1,001 Arabian Naughts
Saudi Arabia's hesitance about involvement in any U.S. military action
against Iraq is the top story at USA Today , the Washington Post , and the New York Times .
The USAT headline stresses the Saudi balk, while the headlines at the
Post and NYT focus on the U.S. acceptance of it.
USAT , like the other dailies, passes along the statement made Sunday
by the Saudi defense minister to the effect that while his country supports
Saddam's compliance with the U.N. inspection effort, it does not favor an
attack on the nation or the people of Iraq. But unlike the Post and the
Times , the paper doesn't illuminate this comment by describing the cold,
hard military consequences. Those papers point out that the U.S. decision not
to press the issue has meant that it has amassed much striking power elsewhere.
The Post gives this order of battle: "F-117 stealth aircraft and A-10
fighter jets at Kuwait's Jabir Air Base, B-1 bombers and F-16 and F-15 fighter
jets at Bahrain's Sheik Isa Airfield, F-14 and F-18 fighter jets on two
carriers, cruise missiles on a number of other ships and B-52 bombers on the
British island of Diego Garcia." (Wonder if this means anything to the average
reader. Wonder if it means anything to the Post : the A-10 isn't a
fighter and the F-18 is a fighter-bomber.) The Post further explains
that the Saudi stance is also a diplomatic blow, denying the U.S. a potential
signal of allied unity.
The Post says the Saudi stance has to do with its aversion to
involvement with any U.S. attack that doesn't have the objective of eliminating
Saddam. But the paper delays explaining the logic until the story's 15th
paragraph: The Saudis are afraid that a mere air campaign will leave behind a
Hussein vengeful towards Gulf neighbors that supported it.
The NYT points out Saudi Arabia will probably grant fly-over
privileges to American bombers taking off from elsewhere.
The Times states that likely U.S. strike targets include Republican
Guard bases, military command centers and suspected weapons factories and
stockpiles. Also, the paper reports an apparent shift in U.S. policy about
Israeli self-defense against any Iraqi attacks. Last week, it notes, Secretary
of Defense William Cohen urged Israel to refrain from retaliating, but Sunday
he was quoted as granting Israel the right of self-defense.
USAT reports the next phase of the Starr investigation: talking to
current and former White House interns as a check on Monica's story. The
WSJ says it's very unlikely Starr will bring criminal charges against
President Clinton while he's in office, but that he will probably dump the
matter into Congress' lap as a potential impeachment case, thus plunging the
country into a "wrenching political dilemma" given the president's surging
popularity. The Journal goes on to note that Starr in on record with a
rather loose interpretation of what counts as an impeachable offense, reporting
that he once argued before the Supreme Court that poisoning the neighbor's cat might be impeachable.
The Journal reports that the FTC is set to end decades of leniency
regarding cigars. Apparently, the agency is moving towards requiring stogie
makers to report their ad and promotion budgets. And is considering further
steps such as: requiring cigar ads to carry a Surgeon General's health
warning.
Sunday's Los Angeles Times reports that according to a recently
released man, Iraqi prisons have been the site of hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of executions of political prisoners and common criminals in the latter part of
1997.
The NYT , in the wake of the Karla Faye Tucker execution, ran in
Sunday's "Week in Review" a brutally reported and mug-shot illustrated piece by
Sam Howe Verhovek on some of the other women waiting on America's Death Rows.
The piece convinces the reader that Tucker's pickax is not an anomaly: "Among
the ways condemned women have killed in this country are shooting with an
AK-47, slicing with a box cutter, injecting with battery acid, and beating with
a baseball bat. One drowned her paralyzed son by pushing him off a canoe on a
family outing, leaving him and his 50 pounds of metal leg braces to sink to the
bottom."
The WP says that the Paula Jones trial judge has had an interesting prior run-in
with Bill Clinton. Seems that in law school, she was a student in a course on
admiralty law that Clinton taught. And he lost a bunch of exams including hers.
Kind of amazing those exams didn't eventually turn up in the private quarters
at the White House.
