DATE=08/19/03

TYPE=U-S EDITORIAL DIGEST

NAME=TUESDAY'S EDITORIALS

NUMBER-6-13051

BY LINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT-

INTRO: The death of a notorious African dictator and the investigation into the cause of North America's massive power outage vie with each other for top space in U-S editorial columns. Other commentaries deal with Israel fencing itself in; the Libyan compensation issue for the Lockerbie bombing; and the situation in Liberia. Now, here with a sampling is ___________ and today's U-S Editorial Digest.

TEXT: The death of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia is producing an outpouring of venom from American newspapers, including Kentucky's Louisville Courier Journal.

VOICE: Tyrants do not always live to know justice. Suicide spared Hitler, and Stalin and Mao died in bed... Another homicidal despot escaped an earthly accounting of his brutality the other day when …Idi Amin, died in Saudi Arabia of natural causes. … His victims were not so fortunate. International human rights groups have estimated that… Amin caused at least 300-thousand, perhaps half-a-million of his countrymen to be killed.

TEXT: In Texas, The Houston Chronicle says "good riddance" …while Salt Lake City Utah's Deseret News dismisses him as "A two-bit thug" and says he is a "man worth forgetting." Tennessee's Chattanooga's Free Press wonders why the U-N or some other international judiciary power never tried to capture and try him for war crimes, suggesting such proceedings are not always successful.

The big domestic story drawing comment continues to be the huge power blackout in the U-S and Canada. Stating the obvious, Connecticut's Hartford Courant, which also went without power, suggests:

VOICE: It now should be all too apparent to the hundreds of thousands [of] residents from Ottawa to Cleveland, from Detroit to New York City, that something is wrong with the way electricity is delivered to their sockets. Faults in the electrical grid more than [hunreds-of]-kilometers away caused a succession of failures that propagated across the network to envelop them in the largest electrical blackout in American history.

TEXT: In a pair of editorials, The Detroit News fears the aging power grid "Remains a Chink in Homeland Security," while adding that politicians should require "more reliability from electric utilities" rather than arguing about long-range goals of where to drill for new oil and gas deposits. Chicago's Tribune warns against a too hasty repair of the system, which might cost more than it should and not fully solve the problem.

The wall Israel has begun building to separate itself from the Palestinian West Bank continues to draw ire, including this from Florida's Orlando Sentinel.

VOICE: Whether it is called a security fence or a wall, a barrier that Israel is building around the occupied West Bank represents a huge obstacle on the "road map" to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. If President … Bush is as committed as he says to Mideast peace, he will press Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stop construction of the barrier.

TEXT: The Chicago Tribune remains hopeful that there is some progress in the Mideast peace process … Israel has agreed to allow Palestinians to monitor terrorism suspects in the West Bank rather than demand they be jailed. Agreement seems near on a plan for Israeli troops to leave Jericho and Qalqilya. Israel has suspended construction of a controversial security fence along the West Bank border.

Oklahoma's Tulsa World rejects the idea that Libya's offer of 27-billion dollars to families of victims of the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing should lead to normal relations with the United States. "It is too soon to forgive and forget the murders over Scotland that [Mr.] Gadhafi endorsed."

Lastly, on the situation in Liberia, Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union is insisting that former dictator Charles Taylor "should be arrested in Nigeria, where he lives in exile, and turned over to a United Nations tribunal."

That opinion from the Florida Times-Union concludes this editorial sampling of Tuesday's U-S press.

NEB/ANG/RAE