’ deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.
Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.
This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:
Donald Rumsfeld must go.
ARMYTIMES.COM

When I was protesting apartheid as a college student in the 1980s, South African President P. W. Botha, who died Tuesday (Oct. 31) at the age of 90, was the embodiment of racist evil. But when my car broke down near his house in South Africa a decade ago, I was sufficiently brash and morbidly curious that I decided to call the “Great Crocodile“ and invite myself over for tea.
As the apartheid strongman from 1978 to 1989, the glowering leader may have been the most hated figure in Africa in the 1980s; he certainly was on U.S. college campuses. Under his reign, anti-apartheid protest rocked South Africa, and the irascible Botha responded with an iron fist. Thirty thousand people were detained without trial during his rule, and thousands were tortured and killed by his police. Botha imposed virtual martial law from 1986 to 1989.
I called Botha. “Mr. Botha doesn’t grant interviews any longer,“ his secretary snapped. Minutes later, Botha himself called me back at the museum. He repeated that he did not grant interviews, especially not to journalists, who have caused him nothing but trouble. After some prodding from me, he relented and invited me over the next day for “just 30 minutes, and no political discussions.“
Thus began our three-hour conversation. I quickly discovered that Botha at 80 was as sharp, abrasive and truculent as he ever was.
P. W., as South Africans call him, greeted me stiffly at the top of some stone stairs and ushered me into his office. A small South African flag--the old one, not the brightly colored flag adopted by President Nelson Mandela’s government in 1994--stood in the corner.
Ethnicity mattered, now as always. “I am an admirer of great men in Israel,“ he declared. He recalled how he first helped Israeli leaders by sending them a “small boatload of 1,000-pound bombs.“
He proudly pulled a book off his shelf about the American Revolution, flipped it open and told me to read the inscription aloud: “To P. W. Botha--With appreciation and esteem, William Casey.“ President Reagan’s CIA chief was a good friend, he said wistfully.
Botha was totally unrepentant on his violent reign. When I asked him his solution for what ailed South Africa, he replied with a rehash of the original apartheid fantasy: a balkanized “confederation of states“ consisting of white and black homelands. He objected to calling this “apartheid.“ What, I asked, would he have preferred to call the National Party’s racial policies?
“Good neighborliness,“ he replied with a faint smile.
I asked him how he viewed Mandela, then South Africa’s first black president. The two men had met three times: first when Botha was president and Mandela was a prisoner, and twice after, when President Mandela visited Botha at his home. Botha liked Mandela, sort of, and they regularly exchanged birthday cards. “I think Mandela is an intelligent man,“ he offered. “When we disagree, we tell each other. And when we agree, we say so.“ None of this mattered enough during his presidency, when Botha pointedly refused international demands for Mandela’s unconditional release.
The Great Crocodile was at peace with his legacy: “I’m not despondent. I’m quite happy. He who is prepared to sacrifice himself in the name of decency and honesty and for the cultural values of his people--his memory will live.“ I pressed him about how he thought he would be remembered. “History will deal with me,“ he concluded.
David Goodman is
the author of “Fault Lines: Journeys Into the New South Africa“
LATIMES.COM

Luis Inacio “Lula“ da Silva’s resounding electoral victory with over 60 percent of the vote places Brazilian politics on a new footing. While many on the left remain critical of Lula for the limited reforms of his first term, his very victory has consolidated a shift in the country’s possibilities for deeper social transformations.
A major reason for Lula’s resounding victory is due to the support of the poor and dispossesed who make up the majority of Brazil’s population. Even in the first round of the elections on October 8 when Lula fell short of an absolute majority, garnering 48 percent of the vote versus his leading opponent’s 41 percent, the poor, particularly in the country’s impoverished northeast, provided the decisive margin of support. As Darci Frigo of the Land Rights Center in the state of Paran states, “Agrarian reform may have been limited in Lula’s first term, but thanks to the Zero Hunger program and direct income subsidies many families have more food and are better off.“
Many in Brazil remain skeptical of the chances for significant advances in a second Lula administration. Marcos Arruda of PACS, a research center on social and economic alternatives based in Rio de Janeiro, is highly critical of Lula. He notes that “the destruction of the environment, particularly in the Amazon basin has continued apace,“ and “the government has practiced irresponsible fiscal policies focus on repaying the international debt and keeping national interest rates high while social spending falls far short of what the county needs.“
During Lula’s first term, most of the country’s social movements felt that their agendas were largely neglected as Lula pursued economic and social stabilization policies. Darci Frigo of the Land Rights Center states, “The demands for a profound agrarian reform program advocated by the MST, the Landless Movement, were ignored. Some limited spending was directed to social and educational programs for the landless, but the large landed estates of the country were barely touched as the government encouraged agro-exports.“
While Lula in the final election round did come out for social spending, Brazil’s robust social movements are not sitting idly by, waiting on Lula’s volition. Seventeen social movements lead by the MST and the Unified Workers Central mobilized in the major cities of Brazil during the final days of the campaign. They released an action manifesto, titled “Thirteen Points for A Social Policy for Brazil.“ Committing themselves to “an intensification of the popular and democratic struggles throughout the country“ during Lula’s second term, they outlined a program that called for profound changes in education, health, fiscal policies, and agrarian reform, all to be carried out “with the effective participation of the people and their social organizations.“
As Friar Betto, a radical Brazilian theologian notes, “Lula owes us much based on the promises he has made during his presidential campaigns.“ Even more than Lula’s first campaign in 2002, this election polarized the country’s electorate, laying out two distinct visions. Francisco Meneses says, “Perhaps Lula on his own would not change much, but the reality is that the social movements realize that this election is their victory and they intend to sharpen the agitation for real transformations from below.“
ZMAG.ORG

The political landscape of the United States could change dramatically in the next few days if the Democratic Party is able to overcome the habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With the Bush administration’s disastrous Iraq policy overshadowing all other issues in the campaign for the congressional elections, Republicans are in danger of losing control of the legislative branch.
The Democrats are on track to capture more than the 15 seats they need to gain control of the House of Representatives. They are also within striking range of picking up the six seats that will give them control of the Senate. As November 7 draws near, the Grand Old Party has felt compelled to boost advertisement outlays to defend many seats that were once considered safe.
The Republicans are in such dire straits mainly because the election has turned into a virtual referendum on President George Bush’s performance. His job approval ratings have hovered below the 40 per cent mark for the past several months. That most Republican candidates have ensured that Mr. Bush does not put in an appearance at their campaign rallies speaks for itself.
The Republican effort to turn the debate around and push local issues to the fore seems to have backfired. Too many of the party’s incumbents have been caught up in scandals of one sort or another. Even cultural conservatives, who staunchly supported the GOP in the past because it was perceived as an upholder of moral values, now seem to be having second thoughts. Those who have been in control for the past four years will also face the brunt of widespread anger against a `do-nothing’ Congress.
True to character, Mr. Bush & party have reverted to the tactic of `fear and smear’ in the closing phase of the campaign. The Republicans have unleashed a range of negative advertisements targeting their opponents. They have also tried to convince the electorate that the country’s security would be in jeopardy if the Democrats took control of Congress.
Unlike in the past elections, this attempt does not appear to have found much traction. The electorate’s anger and concern over the Bush administration’s mishandling of Iraq, stagnant incomes, and the rising cost of health care seem to be too deep-rooted to be overwhelmed by a propaganda blitz. However, the Republicans do have something going for them. They organise and conduct voter-identification and turnout operations better than their opponents. Further, nervousness over the implications of a Democratic victory may serve to galvanise the Republican base. With so much at stake, much of the world will fervently hope that the Democrats have it in them to deliver the knockout.
HINDU.COM