What U.S. newspapers are saying

New York Times

As a potential target of Iraq's unconventional weapons, Israel is a crucially interested party in America's looming confrontation with Baghdad. When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meets with President Bush today in Washington, the two leaders need to discuss ways that Israel can defend its citizens without undercutting American diplomatic and military strategy.

These are sensitive subjects. Mr. Sharon's recent loose talk about retaliation against Iraq could make things easier for Saddam Hussein. And while Israel's need to defend itself is obvious, it has been doing so in ways that are causing unnecessary suffering of innocent Palestinians, complicating America's relations with Arab and Muslim countries whose support is needed against Iraq.

When Baghdad launched conventionally armed Scud missiles against Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Israeli leaders wisely agreed to let Washington respond. Mr. Sharon has suggested that he might not be restrained if Iraq attacked Israeli cities again, especially if it used biological or chemical weapons. Raising the possibility of a devastating Israeli counterattack is one thing. Actually carrying one out is another. The last thing Mr. Sharon should want would be to let Baghdad shift the focus off its own illegal weapons and onto the possibility of a new Arab-Israeli war. ...

It is reasonable for Mr. Bush, facing war in the Mideast, to ask his closest regional ally to contribute constructively toward the mutually desirable goal of disarming Iraq. Reducing unnecessary Palestinian suffering is one requirement.

Washington Times

Soldiers who remain missing in action, even long after the war they fought ended, are an open wound that never heals entirely. But prisoners of war usually come home. Some, such as those who survived the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" in Vietnam, do so after horrific mistreatment by their captors. Last Friday, as American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were again leaving their homes and families to deploy for a likely war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Navy Secretary Gordon England signed a memo changing the status of Navy pilot Michael "Scott" Speicher from "missing in action" to "missing/captured." If then-Lt. Cmdr. Speicher (since promoted to captain) is still alive, that day was about two weeks shy of his 4,300th day in captivity.

Capt. Speicher was flying an F/A-18 when he was shot down Jan. 17, 1991 -- the first day of the air war. Originally, he was classified missing in action. In May 1991, his family went through the agony of hearing that he had been declared "killed in action/body not recovered." Four years later, investigators from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Navy and the Army excavated the site where Capt. Speicher's aircraft crashed, and came back with disturbing evidence that he might still be alive. Only last year, then-Navy Secretary Richard Danzig changed Capt. Speicher's status back to missing in action. Now, Mr. England -- in what may be an unprecedented action -- has again changed Capt. Speicher's status to one that says that, if he is alive, he is, and has been for nearly 12 years, a prisoner in Iraq. ...

Iraq, as it has shown in decades of war and oppression, is capable of the most bestial treatment of its prisoners. We may never know what happened to him. But if Scott Speicher is alive, he has survived longer than any prisoner of war of whom we are aware. America has a sacred duty to every one of its fighting men and women. If Capt. Speicher can be brought home alive, we should spare no effort to do so.

Boston Herald

The terrible bombing of nightclubs on the Indonesian resort island of Bali may prompt Pentagon officials to press the case for renewing ties to the Indonesian military. This should be done.

Ordinary military-to-military relations were forbidden by Congress a few years ago when it became clear that the Indonesian military was heavily engaged in the killing of civilians by paramilitary groups, notably in occupied East Timor.

In the long years of the Cold War, American officers no doubt did cooperate in ways they should not have with some foreign militaries. But despite the myths cherished by the American left, U.S. officers on the whole probably have been a force for moderation, stability and professionalism wherever they have worked.

Indonesia is not going to fight its neighbors, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. But the country long has been struggling with separatist guerrilla movements, as in Aceh province on Sumatra. The government, after many months of denying the threat, now admits that it is fighting al Qaida. ...

Indonesia's cooperation in the fight against al Qaida ought to helped in any possible way, and good relations with Indonesian soldiers can be an important part of achieving that goal.

Chicago Tribune

The massacre in Bali and several other terrorist incidents in the past few weeks -- the bombing of a French supertanker off the coast of Yemen, the killings of a Marine in Kuwait and a Green Beret in the Philippines -- send several ominous messages. Indonesia must quit dodging its responsibility to deal with Muslim terrorists. All Western democracies, not just the United States, are terrorist targets.

Most important, al Qaida's apparent fingerprints on each of these incidents signal that it will take far more than a few strategic blows, such as the defeat of the Taliban or even a regime change in Iraq, to control the worldwide wave of terror by Muslim extremists.

It's going to be a long, door-to-door guerrilla war that will require steadfastness, ingenuity and cooperation with U.S. allies. It will be fought here as well as abroad, against an enemy that has no headquarters. It will be fought against scattered cells of fanatics whose only commonality is hatred of everything Western. ...

The ongoing reality of terrorism also ought to light a fire under Congress, which has been dawdling over President Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security, primarily because of side issues. Democrats insist on union and civil service protections for the employees of the new department, while Republicans object to freedom of information requirements. ...

A new homeland security agency is no panacea, but an important weapon against imminent terrorist threats. It's time Congress acted on it.

Honolulu Star-Bulletin

South Asia has been regarded as a rear battle zone since the war against terrorism was launched a year ago, but the explosion that killed nearly 200 people in Bali moves it to the front lines. The bombing should bring pressure on the Indonesian government to take stronger action against terrorism and increase attention to a resurgence of terrorist activity in the Philippines that ultimately could threaten Hawaii's security.

The explosion was set off at a nightclub in Bali that catered to foreign tourists. Most of the victims were Australians, who regard Bali in much the same way that Americans view Hawaii as a sunny vacation spot. The targeting of a tourist destination by terrorists linked to the al Qaida organization raises concern to new levels. ...

The bombings in both Indonesia and the Philippines provide stark evidence that terrorist activity is increasing in South Asia. Western-based tourism sites in the Pacific basin need curtains against becoming further horrific scenes in the theater of war.

Houston Chronicle

For long-time watchers of the Middle East it has been a truism that the shortage of water is an issue that gets relatively little discussion but has as much or more explosive potential for conflict as any in the region.

Some have maintained that the next major war in the area will be sparked by water.

Such ominous predictions may be closer to reality these days with Lebanon expected this week to open a pumping station near its southern border to divert water from Israel and supply thirsty Lebanese villages.

The disputed waterway is the Wazzani River, which flows south into the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main source of water.

Israel says any siphoning of water should be limited to meeting the drinking needs of local residents and has warned Beirut that the water project will be considered a casus belli. ...

Water, not oil, is among the most provocative Middle East issues of the moment. Let us hope at this critical juncture that the diplomatic dam isn't allowed to burst.

Los Angeles Times

In his fourth attempt, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is close to winning the presidency of Brazil, the world's eighth-largest economy. Lula took 46 percent of the vote in the first round of the election Sunday and is the clear favorite in the Oct. 27 runoff. Not bad for a man born in Brazil's impoverished northeast who couldn't attend high school and had to go to work at an early age to help support his family.

Lula rose to become the head of the metalworkers union and of the largest leftist political party in Latin America. He's been friends with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuelan demagogue Hugo Chavez. But now he says he's changed.

Can this socialist who says he has reinvented himself be trusted to govern the largest country in South America? Brazilians seem to believe he can, and they had better be right because his success matters -- not just to 170 million Brazilians but to other countries in the region and to the United States. ...

The Bush administration should take a prudent but friendly approach to Lula and seek an early meeting. That would signal to the international financial community that Washington would cooperate with the formerly bombastic socialist Lula.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Irish Republican Army already was an obsolete and destructive relic by Good Friday of 1998, when Roman Catholics and Protestants agreed on a historic measure to share power in Northern Ireland, which had been savaged by 30 years of sectarian violence. Yet the IRA continues not only to exist, but to pose a continuing and worsening danger to peace in Ulster.

This week, in an attempt to hold the power-sharing arrangement together, the British government suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly, the home-rule parliament established by the Good Friday agreement. It did so in the face of evidence that the IRA was continuing its paramilitary activities even as its political wing, the Sinn Fein, was taking part in the ruling assembly. ...

If the IRA can't or won't disband, it should at least abandon violence in Ulster. Gerry Adams, who heads Sinn Fein, and other politicians must bring home that message to the die-hards. If the leaders fail to do this, Ulster will risk a descent into the kind of sectarian violence that killed thousands of people.

(Compiled by United Press International.)