DATE=09/30/02

TYPE=U-S EDITORIAL DIGEST

TITLE=MONDAY'S EDITORIALS

NUMBER=6-12648

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The issue of Iraq is once again dominating several editorial columns this Monday. Other commentaries deal with violence in the name of religion; the Middle East; and the AIDS epidemic in Botswana. Now here is ___________with a closer look and some quotes in today's U-S Editorial Digest.

TEXT: The debate over how to deal with Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction continues. The Chicago Sun-Times says this debate is a good example of "democracy in action."

VOICE: "We will soon speak with one voice," President Bush said after meeting with House members of both parties [last week]… focusing on efforts to arrive at a resolution to use force against Iraq. The history of international conflict has proved him right… But …history … also tells us that the parties will indulge in the most unpleasant kind of partisan bickering and pandering until the bell rings - - and that's not entirely a bad thing. …One of the cornerstone strengths of democracy is its openness to spirited, angry and even irrational debate ...

TEXT: Along the South Texas coast, The Corpus Christi Caller-Times is worried about what will happen to the Iraqi people if war comes.

VOICE: The scope of that [military] action and when it may be undertaken are unanswered questions. But if war does come, we should remember that the Iraqi people are victims of their own despotic regime under Saddam Hussein.

TEXT: In Ohio, the [Cleveland] Plain Dealer is worried about the younger generation's ability to place this debate in context.

VOICE: Consider a few facts from recent surveys: Legions of seniors at top universities cannot identify James Madison or Valley Forge. And more than half of high school seniors think the United States allied with Germany and Italy during World War Two. Scholars long have bemoaned our nation's ignorance of basic elements of our history. Now that terrorists have attacked our shores, essentially, because of our principles, the seriousness of Americans' lack of knowledge looms all the larger.

TEXT: In the Texas capital, the Austin American-Statesman worries that the Iraq debate is distracting people from the serious problem of the sluggish U-S economy.

Several papers are expressing horror at the toll religious intolerance is taking around the world, especially in Pakistan. The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville is one of them.

VOICE: The [recent] deadly attack in Pakistan … is another reminder about the consequences of religious intolerance. Seven employees of a Christian charity were tied to chairs and shot dead in Karachi. The killers are believed to have been trying to scare Christians into leaving the country, which is 96 percent Muslim. … In India, meanwhile, Islamic radicals recently killed 30 worshippers in a Hindu temple. … Even in the United States, an average of 15 to 20 churches - - mostly Christian - - are burned every month, according to Reuters. … Religious hatred is taking a terrible toll, and not just overseas.

TEXT: Turning to another conflict with religious roots, the Israeli Palestinian dispute, today's [Memphis, Tennessee] Commercial Appeal wonders whether Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is "even listening?" to criticism from the U-S of his aggressive tactics.

VOICE: The Bush administration asked Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to freeze West Bank settlements. [Mr.] Sharon's government recently approved a new one. …The administration asked [Mr.] Sharon not to bottle up Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his West Bank compound. Israeli tanks and bulldozers have demolished most of [it], leaving [Chairman] Arafat holed up in what [Mr.] Sharon boasts is a "hovel." [President] Bush has committed to creation of a Palestinian state. [Mr.] Sharon has done nothing to show the shares that commitment.

TEXT: Today's New York Times is back on the topic of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, specifically worrying about the heavy toll in Botswana:

VOICE: An astonishing 39 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, prompting President Festus Mogae to warn "We are threatened with extinction." The plight of Botswana is a sobering example of what can happen when the AIDS virus is allowed to spread widely … Other lands where the virus is beginning to take off, [Editors: U-S slang for, in this case: "spread rapidly"] including China, Russia and Eastern Europe, had better take note.

TEXT: In Asian commentary, today's Los Angeles Times is heartened by what it sees as an easing of the Bush White House's confrontational view toward North Korea, with the impending visit of a senior State Department official.

VOICE: The Bush administration is beginning to … understand that talking to the North is better than dismissing it as evil and then ignoring it.

TEXT: Other editorial pages address Mexico on two separate issues. The San Antonio Express-News worries that:

VOICE: The Mexican government's safety campaign in the highly dangerous coal mines known as pocitos has been sadly inadequate. As a result, many coal miners continue to labor in conditions unheard of in the United States for more than one-hundred years. [An] Express-News staff writer [reports] "Most of the pocitos have no secondary escape routes, inadequate ventilation and little to no monitoring of explosive methane gas."

TEXT: Meanwhile, Boston's Christian Science Monitor cheers Mexican President Vicente Fox's war on corruption.

VOICE: One of his probes did charge Pemex, the national oil company and economic heart of the country, with diverting more than 100-million dollars to support the two-thousand president campaign of the long-reigning P-R-I party. But after Mr. Fox launched a corruption investigation against at least three leaders of Mexico's oil union, the union has threatened a strike this week, claiming the issues is salaries.

[President] Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive, is up against a tradition of corruption, embellishment, and repression that has been a part of Mexican politics for decades. ... but ... it is necessary that he continue ... for a country clogged in corruption cannot experience any growth.

TEXT: Next, an editorial addresses the current sluggish state of the U-S economy following a series of corporate bookkeeping scandals that roiled Wall Street. Today's Indianapolis [Indiana] Star wonders whether real punishment will be meted out to the culprits.

VOICE: When it comes to white-collar crime, is there really such a thing as punishment? In the cases of Adelphia, Enron and WorldCom, that question remains to be answered … Prosecutors and investigators deserve credit for their efforts in all of these cases, but progress is not resolution. Thousands of victims may never recover from their financial losses…

TEXT: In Baltimore, The Sun is puzzled over why, despite some relatively positive economic news, "decent" economic expansion, low inflation, and a robust housing market, financial markets continue downward.

VOICE: …the growing reality for many households is a regressive double whammy - - precipitously dropping stock prices and falling household income. And that has Corporate America spooked [Editors: "worried"] about … the possibility of a double-dip recession.

TEXT: On that economic note, we conclude this editorial sampling from Monday's U-S press.

NEB/ANG/MEM