New York Times
With the presidential election now less than two years away, George W. Bush started honing his team yesterday for the coming campaign. He did so by dismissing his top two economic advisers, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Lawrence Lindsey, a White House aide. The decision rids the White House of men whose counsel was not always followed -- and, in the case of Mr. O'Neill, whose political stumbles were legion. Given President Bush's fear of following his father into early retirement because of a weak economy, the shake-up may also be prelude to a new raft of ambitious but ill-advised economic stimulus proposals. ...
Mr. Bush now has an opportunity to appoint a forceful Treasury secretary who can help him shape and communicate the administration's economic policies, and play a leadership role in global economic matters. If he wants that sort of partner, he would be well advised to bypass political operatives and economic ideologues.
Honolulu Advertiser
This time a year ago, the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was still in shock following the deadly Sept. 11 attacks.
Considerable ink and wind was expended on debating whether 9/11 was "another Pearl Harbor."
Yes and no, we reflected.
"While Sept. 11 was a largely unexpected and seemingly symbolic terror attack on unknowing civilians," we wrote, "the Pearl Harbor attack was a carefully planned, forewarned and -- in some quarters, at least -- anticipated attack on strategic military targets."
Today, there's budding evidence that the nation was at least as forewarned as it was in 1941. ...
The lessons that Pearl Harbor continues to offer revolve around the American spirit of resilience and courage; that confidence (call it Yankee defiance, if you wish) that allowed them to bounce back after the events of Dec. 7, 1941.
There's no evidence that spirit is in any way lacking 61 years later.
What has changed is a precise notion of who the enemy is and how we'll know when he, or they, are defeated unconditionally.
Washington Times
The Gloomy Gus who regularly moans that the world is becoming a worse place was proved wrong on Thursday, when U Ne Win, 91 and the former military dictator of Burma, quietly passed away at his lakeside villa near Rangoon.
Ne Win rose to power in the late 1930s as a leader in Burma's efforts to establish autonomous rule. He first trained and fought with the Japanese against British forces in World War II, and then turned his guns on the Japanese upon learning of their own colonial designs. After a period of relative growth and stability, Ne Win seized power in a 1962 military coup and instituted his particular brand of xenophobic socialism. Over the course of the next three decades, Burma, once a crown jewel of the British Empire, was reduced to unspeakable poverty and oppression. ...
Ne Win was quickly and quietly cremated yesterday, his ashes scattered in the Yangon River. If only the Burmese people could wash away just as easily the wreck and ruin he visited upon them.
Washington Post
Adel al-Jubeir, the suave Saudi spokesman, was back in town this week to argue that American perceptions that his government has not been a cooperative partner in the war on terrorism are based on simple misunderstandings -- "a bum rap," as Mr. al-Jubeir put it in his flawlessly colloquial English. Part of the problem, he said, is that Saudi authorities have not publicly explained how much they have been doing to block funding for terrorist organizations; another difficulty is that different parts of the U.S. bureaucracy aren't communicating with one another. "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" goes the Saudi complaint about officials at State, Treasury and the White House, who allegedly bombard Riyadh with demands for information that has already been provided, or for action that has already been taken.
Perhaps there is something to that, and yet the Saudis seem to be having their own problems with internal coordination. Even as Mr. al-Jubeir was broadcasting his "we are in this together" message to every American microphone and camera he could find, his government's interior minister was arguing that U.S. media are controlled by "Zionists" and that Israel, not Osama bin Laden, was behind the 9/11 attacks. "It's impossible" that al Qaida carried out the assault on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, or that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, the interior minister, Prince Nayef, said in an interview posted on the Internet by a magazine published by the Saudi royal family. "I think they (the Zionists) are behind these events."
So who are we to believe? The urbane spin-doctor who assures us that the Saudi leadership is as committed to stamping out al Qaida as the Bush administration -- or the prince back home who says Israel, and not the Saudi-born terrorist leader, is the enemy? The slang-friendly spokesman who posits that Osama bin Laden deliberately recruited Saudis for his hijacking teams so as to drive a wedge between otherwise fast friends -- or the police chief who still denies that Saudi citizens were involved? ...
One or the other might be dismissed as a fraud, but the more troubling reality is that both are real, and both are part of Saudi Arabia's relationship with the United States. No wonder, Mr. al-Jubeir, that we are confused.
Dallas Morning News
Today is a key date in the colossal test of wills between President Bush and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. That's when Iraq has said it will submit to the United Nations a full accounting of its weapons programs, meeting the terms of the same U.N. Security Council resolution that sent U.N. weapons inspectors back to Iraq late last month after a hiatus of four years.
Evidently, the Iraqis are preparing to report that they are clean: "The fact is, we don't have weapons of mass destruction -- no chemical, no biological, no nuclear weaponry," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said on Wednesday.
If the Bush administration determines that Iraq is lying, expect the drumbeat of war to strengthen and quicken. The administration has indicated that it will brook no ducking or dodging on Iraq's part, that it would consider evasion to be a material breach of the U.N. resolution and cause for war. As Mr. Bush warned early this week: "Any act of delay, deception or defiance will prove that Saddam Hussein has not adopted the path of compliance and has rejected the path of peace."
The Iraqis would be well advised to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And Mr. Bush would be well advised to back up whatever suspicions he may develop that the Iraqis are cheating.
Building a solid case may take time -- perhaps even beyond the optimal fighting season, which ends with the arrival of Iraq's early and infernal summer. So be it. Better to build such a case than to play into Mr. Hussein's hands by rushing headlong into a battle we might win, but a war we could lose.
(Compiled by United Press International)
