OUR VIEWS

Deaths of Saddam's sons

Some experts are saying the killing of those two in a gunfight may not stop the attacks on U.S. troops, at least not immediately, but it has to be dispiriting to guerrilla assassins that Uday and Quesay were found and killed.

Their deaths mean that even the top people in the deposed regime cannot hide forever, they demonstrate again the capabilities of the U.S. military and they reassure the Iraqi people that the regime is finished. Informants, it is believed, may thus be encouraged to help in the capture of Saddam himself and in directing U.S. officials toward those whose daily ambushes of Americans have caused great concern in the United States.

The deaths have also served to remind us of just what a horror the regime was. Uday, news stories remind us, was a flamboyant, reckless, sadistic torturer and murderer, someone who whipped athletes who failed to win games, raped women whenever he felt like it, beat a servant to death and murdered a military official who didn't want Uday dancing with the man's wife. Even his own father reportedly turned sour on the son when Uday murdered Saddam's favorite bodyguard.

Quesay was a quiet killer. He exercised more self-control, it seems, but was just as deadly, arranging for genocide when it was deemed in the regime's interests.

The nature of these men is evidence that the United States did the right thing in its war on Iraq. Despite his apparent doubts about Uday, Saddam had granted both considerable power; they ranked right under their father in the regime. Their lifelong brutality clearly showed them capable of assisting terrorists in committing mass murder in this country, and if they had stayed in power they would have continued to terrorize fellow Iraqis. The announcement of their deaths in Baghdad was followed by a night of celebratory gunfire, news stories tell us.

The major contribution these two men made to the world was their leaving of it. The hope has to be that Saddam is found next and that Americans and allies in Iraq will indeed be safer.

Protecting Iraq's minorities

According to Paul Haven of the Associated Press, they are an ancient religious sect, most of whose members live in Iraq, who believe that John the Baptist, not Jesus, was the messiah. This week they mark the anniversary of the creation and the annual return of angels from heaven.

The Sabaean Mandeans don't seem to have been treated any worse than most under Saddam Hussein. He killed some of its members and confiscated some of its temples, but seems to have left them pretty much alone as long as they kept their heads down and their mouths shut.

Saddam's regime was secular, and Saddam himself wasn't religious, embracing Islam only when he thought it might rally Muslim support. The Sabaean Mandeans fear that won't be the case in postwar Iraq, particularly if the new government is run by Shiites who do not have a great record of religious tolerance in other countries. And, the Sabaean Mandeans note with some worry, they were left off the new 25-member governing council.

The coalition did not fight the war to bring a new era of religious intolerance to Iraq. One of our legacies should be the right of the Sabaean Mandeans to practice their religion peacefully and unmolested.

Why don't we feel better?

The recession lasted just eight months, and at its worst, the second quarter of 2001, it wasn't very bad, but the downturn came as a rude shock to the country that had enjoyed a decade of robust economic growth.

If the forecasts of sustained growth this year and next hold, President Bush should be able to campaign for re-election free of the economic gloom that hung over his father. The recession during the presidency of Bush senior also lasted eight months and ended in March 1991, but that President Bush was never able to convince the electorate things were indeed getting better. And the bureau didn't declare that recession over until December 1992, the month after the election.

The rough definition of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of economic contraction. The bureau uses more complex measures and, even though the economy resumed growth in the fourth quarter of 2001, held off declaring the recession officially over while it mulled the jobless rate, now at a nine-year high of 6.4 percent.

Of course, if you're one of that 6.4 percent, the recession isn't over until it's over.

YOUR VIEWS

Premise for I-20 safety tactics flawed

Lucy's tactics remind me of the peripheral measures taken by our state Department of Transportation and highway safety patrol to solve a problem that they obviously don't fully understand, as they widen the highway, add "fast lanes," construct median barriers, deploy "dummy" patrol cars, erect flashing signs begging drivers to slow down, erect signs that flash a driver's speed with the "wish" that the driver just may be nice enough to obey the law.

Lucy employed all efforts "inanimate" to solve a problem of "human" failure. Human failure to slow the speed of that "out-of-control" assembly line. Her efforts had no bearing on the problem. And as with poor Lucy, our state Department of Transportation and State Troopers are employing efforts that have no bearing on the real problem: Human failure to slow the speed of "out of control" drivers disobeying existing public safety laws.

In these times of political correctness and touchy-feeliness, God forbid we hold ourselves responsible — for anything. Until we do, the human carnage by humans will continue on Interstate 20, no matter the amount of money, materials and manpower spent on attacking all but the tragic problem.

Armond "Si" Simmons
Pell City 35128

Attacks freedom

The United States Constitution does not gurantee anyone the right not to be offended. However it does give us the right to express ourselves through the written word, vocally or through symbols. Everyone has the right to be heard in America even if there is not one person too agree with what they are saying.

I dare that bunch of spineless wimps that call themselves administrators at UA consider themselves smart enough too try and undo the rights the Founding Fathers gave us. These cowards are kowtowing to the forces of the politically correct crowd and trying to appease them, instead of finding the intestinal fortitude to stand-up to them as the founders of this great country would.

If they get away with this, expect only graduates of this school to tow the party line of the politically correct in this country. It seems UA finds it easier to capitulate than produce free-thinking Americans. That spells bad news for everyone's constitutionally guranteed rights!

Billy E. Price
Ashville 35953-6128

A fighter

For Judge Moore's fight to be compared to actions by our Gov. George Wallace and Mississippi's Ross Barnett's desegregation and integration fights is as insulting as a slap in the face.

I am aware of the laws of "separation of church and state" and the First Amendment but what could the monument hurt? When it's an acknowledgement to God. If you believe, you believe. If you don't, you don't ! This brings to mind the situation concerning those certain people that did not want "In God We Trust" on a public wall in Detroit. Yet it was on every piece of legal tender in their pockets.

There is a big fight against "rules to live by" being displayed in public. Yet, gays are now allowed in the Pulpit. The kids have suffered enough already. Whether we know it or not, we all need Jesus.

Leslie G. Rembert I
Birmingham 35215

Drug czar spreads false information

Walters' speech was disappointing. Taxpayers should reasonably expect an $11 billion drug war budget to produce a distortion of the facts somewhat less transparent than that presented by Walters. Look what the Iraqi information minister was able to accomplish on a limited budget.

Walters claims marijuana is more dangerous than cocaine. However, in the last 5,000 years of recorded history, marijuana has never killed anyone. One would have to eat 40 pounds in 15 minutes or smoke 1,500 pounds in 15 minutes in order to overdose.

Mr. Walters claims 63 percent of people entering drug treatment programs are there for marijuana. He also said that the majority of teens "submitting themselves" for treatment were there for marijuana. Teens under 18 years of age cannot voluntarily sign themselves into treatment. This is forced treatment to stay out of juvenile detention and for adults who have gone through drug court it is an option to stay out of jail. It does not mean they are addicted.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services:

In 336,900 substance-abuse treatment admissions (21 percent of total admissions), marijuana was reported as secondary to abuse of another substance. That is, in 60 percent of the admissions involving marijuana in 2000, marijuana was not the primary substance of abuse.

Among secondary marijuana admissions, 56 percent had alcohol as the primary substance of abuse, 21 percent cocaine, 11 percent stimulants, 10 percent opiates, and 2 percent other substances.

Walters strongly supports turning our schools into armed camps where children are guilty until proven innocent. The government has no business in our bladders and certainly not in the bladders of our children. The last time a student was suspected of using drugs in an Alabama school he was entrapped by undercover narcotics agents and faced 26 years in state prison. Don't think it can't happen to your children.

The War on Drugs is a wasteful counter-productive government jobs program that creates the crime it claims to protect us from while trampling the Bill of Rights in the process. It is time for Americans to hold these cowardly politicians responsible for the damage their failed policies have caused and to demand an end to the drug war aka The War on the American people.

Loretta Nall
Alexander City 35010

At it again

Our county reps, led by Larry Langford, want still more of our tax dollars while waste and inefficiency run rampant.

Case in point, I pass a county employees home about five days a week and see his shiny new 4x4 white Ford truck sitting in front of his home more often than not. Apparently there is not enough for him to do. Lately I am seeing another truck with the same Jefferson County logo parked there. I find it hard to believe he needed help doing nothing.

With this sort of thing going on, the politicians wonder aloud why people are opposed to tax increases. The fad catchword being "schools need it."

Suggestion. Fire people like the above and apply that money toward schools.

I can already hear the yes, buts. ...

George C. Riley
Hueytown 35023

OTHER VIEWS

Conservatives facing identity crisis

By GEORGE WILL
THE WASHINGTON WRITERS GROUP

George W. Bush may be the most conservative person to serve as president since Calvin Coolidge. Yet his presidency is coinciding with, and is in some instances initiating or ratifying, developments disconcerting to four factions within conservatism.

The faction that focuses on foreign policy has four core principles: Preserve U.S. sovereignty and freedom of action by marginalizing the United Nations. Reserve military interventions for reasons of U.S. national security, not altruism. Avoid peacekeeping operations that compromise the military's war-fighting proficiencies. Beware of the political hubris inherent in the intensely unconservative project of "nation-building."

Today a conservative administration is close to asserting that whatever the facts turn out to be regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the enforcement of U.N. resolutions was a sufficient reason for war. If so, war was waged to strengthen the United Nations as author and enforcer of international norms of behavior.

The administration also intimates that ending a tyranny was a sufficient justification for war. Foreign policy conservatism has become colored by triumphalism and crusading zeal.

The conservative faction that focuses on low taxes as the key to economic dynamism and individual opportunity has had two good years. But this faction must be unsettled by signs that the president's refusal to veto last year's abominable farm bill (in fact, he has vetoed nothing) was not an aberration. The tax cutting seems unrelated to any thoughtful notion of what the government should and should not do.

Howard Dean, who will say anything while pandering to his party's activists, says the Bush administration aims to "dismantle" Medicare. Actually, the administration is eager to approve the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society 40 years ago.

A prescription drug entitlement is not inherently unconservative, unless the welfare state itself is — and it isn't. If the pharmacological revolution that has occurred since Medicare was enacted in 1965 had occurred by then, some such entitlement would have been included. But the administration probably will approve an entitlement of unknowable cost ($400 billion over 10 years is today's guess, which is probably low), without reform of Medicare.

The conservative faction that focuses on constitutionalism and democratic due process winced when the president seemed to approve of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion affirming the constitutionality of racial preferences for diversity in higher education — and perhaps in many other spheres of life. The concept of group rights — of government complicity in allocating wealth and opportunity on the basis of skin pigmentation — now has a conservative president's imprimatur.

Finally, this summer the faction called "social conservatives" has been essentially read out of America's political conversation. Their agenda has been stigmatized as morally wrong and constitutionally dubious by the Supreme Court, seven of whose nine members are Republican appointees.

The president is rightly reluctant to endorse a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual institution: constitutionalizing social policy is generally unwise. But the administration's principal objective may be to avoid fights about cultural questions. Two weeks ago the administration reaffirmed the irrational and unfair implementation standards of the Title IX ban on sex discrimination in college athletics. Those standards are now immortal, having received a conservative administration's approval.

What blow will befall conservatives next? Watch the Supreme Court, the composition of which matters more than does the composition of Congress.

Justice David Souter, nominated by the first President Bush, quickly became a reliable member of the Supreme Court's liberal bloc. Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel who came with this President Bush from Texas, may be chosen to fill the next court vacancy. The likelihood of a vacancy during this presidency has given rise to a grim joke among conservatives:

How do you say "Souter" in Spanish? "Gonzales."

Reason to doubt some rape convictions

By PAUL CAMPOS
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

Consider the following case from August 2000. Two University of Denver students went on a date. Both agreed that they drank alcohol and smoked marijuana, that the woman invited the man back to her room, that they engaged in intimate physical contact, and that she allowed him to spend the night with her.

Then their stories diverged. The woman claimed she said "no" when the man attempted sexual intercourse, and he ignored her. The man claimed the intercourse was consensual.

There was no other significant evidence in the case. On the basis of the woman's testimony, a jury decided there was no reasonable doubt that the man had raped her.

"She was a fantastic witness, who was on the witness stand for hours and hours," says the prosecutor who tried the case.

For anyone who believes people shouldn't be convicted of crimes unless they have been shown to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, verdicts of this sort are a reminder of how the politics of rape contaminate the legal system.

It used to be that it was almost impossible to convict a man of rape if a woman had an extensive sexual history, or was using birth control or was married to the defendant. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and men are convicted of rape because juries disbelieve them and believe their accusers, even when no other evidence corroborates the accuser's claim.

Accusations of "acquaintance" or "date" rape will always raise difficult legal issues. No reasonable person thinks that merely because a woman has agreed to see a man socially, or to get drunk with him, or to engage in some intimate contact with him, she thereby waives her right to refuse to have sexual intercourse with him.

At the same time, if we take the idea of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" seriously, we must accept that it should be extraordinarily difficult to convict someone of sexual assault in such situations. Given that we are supposed to prefer large numbers of guilty persons free to even small numbers of wrongful convictions, it's hard to see how routinely convicting men of rape in "he said, she said" situations is consistent with the principles of our criminal law.

It remains to be seen what evidence is available in the Kobe Bryant case, other than the defendant's admission that he engaged in sexual intercourse, and the accuser's claim that this aspect of their encounter wasn't consensual. Given the recent history of "date rape" prosecutions in Colorado, however, it's quite possible that there isn't any other evidence.

If so, the filing of charges against Bryant (let alone the prosecution of an actual trial) should be deeply troubling. After all, prosecutors are not supposed to bring charges just because they think someone committed a crime, or even if they're fairly sure the prospective defendant is guilty. They're supposed to file charges only if they believe they can demonstrate that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Finding someone guilty of acquaintance rape on the basis of nothing but the victim's testimony is tantamount to taking the view that men lie about sex and women don't. Unfortunately, the politics of rape now make it possible to prosecute a rape case on the basis of little more than this belief. And if anything is beyond a reasonable doubt, it's that this belief is false.

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