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OpEd
Freedom is never free
By Paul Coverdell
U.S. Senator
. The recent U.S.-led military
action in Iraq focused our nation
once again on the danger American
troops face throughout the world.
Our soldiers rang in the New Year in
the Middle East and in more than 80
countries around the globe. In 1999,
the U.S. Air Force will have four
times the number of soldiers overseas
than were deployed at the end of the
Cold War. Since 1989 the Army has
undertaken three times the missions it
did during the entire 40-year span of
the Cold War. These numbers may
indicate the Clinton Administration’s
willingness to commit troops around
the world, but they fail to illustrate
the initiative to back them up.
Despite a Presidential commit
_ ment to increase military spending,
his recently proposed budget will fall
well short of covering some of the
military’s most basic readiness needs.
President Clinton’s proposed sl2 bil-
Jion increase for next year amounts to
only $2 to $4 billion in “new money.”
Only accountants and magicians can
tell you where the Clinton
, Administration gets the sl2 billion
’. figure, but even this amount is too
.. small. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have
.. voiced a need for minimum annual
a increases of $17.5 billion, an amount
that would not even cover pay raises.
In recent testimony before the Senate
. .Armed Services Committee, Gen.
Michael Ryan, Air Force Chief of
... .Staff, said of the President’s budget,
, “It does not meet the stated need that
we testified here before.” The leaders
•; of the other service branches echoed
-.this sentiment.
After six straight years of defense
' budget cuts, the Clinton
Administration has finally admitted
■■ that our nation’s military is in trou
•„ blc. It took expert testimony last
September to convince them that the
stories of a weakened military were
< true - the armed services cannot
V retain underpaid troops; the Army
.and Navy are having trouble just get
ting recruits into uniform; troops are
... spending too much time maintaining
old equipment; and constant deploy
ments overseas are undermining
■ . morale and readiness.
Based on the day-to-day obliga
tions of servicemen and women, as
-; well as this Administration’s endless
willingness to deploy them overseas,
What accounts for the Pope’s appeal?
Why would hundreds of thou
' sands of Mexicans camp out
overnight at a chilly racetrack to
gain a glimpse of Pope John Paul
- -II? Why would 20,000 St. Louis
teenagers chant “Vfe love you” at
a youth rally, or 100,000 attend a
Mass at the city’s Trans World
Dome?
.„, As the head of a church with a
billion members, any man would attract crowds. But
not with the fervency and love that this man sparks.
Though he is now very frail, with a visibly trembling
hand, when he speaks, he moves crowds deeply.
Why?
First, all know this may be his last visit.
Second, he speaks in the language of whatever
people he has visited in his 85 trips abroad. We admire
a man whose native tongue is Polish, who took the
t , time to learn our language whether English, Spanish,
„ French, Italian, etc.
.; Third, he has keen insight on each culture and
senses the deepest feelings of those he is visiting. In
< f his fourth visit to Mexico, he mentioned the Virgin of
> ; Guadalupe six times in his brief arrival statement. She
' appeared to an Indian peasant named Juan Diego in
, 1531, a decade after the brutal Spanish conquest of the
• Aztec empire. She asked him to tell the bishop to build
a church on the hill where she appeared.
But the bishop did not believe Juan Diego. On
Dec. 12, 1531, she appeared again and told him to
pick flowers from the hillside, gather them in his cloak
, and take them to the bishop. When he opened his
~ shroud, it bore her image, that of a dark-faced woman.
The garment has hung ever since in series of
churches built on the site. The newest basilica, a cylin
drical building built in 1976, is the most visited shrine
in the world, after St. Peter’s in Rome. “For us, she is
the mother of Mexico, and she is my mother. She is
dark like us. We adore her every day," Clara Frias
I Tapia, 55, told a reporter.
In St. Louis, the Pope insightfully recalled the
• 1857 Dred Scott decision, a Missouri case in which
the Supreme Court declared “an entire class of human
beings, people of African descent, outside...the
Constitution’s protection. America faces a similar time
of trial today." he added,
“Today the conflict is between a culture that
affirms, cherishes and celebrates life and a culture that
■' ' . . t
many military and congressional
leaders have expressed concern about
the crisis of too little money, too
many world-wide military obliga
tions. We have the obligation to
repair this problem quickly.
The Clinton Administration’s
misplaced priorities have downgrad
ed our military to the point where it
is extremely difficult for our armed
forces to accomplish the critical mis
sions with which they are tasked.
Current strategy calls for a military
capable of winning two major, near
simultaneous conflicts. For example,
if a war breaks out in Iraq, followed a
week later by a military crisis in
North Korea, our armed forces must
be ready to fight and win both con
tests.
In light of the volumes of evi
dence describing our deteriorating
military, the Clinton Administration
had maintained that, while some
units are experiencing problems with
equipment readiness and personnel
shortages, the “first-to-fight” units
were prepared to go to war. Even that
line has been crossed. The Pentagon
has acknowledged in its most recent
quarterly readiness report to
Congress that those units which
would lead our nation into conflict
are straining under lower defense
budgets.
Congress has taken steps to
address these military funding short
falls. But the price of the
Administration’s dormancy will be
greater than the $1.3 billion included
in our most recent budget and the
proposed sl2 billion increase, real or
otherwise, in the President’s budget
for next year. In addition to military
readiness, our soldiers must have a
quality standard of living. It is unac
ceptable for our servicemen and
women to qualify for food stamps, or
live in sub-standard housing. It is also
unacceptable for those who devote
their lives to military service to
receive little more than a hand shake
upon retirement. These fine men and
women make tremendous sacrifices,
and we owe them nothing less than
an acceptable quality of life.
Every one of us should remember
that freedom is never free. While
Congress has placed a bandage on
the bleeding, this readiness problem
will not go away without direct atten
tion. Rebuilding the military is a
small price to pay to ensure freedom
for all Americans.
Mike
LHM McManus
___
time of holiness” across the
Americas, linking North and South America against
the “social sins” of violence and injustice. In the
Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, he spoke in
English, calling for “No more violence, terrorism and
drug trafficking. No more torture or other forms of
abuse.” Applause erupted after each sentence.
In St. Louis, he thanked “The American people for
the countless works of human goodness” which “have
been such a part of the history of your country. I know
that you will hear my plea to open wide your hearts to
the ever-increasing plight and urgent needs of our less
fortunate brothers and sisters throughout the world.”
In his first major message to the Americas as a
whole, a 135-page exhortation, “Ecclesia in America,”
he acknowledges that many of the hemisphere’s 500 |
million Catholics are only nominally Catholic, but
called on them to engage in intense prayer, and to seek
“a personal encounter with Christ.” He said the church I
needs “new order, methods and expression” for a “new
evangelization of America.”
He noted the Americas are tied together by immi
gration and Latin America’s $697 billion debt. “The
decision to speak of ‘America’ in the singular,” John
Paul explains in the document, “was an attempt to
express not only the unity which in some way already
exists, but also to point to that closer bond which the
peoples of the continent seek and which the church
wishes to foster.
“In America as elsewhere in the world, a model of
society appears to be emerging in which the powerful
predominate, setting aside and even eliminating the
powerless.” While he called for a “preferential love for
the poor,” he added, “If evangelization of the leader
ship sector is neglected, it should not come as a sur
prise that many who are a part of it will be guided by
criteria alien to the Gospel and at times openly con
trary to it.”
This Pope speaks to all of us, inspiring any who
listen. That is his appeal.
> i i i
Our values show in the choices we make
My grandfather was a farmer by trade. He
grew up around Fairmount and Jasper. He was a
colorful character even to me, a child. He was
gruff at times and I don’t recall ever seeing
much of a smile on his face, a bit frightening to
a small child. His face reflected a hard life and
was creased and weather worn from long years
of farming. I know from conversations with my
Dad that his father was often a hard man to
understand.
Grandfather was well known as a trader. For
several years after the war, he bought and sold
the same Jeep many times, always making
money on both the purchase and selling prices.
The tale is told that he was sitting with a group
of farmers in front of the Mercantile store in
Jasper when another farmer approached him
about buying some pigs. Grandfather made him
a price on the pigs, sight unseen, and before he
left town a few hours later, he had sold the pigs
to another farmer, at a profit.
While I was still in high school my
Grandfather passed away. He was still a colorful
character at age 87. He had plowed his two-acre
garden that year with a team of mules and only
claimed to be a little sore from the rope around
WHAT YOU THINKtrom 10A
• • •
An absolute zoning moratorium
is needed in this county and the
metro area in general. If Bill
Jenkins should not vote on Zoning
Application #2275 , Kroger at Old
Atlanta and Sharon Road, as you
keep reporting, then should not
Keefer, a developer and by defini
tion not objective, and Bennett, a a
big land owner, and Bowen, not
vote on such zoning applications.
Pat Topping , a nice guy, but a hired
gun for the business community to
develop and destroy even tree
standing . Why? I don’t believe that
going back to Macon story.
Remember the homeowners, the
little guys keep your paper and your
salary going, not developers and big
business.
• • •
What so you think about the
Clinton impeachment vote? Do
you support impeachment? Why?
Why not?
• • •
Impeached! The American
Justice System!
When Newt Gingrich was taped
by the Florida couple because of his
ethics violations they would do
nothing about it because it was ille
gally taped. The couple was penal
ized.
When Linda Tripp illegally
seeks to declare entire groups of
human beings: the unborn, the ter
minally ill, the handicapped and
others considered ‘unuseful,’ to be
outside the boundaries of legal pro
tection.”
John Paul is also inspirational
in what he says. He challenged
Catholics to ‘‘stir up a new spring-
Julianne
Boling
I
his shoulders. Any reference to his ability to
make a “good trade” always resulted in state
ments concerning the special skills needed for
trading, but the most important aspect, he said,
was knowing what to keep and what to trade.
Our lives are constantly filled with “trading”
situations. We may be asked to trade our princi
ples for a little more profit. We may be faced
with a proposal that would trade our integrity
and reputation for position and fame. In the
social world we are often called upon to trade
loyalty for prestige, character for credibility,
idle chit chat for gossip. In the world of power,
business and politics, people are called upon to
trade friends for the right acquaintances, facts
taped Monica Lewinsky she went to
Kenneth Starr. Instead of obeying
the law Starr asked the FBI to wire
her to do more illegal taping. Can
just anyone go to the FBI and
request that they wire them so they
can illegally tape someone. At the
point in time Starr was special pros
ecutor for Whitewater, Travel Gate,
File Gate and Vincent Foster death
(third investigation).
After the second illegal taping
Starr goes to Janet Reno with an
emergency request to be appointed
special prosecutor for Clinton-
Lewinsky. It seems that he had
advised Paula Jones’ lawyers before
he was appointed special prosecu
tor. My understanding is that he did
not tell Reno about this.
Why was he so interested in
“getting Bill Clinton?” I understand
that had George Bush been elected
he was expecting an appointment to
the Supreme Court; also, his law
firm represents Big Tobacco.
Tripp takes the tapes to Jones’
Valentine's Day
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I the FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS
ForsythCountyNews
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS Sund»y, Jarnwy >l,lW>
lawyers who are representing her in
a sexual harassment case. The
tapes show that the Lewinsky affair
was consensual. This was mixing
apples and oranges. Clinton should
not have been deposed about
Lewinsky and Lewinsky should not
have been asked to submit an affi
davit.
Lewinsky was told if she did
not testify they would indict her
and her mother on felony charges
and would be imprisoned for 27
years. They gave her contractual
immunity and she had to answer
the questions like they wanted her
to.
I read that they spent 120 hours
with Linda Tripp telling her the
questions they were going to ask
her and how they wanted them
answered. She was also given con
tractual immunity.
The Republican members of the
house say he lied under oath and it
was terrible. When the Tobacco
CEOs lied under oath they did not
for fabrications, and right for wrong as they Are
forced to hide behind a facade of deception to
win the accolades of people they do not even
respect.
I have among my collections these words
about The Philosopher: “I saw him sitting in his
door, trembling as old men do; his house was
old, his team was old, and yet his eyes seemed
new. His eyes had seen three times my years,
and kept a twinkle still, though they had looked
at birth and death and three graves on a hill. T
will sit down with you and you will me
wise; tell me how you have kept the joy Still
burning in your eyes?’ Then like an old time
orator, impressively he rose. *1 make the most of
all that comes, and the least of all that goes! I"
How difficult we seem to want to make the
situations of life where the choices should be
simple, where loyalty and right from wrong
should take precedence over prestige, power and
position. Over and over in the course of ourlife
time we will ask ourselves these questions:
What am I willing to trade? What is worth keep
ing and what am I willing to exchange? The
answers to these questions will certainly explain
your values.
seem upset. They helped kill.the
tobacco settlement for them.
In my opinion this is an illegal
Republican political coup! this
should have stopped with the ille
gal taping.
Toothpaste cannot be put back
in the tube so I suggest the follow
ing.
Starr go to the well of The
House, The Senate and then go on
TV and tell how he has illegally
treated the President and the
American people. Linda Tripp <b
the same plus follow Starr’s diuigh
ter the rest of her college days with
a tape recorder and tape everythin;
she says.
Starr’s daughter go on TV and
apologize to Chelsea Clinton for all
the things Starr did to embarrass
Chelsea. She should do this seyeral
times, so we can decide if she’s
sincere.
The American people are. fair
minded. I think this accounts for
Clinton’s high approval rating.,’
PAGE 11A