New York Times
If, starting next month, your neighbors begin showing unexpected interest in your travel plans, your cable TV repairman asks what magazines you subscribe to and the pizza delivery boy starts trying to draw you out about your views on the Middle East, it could be that everyone is just getting a lot friendlier. But it is more likely that you are being engaged by some of the early participants in the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS. The Bush administration plans to enlist millions of Americans to spy on their fellow Americans, and to feed that information into a centralized database. This ill-considered domestic spying program should be stopped before it starts.
The Bush administration, which plans to start the program in the late summer or early fall, is in discussions with industry groups whose members might be enlisted to engage in spying. ...
Even if it is limited to public places, the program is offensive. The idea of citizens spying on citizens, and the government collecting data on everyone who is accused, is a staple of totalitarian regimes. ... Fortunately, TIPS is already facing opposition. The American Civil Liberties Union, not surprisingly, has denounced the program. But so, too, has Dick Armey, the House Republican leader. The Postal Service has already expressed serious reservations about participating. And the initial version of the bill to create a Homeland Security Department, introduced by Mr. Armey, includes language that would prevent TIPS from going forward.
The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism tactics -- secret detentions of suspects, denial of the right to trial and now citizen spying -- have in common a lack of faith in democratic institutions and a free society. If TIPS is ever put into effect, the first people who should be turned in as a threat to our way of life are the Justice Department officials who thought up this most un-American of programs.
Washington Times
Most researchers, policy analysts and public observers disapproved of last month's recommendation by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to vaccinate only about 20,000 U.S. health-care workers against smallpox. Now, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services say they want to vaccinate even more workers, perhaps upward of a half-million, beginning as early as the fall.
Vaccinating roughly 40 percent of the nation's emergency health-care cadre would certainly be a great step forward. Ultimately, however, Americans must be able to choose for themselves whether to receive the vaccine. While making the smallpox vaccine available to everyone presents technical and bureaucratic challenges, U.S. health officials should not let these stand in the way of the public's right to choose if they should receive the vaccine. ...
Although these important complications might discourage the implementation of a public vaccination program, the Department of Health and Human Services must make the vaccine available to all. The protection of the personal health and freedom of Americans is well worth the time and effort.
These procedural and legal complications -- though valid -- must not be used as justification for bureaucratic inertia. They are problems to be solved with some dispatch by the secretary.
Chicago Tribune
If Yale public health specialist Edward H. Kaplan and his colleagues are right, a smallpox attack on an American city could explode into a full blown epidemic and kill 110,000 Americans in a year before public health officials could rein it in.
That study is one of the latest -- and scariest -- in an intense firefight between the federal government and some leading public health researchers over how to best prepare for the threat of a terrorist smallpox attack. While the dueling likely will continue at least until the end of the year, most Americans are left to wonder what they should do.
The short answer: Nothing yet, because the government doesn't have enough vaccine for all Americans. Moreover, there are no plans to offer voluntary smallpox vaccinations even when it does. That is a mistake. The government should be planning now to make the vaccine available and let people and their doctors decide whether to take it. ...
The best protection of all, studies show, would be a widespread inoculation of the United States population before an attack.
Public health officials are reluctant, however, because the smallpox vaccination is especially risky. One or two people in a million will die from it, and others will suffer serious side effects, such as encephalitis. In some cases, the vaccine can overwhelm the immune system -- particularly in HIV patients or cancer survivors -- and some could get seriously ill simply by being in contact with someone who is vaccinated but doesn't have the disease.
Some experts, too, have been skeptical of the threat of a smallpox terrorist attack, pointing out that there are many other potential bioterror weapons. But the smallpox debate has taken on greater urgency in recent weeks as the Bush administration has talked tough about a possible invasion of Iraq, a country suspected of harboring secret stocks of the virus. ...
Given the serious nature of the threat and the vulnerability of the population, it makes sense for the government to make smallpox vaccine widely available.
A recent poll by Harvard University's School of Public Health showed three out of five Americans said they were willing to be immunized, despite the health risks, and even though no imminent threat of such an attack exists. Some believe that all the preparations for a smallpox attack make it less likely that an enemy would try to use such a weapon. Good. The more vaccinated, the stronger that argument--and the sooner America can return to a time when the threat of smallpox existed only in history books.
Dallas Morning News
Afghanistan is a rough place, even for those supposedly protected. The recent assassination of Abdul Qadir, one of Afghanistan's five vice presidents, highlights the uneasy state of affairs.
The attack on Mr. Qadir is just the most recent assault on new Afghan leadership. Interim Afghan Cabinet minister Abdul Rahman was killed in February. In April, the Afghan defense minister was targeted.
Countries do risk losing leaders to zealots angered over policy. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been a target of religious extremists for his support of the campaign against al Qaida. However, the attacks on Afghan interim government officials including Mr. Qadir, a Pashtun warlord with prior links to the drug trade, appear more a product of rival gangs than rival ideologies. And that problem must be resolved if Afghanistan is to avoid the thinning of its leadership ranks and the traumatizing of its population.
Two things are key -- internal security and an understanding that more can be gained from cooperation than confrontation.
Security is a major problem. Although international peacekeepers have agreed to start training bodyguards for Afghan officials, that doesn't help the rest of the population. The international security assistance force is deployed only in Kabul, the capital. Outside Kabul, regional warlords still maintain private armies in an attempt to keep peace -- or not. Conditions are especially bad in northern Afghanistan, where humanitarian aid supplies are threatened. ...
The United States must take the lead in helping establish peace if it ever wants to finish fighting the war. That means building the framework for a civil society in a country whose fractious history continues to plague it. Mr. Karzai, whose father was assassinated by the Taliban in 1999, knows that a powerful central government is never likely to emerge. But foreign powers with American encouragement must help establish the security needed to rebuild a viable society.
Miami Herald
The Irish Republican Army, the most murderous terrorist group in Northern Ireland's three decades of civil conflict, delivered a stunning message last week: ''We offer our sincere apologies and condolences'' to the families of the thousands of civilians killed and injured as a result of the IRA's actions.
The apology alone won't guarantee lasting peace where Catholics and Protestants have been warring for centuries. But it does suggest an important lesson that bodes well for the Good Friday peace process underway. ''The process of conflict resolution requires the equal acknowledgment of the grief and loss of others,'' the IRA apology said. ``We are endeavoring to fulfill this responsibility to those we have hurt.''
Terrorism by any other name is still terrorism. Even worthy ends do not justify torture, bombing and killing of civilians. Such violence breeds only more violence and hate. The scars left behind become barriers to national reconciliation.
Northern Ireland's Catholic minority has had legitimate complaints, which explain the group's separatist aspirations. Most in the Protestant majority wish to remain a part of Britain. Paramilitary groups from both sides have waged bloody battle since 1968. But a shaky cease-fire has been in place for five years.
As the IRS message said, ''The future will not be found in denying collective failures and mistakes, or closing minds and hearts to the plight of those who have been hurt.'' Whatever the motive, the IRA offered welcome acknowledgment and hope for an eventual end to the violence.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
