Can This Guy Run the U.N.?




How a quiet Korean diplomat became the favorite for Secretary-General

When Ban Ki Moon received word last week that North Korea might be planning to test a nuclear device, he had reason to be anxious. As South Korea's Foreign Minister, Ban is a key player in the six-party talks aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear program. A test would scuttle those talks and likely lead to a renewed U.S. push for sanctions against North Korea. And so in the middle of Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving, Ban, 62, was on the phone to his counterparts in Moscow, Beijing, Washington and Tokyo, building a response to the North Korean announcement. Speaking to TIME between calls, Ban said he was "much worried and troubled" about the possibility of a nuclear test. That's in part because of the impact it could have on the job he may be about to land: Secretary-General of the United Nations. "I hope this situation will not cause any problems to my current candidacy," he says.

With the 192-nation General Assembly likely to vote on the next head of the U.N. this week, Ban has emerged as the clear favorite to replace outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan. If Ban gets the job, he'll have to get used to managing problems beyond the Korean peninsula. With the world confronting conflicts from Darfur to Afghanistan, many people expect the Secretary-General to be a global avatar of peace, as Annan in his best moments sought to be. Just as daunting is the challenge of cleaning house at the U.N., which has been dogged for years by mismanagement, inefficiency and corruption--crystallized in the oil-for-food scandal that tarnished Annan's tenure. Add to that the task of refereeing between the U.S. and countries like Russia and China, which are determined to chart their own course, and you get an idea why Annan calls it "the most impossible job in the world." "It would help if the next Secretary-General was a brilliant, compelling leader," says a U.N. official. "But to actually be chosen for the job, the candidate must be a person who offends no one."

Inoffensiveness is Ban's outstanding quality. He has spent 36 years as a diplomat, almost all of them outside the spotlight. His peers praise his understated "Confucian approach," as one Chinese expert puts it, but some wonder whether Ban has the steel to play a leading role on the international stage--a question that's been sharpened by North Korea's latest provocation. "This will be the first time he's ever been his own boss," says Peter Beck, the Seoul-based director of the International Crisis Group's Northeast Asia project. "Can he really assert himself and stand up to governments that act contrary to the U.N.?" His allies say that it's a mistake to assume that Ban is as diffident as he might sometimes appear. "It's a typical Oriental style," says Yoon Young Kwan, Ban's predecessor as South Korean Foreign Minister. "He is soft-spoken, but inside he has a strong view and strong motivation."

A self-described "country boy," Ban was born in 1944, when South Korea was under Japanese occupation, and spent his childhood in the shadow of the Korean War. He had diplomatic postings in New Delhi and Washington, at the U.N. and in Vienna before becoming South Korea's Foreign Minister in 2004. The years abroad gave him global contacts and helped protect his reputation from the taint of South Korea's toxic political environment. "He doesn't make enemies," says Yan Sun Mook, the chairman of the opposition Democratic Party's international-relations committee. "He makes friends." But Ban can also be tough. In the face of opposition from his own diplomats, Ban reformed Seoul's foreign ministry, replacing a promotion system based on seniority with a meritocratic one. He's an "iron fist in a velvet glove," says an aide.

Pursuing the U.N. job has required Ban to make nice with both the U.S. and China, a challenge even for a diplomat of Ban's skills. The U.S. preferred either Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga or former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, but both were vetoed by other permanent Security Council members. Washington's reluctance was due in part to South Korea's growing coziness with China and by Seoul's "sunshine policy" of engagement with Pyongyang, which some Administration officials say has hindered efforts to get tough with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The U.S. is skeptical that Ban, long careful to avoid stepping on toes, would really be willing to challenge the entrenched interests inside the U.N. that are opposed to reform.

Ban dismisses the notion that the U.S. and South Korea have drifted apart: "We are going through a very important transformation period, but our relationship is very sound and healthy." So far, reaction to Pyongyang's announcement of a planned nuclear test has been unified, with even China, the closest country North Korea has to an ally, warning Pyongyang that a test would bring "serious consequences." Ban is so intent on resolving the North Korean dispute that he says he might visit Pyongyang himself as Secretary-General--something Annan never did. "I've gained a deeper experience and understanding into this complex issue," he says. "Having known all the history and background and having known people in both the South and the North, I'm convinced I can do much better than any other person." He may soon get the chance to prove it.

With reporting by With reporting by Susan Jakes/Beijing, Jennifer Veale/ Seoul, Adam Zagorin/ Washington

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A New Nuclear World



North Korea's nuclear weapons test creates serious problems for the U.S. and its allies in trying to rein in the rogue state—and opens a dangerous new chapter in nuclear proliferation.

At roughly 10:30 Monday morning Pyongyang time, the number of card carrying members of a once exclusive club—those countries armed with nuclear weapons—increased yet again. In a mountainous region 385 km northeast of the North Korean capital, Kim Jong Il's government showed that it was as good as its word when it comes to saber-rattling. After warning last week that it intended to test a nuclear weapon, it did—defying the international community and daring it to do something in response.

Rhetorically, at least, the response was swift. China, typically thought of as the only nation with any influence on North Korea, said the test was "brazen" and that Beijing "resolutely opposed" it. New Japanese leader Shinzo Abe, on his first visit to South Korea as Prime Minister, said in Seoul that a nuclear North posed a "grave danger" to Japan. Meanwhile, South Korea's Prime Minister Roh Moo Hyun said his government would react "calmly, but sternly." All were waiting on an official response from the Bush administration, whose envoy Christopher Hill had said in a speech last week that the US "could not live" with a nuclear North.

But the question Washington woke up to Monday morning was starkly simple: what other choice does it really have? The fact is, the options available to the U.S. and its partners in trying to contain the North Korean nuclear threat are limited. Most analysts believe there is no plausible military option available: any strike on the North's nuclear facilities would give it enough time to launch artillery strikes across the border, to devastating effect in Seoul. Shoichi Nakagawa, policy chief of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, held out the prospect for further economic sanctions. "We've already imposed financial sanctions, but we'd have to raise the pressure a level by halting imports and exports and conducting inspections of ships" traveling between the two countries.

The U.S. and its partners in East Asia have had a broad array of financial sanctions in place for months—including the closure of accounts in a Macau bank allegedly used by members of Kim's regime to launder tens of millions of dollars—moves which even the Chinese government has supported. Indeed, analysts in Seoul, Beijing and Washington believe Pyongyang's fury over the sanctions was one of the reasons behind its defiant nuclear test. But cutting off North Korea completely—what hawks in the Bush administration have in the past referred to as the "strangulation strategy"—is unlikely, because neither Beijing nor even Seoul are likely to go along. More than anything, China seeks stability on the Korean peninsula; the idea of thousands of economic refugees pouring across the North Korean border and into northeastern China gives Beijing nightmares. Though Beijing provides up to half of North Korea's oil and a substantial amount of its food, "there is a limit as to what they can and will do," says Daniel Pinkston, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

The grim result is that the world may have to live with a nuclear North Korea—a reality that will likely have ripple effects across the global security landscape. Already, in Japan, advisers close to Prime Minister Abe are calling for Japan to go nuclear itself, despite its so-called "pacifist" constitution. "A missile defense system alone cannot protect Japan from a nuclear attack," Terumasa Nakanishi, an academic and outside adviser to Abe, told TIME Monday. "The only way to repress a North Korean nuclear attack is by possessing nuclear capabilities." Japan—the only country to suffer the effects of an atomic weapon dropped in anger—"will have to rethink it non-nuclear principles," Nakanishi asserts.

North Korea's ability to weaponize its nuclear capability—by placing it atop a missile, for example—and its ability to fire a missile across vast distances now becomes a critical part of the security calculus in northeast Asia. In mid-July, Pyongyang launched a missile potentially able to travel as far as Alaska or Hawaii, but it crashed just minutes after takeoff. But six other shorter-range missiles—all of which could hit Tokyo—were tested successfully. "The United States may be concerned," says Masahiro Sakamoto, vice president at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo, "but for Japan this is a direct threat."

And the faster North Korea is able to climb the nuclear learning curve, the more acute the dilemma for Washington's allies in the region gets. If Pyongyang could hit Tokyo but could credibly threaten Tacoma, Washington at the same time, would the US respond as vociferously to an attack on Japan? Wouldn't Tokyo—or Seoul—seek its own nuclear deterrent under those circumstances?

The implications of Pyongyang's new nuclear prowess extend beyond Northeast Asia. Iran's ruling Mullahs are no doubt watching carefully, and may well be heartened by the relative lack of leverage the world seems to have to thwart the North's nuclear ambitions. As one former Defense Department official in Washington puts it, "If the world can't summon the will to apply crippling sanctions against an economic basket case like North Korea, what will it do when it comes to the world's third-largest oil exporter?"

If the answer is as it appears—not much—then Oct. 9 may well mark the crossing of a nuclear Rubicon of sorts. In Congressional testimony last year, Jon Brook Wolfsthal, deputy director for Nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace , said "History may well look back at our failed efforts with North Korea as the turning point when the nuclear dam burst and nuclear weapons became widespread and commonplace in the arsenals of scores of countries." Beyond the many voices raised in opposition to the North's test, the world now waits to see whether anyone will actually do anything about it—or whether Wolfsthal's grim prognosis is, in fact, the future.

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The End of a Revolution




Sex, lies and power games are just the latest symptoms of a Republican Party that has strayed from its ideals

Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left. The epitaph for the movement that started when Newt Gingrich and his forces rose from the back bench of the House chamber in 1994 may well have been written last week in the same medium that incubated it: talk radio. On conservative commentator Laura Ingraham's show, the longest-serving Republican House Speaker in history explained why he would not resign despite a sex scandal that has produced a hail of questions about his leadership and the failure to stop one of his members from cyberstalking teenage congressional pages. "If I fold up my tent and leave," Dennis Hastert told her, "then where does that leave us? If the Democrats sweep, then we'd have no ability to fight back and get our message out."

That quiet admission may have been the most damning one yet in the unfolding scandal surrounding Florida Congressman Mark Foley: holding on to power has become not just the means but also the end for the onetime reformers who in 1994 unseated a calcified and corrupted Democratic majority. Washington scandals, it seems, have been following a Moore's law of their own, coming at a faster clip every time there is a shift in control. It took 40 years for the House Democrats to exhaust their goodwill. It may take only 12 years for the Republicans to get there.

If you think politicians clinging to power isn't big news, then you may have forgotten the pure zeal of Gingrich's original revolutionaries. They swept into Washington on the single promise that they would change Capitol Hill. And for a time, they did. Vowing to finish what Ronald Reagan had started, they stood firm on the three principles that defined conservatism: fiscal responsibility, national security and moral values. Reagan, who had a few scandals in his day, didn't always follow his own rules. But his doctrine turned out to be a good set of talking points for winning elections in a closely divided country, and the takeover was completed with the inauguration of George W. Bush as President.

But after controlling both houses of Congress and the White House for most of Bush's six years in office, the party has a governing record that has come unmoored from those Grand Old Party ideals. The exquisite political machinery that aces the elections has begun to betray the platform. To win votes back home, lawmakers have been spending taxpayer money like sailors on leave, producing the biggest budget deficits in U.S. history. And the party's approach to national security has taken the country into a war that most Americans now believe was a mistake and that the government's own intelligence experts say has shaped "a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

One of the problems is that after the Republicans got into power, the system began to change them, not just the other way around. Among the first promises the G.O.P. majority broke was the setting of term limits. Their longtime frustrations in the minority didn't necessarily make them any better at reaching across the aisle either. Compromise, that most central of congressional checks and balances, has been largely replaced by a kind of calculated cussedness that has left the G.O.P. isolated and exposed in times of crisis.

The current crisis arrived with a sex scandal that has muddied one of the G.O.P.'s few remaining patches of moral high ground: its defense of family values and personal accountability. Although Hastert and other Republican leaders say they heard last fall about the "overfriendly" approaches of a not-so-secretly-gay Congressman to a 16-year-old former page--both majority leader John Boehner and campaign chairman Tom Reynolds say they brought it up with Hastert last spring--they insist they never imagined anything like the more graphic instant messages that subsequently came to light. Boehner spokesman Kevin Madden said his boss was told only that there had been "contact" between Foley and a page, and that his knowledge of even that much came from a fleeting conversation on the House floor. But shouldn't someone have got chills at learning that a 52-year-old man had sent a teenager a creepy e-mail asking for a "pic of you"? Certainly the page understood what the e-mail meant, which is why he forwarded it in August 2005 to the office of Louisiana Congressman Rodney Alexander, who had sponsored him for the page program and who was alarmed enough to take his concern to Boehner. "This freaked me out," the teenager wrote. "Sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick."

The House response was political from the start. Last November, Jeff Trandahl, then clerk of the House, told John Shimkus, the Republican head of the board that oversees the page program, about the less incriminating e-mails. But nobody bothered to inform the board's lone Democrat. Shimkus and Trandahl appear to have done nothing more than give Foley a private warning. When Alexander expanded the circle of those aware of the e-mails the following spring, one of the two people he chose to loop in was Reynolds, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, whose job is managing the election. Foley wasn't even stripped of his co-chairmanship of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

Even after a batch of truly sleazy instant messages was discovered by ABC News, Reynolds' chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who was also a former aide to Foley, tried to solve the political problem by attempting to talk the network out of publishing the worst of the messages. Fordham resigned last week, but he didn't go quietly, the way House leaders had hoped. On his way out, he threw fuel on the political fire by announcing that he had warned Hastert's staff of Foley's "inappropriate behavior" at least three years ago--a charge that Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, denied.

All this suggests that the Republican leaders were motivated much more by fear of electoral fallout than concern for the young pages in their care. And if they were worried that the revelation would hurt their chances of holding on to the House, they turned out to be right. Before the scandal broke, they were beginning to believe that the clouds were finally clearing for them. Their fabled get-out-the-vote and fund-raising operations were nearing full stride just as gas prices were dropping and the national debate was refocusing on their home-court issue of terrorism.

It seems likely that the party will instead need to reckon with sex and scandal throughout the final weeks of the election. As conservative George F. Will, writing in the Washington Post last week, put it, the Foley affair is "a maraschino cherry atop the Democrats' delectable sundae of Republican miseries." In the latest TIME poll, conducted the week after the news broke, nearly 80% of respondents said they were aware of the scandal, and two-thirds of them were convinced that Republican leaders had tried to cover it up. Among the registered voters who were polled, 54% said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, compared with 39% who favored the Republican--nearly a perfect reversal of the 51%-40% advantage the G.O.P. enjoyed as recently as August. There was even worse news in a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center that showed a precipitous drop in Republican support among frequent churchgoers, one of the most important and loyal elements of the G.O.P. base. There's no indication that they are clamoring to be Democrats, but the risk is that they will simply stay home on Election Day.

One of the victims may turn out to be campaign chairman Reynolds, who suddenly found himself running as many as 8 points behind in his upstate New York House-seat re-election bid, which had appeared fairly safe a week earlier. Hastert's job seems secure for the moment, barring any big new revelations, in part because the House Speaker is not merely a party leader; the role was established under the Constitution. It would be difficult to replace Hastert without summoning Congress back into town from the campaign trail. Nor would an ugly fight over who would succeed him be good for the party's prospects in November. Still, Republicans are not particularly eager to be seen with him. His campaign schedule is starting to look a lot lighter, as House candidates across the country are turning down his offers to do fund raisers for them. Even the leadership's much vaunted discipline seems to be in tatters. Majority leader Boehner defended himself last week by attacking Hastert: "My position is, it's in his corner, it's his responsibility." And the third in command, whip Roy Blunt, suggested that things would have been different if he had been informed. Not incidentally, both men are expected to consider making a bid for the top job if Hastert ultimately steps down--and maybe if he doesn't. But by then the job description may be House minority leader.

G.O.P. leaders are so desperate to find someone else to blame that they have been reduced--with no indication that they see the irony--to blaming a vast left-wing conspiracy. "The people who want to see this thing blow up," Hastert told the Chicago Tribune, "are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros," the liberal financier who has become a bogeyman of the right. Hastert went on to say, without producing any proof, that the revelation was the work of Bill Clinton's operatives. But that line of argument, of course, suggests that Republicans would have preferred to keep Foley's secrets locked away, presumably at the pages' peril. And the Democrats for once are showing the good sense to stay out of the way when the other side is self-destructing. Sighed one of the younger House Republican aides who sits in on key meetings: "Foul play on the Democrats' side? If that is the only card left to play, then we are in serious trouble."

THE "DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL" PROBLEM

As Hastert and his forces have been trumpeting their charges against the Democrats, a whisper campaign has been launched in Washington to blame an internal culprit: a "velvet mafia" at the upper levels of G.O.P. leadership on Capitol Hill. Foley, that line of argument went, had been protected by gay staff members like Fordham, Trandahl and others whose names were being widely circulated. Says a top aide: "It looks like they may have tried to handle this among themselves because they were similarly situated."

In many ways, that story line is the product of the strains within the party over homosexuality. It's a tension nearly as deep and tortured as those the Democrats grappled with over race a half-century ago, when they tried--unsuccessfully--to keep an uneasy coalition of Southern segregationists and Northern civil rights advocates from tearing their party apart. Even though many of the G.O.P.'s policies have been hostile to gay rights, its leaders have long followed a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy with what pretty much everyone in Washington knows is a sizable number of closeted Republicans among members of Congress, upper-level staff and top party operatives. Says Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans: "There are a lot of gay Republicans who are working behind the scenes to advance the priorities of this party."

Until now, Republicans were able to manage the conflict. And they managed it by ignoring it. That even became part of an electoral strategy dating back to the 2000 election that suggested there was nothing to be gained by moderation. In a memo he wrote to Karl Rove, Bush pollster Matthew Dowd estimated that truly independent voters had fallen to a mere sliver of the electorate. There were, Dowd concluded, not enough percentage points in being "a uniter, not a divider." The key to winning in a polarized country was mobilizing the conservative base. That year, Bush refused to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, choosing instead to see a handpicked group of gay Republicans, but only after the party's nomination was secured. In 2004, even as Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary was a potential symbol of the party's openheartedness, Republicans put anti-gay-marriage measures on 11 state ballots to drive voter turnout.

But the Foley scandal is making it difficult for the party to look the other way. Last week some conservatives went so far as to insinuate that Foley proves that every gay person is a pedophile waiting to happen. "You don't need 'gaydar' to understand he has certain dispositions," Utah Congressman Chris Cannon told the Deseret News. Televangelist Pat Robertson recommended that G.O.P. leaders simply explain the situation this way: "Well, this man's gay. He does what gay people do."

The resignations of Foley and Fordham sparked fears that other gay Republicans would also soon be forced out of both their closets and their jobs. "Kirk is the fall guy," says gay-rights activist Hilary Rosen. "It's going to be open season on gay Republicans. It's the right wing's perfect storm. They never wanted gays in their party anyway."

RULING WITH AN IRON FIST

Oddly enough, it was a sex scandal in 1998 that brought Hastert from obscurity to the Speaker's chair in the first place. Gingrich had been ousted because his brand of fiery leadership had become such a drag on the party that it lost seats rather than gained them amid the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But his anointed successor, Robert Livingston of Louisiana, suddenly backed out amid revelations of an extramarital affair. That's when the party turned to Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach whose affability and low-key demeanor seemed to guarantee calmer times ahead. He was, after all, the man who said he was too humble to brag about being humble.

And yet the way the House has operated under Hastert has been anything but humble. He quickly came to be viewed as little more than a genial front for then majority leader Tom DeLay, whose nickname--the Hammer--pretty much summed up his leadership touch. "There has been no institutional rule, means, norm or tradition that cannot be set aside to advance a partisan political goal," says Brookings Institution political scientist Thomas Mann, co-author of the recently published book whose title describes Congress as The Broken Branch. In 2003, instead of fashioning a compromise that might woo a few Democrats, Hastert and DeLay held what was supposed to be a 15-min. vote open for three full hours as they squeezed the last Republican votes they needed to pass a bill to provide an expensive prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. Far more than in the past, they brought bills to the floor with no chance of amendment and allowed the normal appropriations process to be circumvented so that pet projects could be funded without scrutiny. When DeLay faced indictment by a Texas grand jury, Hastert changed the Republican rules so that DeLay could stay on as leader--though in the ensuing outcry, he had to reverse himself. Hastert was successful, however, in purging the ethics committee of its chairman and two Republican members who had reprimanded DeLay for misconduct. Stretching the limits of arcane House rules and shuffling committees around may not seem like earthshaking offenses, but they are the same type of procedural strangleholds and power plays that the G.O.P. had hoped to excise from the body politic 12 years ago.

"The Republican Party of 2006 is a tired, cranky shell of the aggressive, reformist movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Frank Luntz, one of the strategists of the G.O.P. takeover, wrote this week in a column for TIME.com "I worked for them. They were friends of mine. These Republicans are not those Republicans."

On policy matters, Hastert's leadership approach has been to act as though the Democrats--and sometimes the Senate--simply do not exist. He squeezes hard-edged partisan bills through the House to please the G.O.P. base, even though they have no chance of ever getting through the Senate and reaching the President's desk. "There have been numerous occasions when bipartisan approaches, which would have benefited our conference more than Democrats, have been rebuffed by the Speaker," complains a senior Republican aide, who says he likes and respects the Speaker. "His strategy seems to be, 'Well, don't worry about it. We'll blame [Democratic Leader Nancy] Pelosi.' That might work in isolated circumstances, but when your party's numbers start to tank, and people want to see that you can govern, that approach is not a solid one."

Party leaders concede the point that their revolution hasn't lived up to everything they promised. But they say voters still see the difference between where the parties stand. Former Republican chairman Ed Gillespie--one of the authors of the Contract with America, on which House Republicans ran in 1994--says, "Our party is still better when it comes to spending than the Democrats, stronger on national security than the Democrats and more likely to share concerns about the coarsening of our culture that a majority of Americans share than the Democrats are." Strategists are putting an optimistic face even on the effects of the Foley scandal, saying their internal polling shows little movement against the G.O.P.

Will the Democrats behave any differently if they retake Congress in November? Some would undoubtedly try to use their majority power to exact revenge for Republican overreach. And history has shown them to be just as capable of the type of ideological drift that is tearing at the G.O.P.

For now, though, the question on everyone's mind is, How do the Republicans find their way from here? A number of conservatives have begun to wonder aloud if it wouldn't be better for the party to lose the House or Senate in November. If the revolutionaries have become the redcoats, then perhaps it's time for another uprising. Send the Republicans back into the wilderness so they can forage for the kind of fresh ideas and guerrilla tactics that made them such a force during their previous march on Washington. They could very well be ready in time for the presidential election in 2008. And while they're out there on the campaign trail, they just might rally around their old general, who will be looking to cap his own hardscrabble journey from political pariah to rehabbed revolutionary. That general, of course, is none other than former Speaker Gingrich, who has been spotted in Iowa, New Hampshire and other battleground states for more than a year now, taking potshots at the Establishment he helped create and rearming himself to storm the next barricade. TIME POLL THE PRESIDENT

Do you approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President?

• Disapprove 57% • Approve 36%

THE CONGRESS

Disapprove of the job the U.S. Congress is doing

• 57% disapprove • 31% approve • 12% Don't know Say they would vote for a Democrat if the congressional election were held today*

• 54% vote for a Democrat • 39% favor a Republican • 7% Other party/ don't know

Think the country would be better off if the Democrats won control of the House

• 49% agree • 38% disagree • 13% Don't know

THE FOLEY CASE 78% of poll respondents were aware of the scandal involving former G.O.P. Congressman Mark Foley. Their views:

Do you think Republican leaders in Congress handled the Foley situation properly, or do you think they tried to cover it up?

• Handled properly 16% • Covered it up 64%

Did the disclosure about Foley's sexually explicit instant messages to teenage congressional pages and the handling of this situation by the House Republican leadership make you less likely to vote for the Republican candidate in your district, more likely, or did it really have no effect on how you will vote?

Less likely 25% More likely 4% No effect 68%

Do you think Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert should resign as Speaker because of his handling of the Foley case?

• Yes 39% • No 38% • Don't know 23%

This TIME poll was conducted by telephone Oct. 3-4 among 1,002 adult Americans by SRBI Public Affairs. The margin of error is 3 percentage points. "Don't know" responses omitted for some questions. *Asked of registered voters

With reporting by With reporting by Mike Allen, Melissa August, Perry Bacon Jr., Brian Bennett, Timothy J. Burger, Massimo Calabresi, James Carney, Ana Marie Cox/ Washington, Jeffrey Ressner/Simi Valley

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Campaign '06: On the Attack in Illinois




The Incumbent governor and his Republican challenger compete to tar each other with the sins of the state's disgraced former chief executive


Retired politicians frequently return to the campaign trail on behalf of grateful candidates seeking an electoral boost. But former Illinois Governor George Ryan has become the focus of that state's current gubenatorial race in a quite different way. Both Democrat incumbent Governor Rod Blagojevich and GOP challenger Judy Baar Topinka, the three-term state treasurer, are scrambling to show that their opponent most closely resembles the disgraced one-term Republican now facing six and a half years in federal prison for corruption and fraud.

So far the evidence is scant that either politician is benefiting from the tactic, which lately has all but squeezed out meaningful discussion of issues like taxes, education and health care. Instead, in relentless TV ads, Blagojevich and Topinka have tried to impugn the ethical standards of the other by invoking Ryan, the current poster boy of scandal in a state where questionable patronage practices have rarely before been a political liability. Blagojevich uses old footage of Topinka, a former member of the Ryan administration, practically swooning as she praises the former governor as "a damn decent guy." Topinka, who has never been implicated as a participant in Ryan's patronage schemes, counters with references to recent revelations of a $1500 "birthday gift" to Blagojevich's then seven-year-old daughter from a friend whose wife had just received a state job. "Isn't our last governor going to jail over this? " the announcer ominously wonders.

Perhaps if Blagojevich, the first Illinois Democrat elected governor since 1972, had not so strongly vowed to end "business as usual" four years ago in taking over a bloated, corruption-plagued Republican administration, voters might not be so cynical about the current dialogue. For more than a year, the Governor's disapproval ratings have topped 50%. Federal authorities are currently investigating "endemic hiring fraud" at the state level, alleging that more than 2,000 politically connected job applicants got special treatment by the Blagojevich administration. Illinois recently disclosed a $3 billion budget deficit for fiscal 2005 that was the largest in the nation. (To be fair, Blagojevich, 49, has improved on the $5 billion deficit that Ryan bequeathed to him.) And though the PR-savvy incumbent has bragged about being an "education governor" in announcing initiatives to expand preschool opportunities and toughen academic requirements for high school graduates, Illinois continues to rank near the bottom in state education spending.

Still, the pugnacious Blagojevich, a former Golden Gloves boxer, has a few important advantages. Topinka, 62, currently the only statewide GOP office holder, has a brusque, sometimes cartoonish style that has made her uphill battle even steeper. Though the treasurer, a social moderate, clinched enough votes in March to snatch the nomination in the bloody, five-person circular firing squad otherwise known as the GOP primary, her campaign quickly lost steam. In a September poll of 600 likely voters, Blagojevich led Topinka 45% to 33%. "She just hasn't been able to capitalize on the negatives associated with the governor," said Jay Stewart executive director of the of the Better Government Association, a non-partisan watchdog group based in Chicago.

For most of the summer, Topinka's failure to offer specifics about how she would institute fiscal discipline or deal with unsustainable long-range spending obligations that legislators have agreed to — for everything from Medicaid expenses to public employee pensions — kept her from looking like a serious contender. But in late August she took an important step in announcing a four-year revenue plan that depends on the controversial notion of opening Chicago's first casino to help provide billions of dollars for public schools and property tax relief. Topinka, like Blagojevich, has been averse to raising sales or income taxes to generate revenue, though the challenger insists she wouldn't rule out those measures as a last resort.

The governor's supporters were quick to jump on technical flaws in Topinka's proposal. Blagojevich's own education spending plan involves selling or leasing the state lottery to provide a short-term cash infusion for schools, but no sustainable revenue stream. "It's never been clear that he has any real interest or commitment to policy. He's all about winning the next election," said Charles Wheeler, a political columnist and professor of public affairs reporting at the University of Illinois-Springfield.

Even if Topinka finds her mojo with a Windy City casino, the governor has another big advantage. Over the past few years, Blagojevich has amassed a campaign war chest of more than $20 million. Over the summer, he had $12 million on hand while Topinka reported just $1.5 million in the bank. In a match-up where neither candidate's policy agenda has found much traction, it's hard to bet against the one whose budget for attack ads is virtually limitless.

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Turning Hunger Into Hatred




With Israeli bombs still falling on Gaza and gunmen feuding in its streets, dreams of peace are fading fast
.

The Palestinians in Gaza have come to dread the phone ringing at midnight. Too often a stranger's voice, in flawless Arabic, will say, "I'm from the Israel Defense Forces. This is a warning. We're going to bomb your house in 15 minutes. Leave and tell your neighbors." Usually the Israeli intelligence is accurate--Gaza seethes with Palestinian informers--and the bombs, dropped by an F-16 fighter circling this narrow coastal strip on the Mediterranean, will destroy a hideout, weapons cache or hidden tunnel.

But often those warnings aren't enough to save the innocent. One day last month, the Israelis dropped two enormous charges on a house in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, where smugglers were trying to tunnel into Egypt under a 25-ft.-high concrete wall built by the Israelis. There had been the usual telephone heads-up, but the blasts were so fierce that flying debris injured 50 neighbors. A spear of shrapnel flew more than 500 yds. away and killed a 14-year-old girl, Damilaz Hamad. According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Damilaz is among 60 women and children killed in air strikes since June, when Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in response to the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit. At Damilaz's funeral, militants in black T shirts fired AK-47s in the air. On a white wall, someone had sprayed the words CONGRATULATIONS TO THE FAMILY FOR THE MARTYRDOM OF DAMILAZ HAMAD. The only genuine grief was from the girl's paraplegic mother, who lay crumpled on a mattress on a dirty floor, wailing for her lost daughter. I listened to friends trying to convince the family that Allah had singled out Damilaz, instead of all the ruffians and murderers in this blighted stretch of Gaza, for an early death because her suffering was sure to be rewarded in paradise. Otherwise, my interpreter explained to me, "her death will seem pointless, and her family will grieve more."

For the Palestinians, sorrow has become routine. While the international community has committed itself to enforcing the two-month-old cease-fire between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon, the siege of Gaza and its 1.4 million inhabitants goes on, battering the territory's infrastructure, paralyzing its economy and leaving what's left of the Palestinian government in chaos. As Israeli warplanes attack from the air--all told, their bombs have destroyed 43 buildings and killed more than 220 people, most of them suspected militants--the two rival Palestinian political factions, the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamic militants of Hamas who back Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, have engaged in daily gun battles that left more than a dozen dead in three days of fighting last week. At this point, Palestinians seem to think they are closer to seeing civil war than to realizing their dream of a viable, independent state. "We are used to blaming our mistakes on others," says Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad in a moment of candor. "But we have all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity."

If so, the world isn't offering much in the way of treatment. When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel and the Palestinian territories last week, she offered $26 million in aid to bolster Abbas' security forces. But she also outraged Hamas leaders by encouraging Abbas to dismiss Haniya and his Cabinet and scrap efforts to forge a coalition government with Hamas. Now Hamas militants are threatening more trouble if the Prime Minister is forced out. Meanwhile, the living conditions continue to deteriorate. Because of a blockade imposed by Israel after Hamas was elected to the Palestinian government in January, only Israeli foodstuffs and humanitarian aid are allowed into Gaza. (Palestinians are barred from exporting any homegrown products, and Israeli shells have destroyed more than 40 greenhouses built by the aid agency CARE International.) The Israelis also imposed a sea blockade after its navy stopped arms smugglers and two suicide bombers trying to reach Israeli shores. John Dugard, U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, concluded in late September that "Gaza is a prison, and Israel seems to have thrown away the key."

A tour through Gaza provides glimpses of the miseries faced by ordinary people. Because of the Israeli clampdown, fishing boats cannot venture more than a mile into the Mediterranean without getting shot at by Israeli warships. But the fishermen go out anyway. Abu Audah, a Palestinian boatman, points to three large-caliber Israeli bullet holes in the hull of his vessel and explains, "If I stay at home, I'll die of hunger. So it's better to die at sea, feeding my children." A boat strayed too far out last week, and a fisherman was killed by shots from an Israeli vessel.

Since June 28, when Israeli fighter jets bombed Gaza's main power station, most people have had only four hours of electricity a day. Gaza's hospitals are pitiful, and more than 400 Palestinians with life-threatening illnesses or injuries were made to wait three weeks before the Israelis opened up the Rafah crossing to allow Palestinians into Egypt for urgent medical treatment. Gaza has food, but few Palestinians can afford it, since the government can no longer pay the salaries of the police, teachers and bureaucrats. More than 70% of Gazans are dependent on international food aid to survive. As poverty tightens, many families have run out of friends to borrow from and are starting to sell their furniture and even dowry jewelry to put food on the table. Some have gone further; secondhand-clothing shops are now all over Gaza's poorest neighborhoods.

For Israel and the U.S., the squeeze on Gaza was intended to have corollary benefits: sowing discontent with the Hamas-led government and strengthening Abbas, whom Israel sees as its only viable negotiating partner. But neither has happened yet. Sources close to Abbas say Rice has promised that sanctions will be lifted and funds will flow back to the Palestinians once the Israeli corporal is freed and the President dissolves the Hamas government. But Abbas, despite being the Bush Administration's favorite, could end up the loser. Many Palestinians see him as weak and fickle. Hamas' gunmen are more numerous and better disciplined than Abbas' Fatah fighters, who have splintered into rival militias whose main activity in Gaza these days is stealing cars and kidnapping. "Our image in the streets is very bad," concedes a senior Fatah official. "We are seen as self-interested and collaborators [with Israel], not fighters for Palestine. And this is what Abbas is ignoring. You can't confront your political adversaries without the support of the masses."

Here's how a civil war could start. Islamic preachers under Hamas' influence begin denouncing Abbas in mosques as a stooge of the U.S. and Israel, undercutting his credibility. Hamas would then use its majority in the legislative body to try to oust Abbas as President. If that were to fail, Hamas' fighters would take to the streets in Gaza and the West Bank territories. Such an internecine conflict would devastate the Palestinians, since many families have fathers who support Abbas and sons who belong to Hamas. And the consequences for Israel could be just as dire. A senior Hamas commander says the rift with Abbas is unmendable. Although Hamas has agreed to halt its campaign of suicide bombings in Israel, the commander says, "I'm afraid that [pressures from the] Americans and Israelis are pushing radicals inside Hamas to resume such attacks." And if that happens, Israel's wrath against the Palestinians would surely be even more terrible.

The danger for Israel--and the world--is that the longer the siege of Gaza lasts, the more likely it is to strengthen radicals who have little interest in a peaceful settlement of the dispute with Israel. Despite the blockade of Gaza, many Palestinians still have a few good memories of Israelis. Feheme, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy with blood cancer, was twice treated in Jerusalem and still gets follow-up calls from his doctor. A farmer whose orange groves were shelled 12 times by Israelis after militants set off a rocket in a nearby field still talks fondly of his Israeli friends. But although he opposes the Palestinian militants and the rain of destruction they attract from the Israeli side, he says that "if I start complaining about the militants' setting off these rockets, they'll shoot me."

If the Israelis thought their siege of Gaza might break Palestinian support for Hamas, they were wrong. It has only made Palestinians angrier and more desperate. Says Gaza resident Omar Shabani, an economist: "My kids ask me why the Israelis are doing this to us, and I can't answer them. I don't want to increase their hatred toward Israel, but the truth is, the Israelis are doing everything to make us hate them."

With reporting by With reporting by Jamil Hamad / Nablus, Aaron J. Klein / Tel Aviv

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Today in History - Oct. 9


The Associated Press

Today is Monday, Oct. 9, the 282nd day of 2006. There are 83 days left in the year. This is Columbus Day, as well as Thanksgiving Day in Canada.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Oct. 9, 1888, the public was first admitted to the Washington Monument.

On this date:

In 1635, religious dissident Roger Williams was ordered banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In 1701, the Collegiate School of Connecticut — later Yale University — was chartered.

In 1776, a group of Spanish missionaries settled in present-day San Francisco.

In 1930, Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field, N.Y., to Glendale, Calif.

In 1936, the first generator at Boulder (later Hoover) Dam began transmitting electricity to Los Angeles.

In 1946, the Eugene O'Neill drama "The Iceman Cometh" opened at the Martin Beck Theater in New York.

In 1958, Pope Pius XII died. (He was succeeded by Pope John XXIII.)

In 1967, Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara was executed while attempting to incite revolution in Bolivia.

In 1975, Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1985, the hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrendered after the ship arrived in Port Said, Egypt.

Ten years ago: Vice President Al Gore and Jack Kemp debated in St. Petersburg, Fla. Two Americans, Robert F. Curl Jr. and Richard E. Smalley, and a Briton, Harold W. Kroto, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry while three Americans, David M. Lee, Robert C. Richardson and Douglas C. Osheroff, won the physics prize. In the opening game of the American League Championship series, 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier turned a probable fly out into a game-tying home run by reaching over the right-field wall at Yankee Stadium and sweeping the ball into the stands with his baseball glove (the Yankees defeated the Baltimore Orioles 5-4, in 11 innings).

Five years ago: In the first daylight raids since the start of U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan, jets bombed the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., were sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy; the letters later tested positive for anthrax. Americans Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman, and German-born U.S. resident Wolfgang Ketterle won the Nobel Prize in physics. Director and choreographer Herbert Ross died in New York at age 74. Dagmar, who parlayed her dumb blonde act into television fame in the early 1950s, died in West Virginia at age 79.

One year ago: Dozens of foreign tourists fled devastated lakeside Mayan towns as Guatemalan officials said they would abandon communities buried by landslides and declare them mass graveyards. A driverless Volkswagen won a $2 million race across the rugged Nevada desert, beating four other robot-guided vehicles that completed a Pentagon-sponsored contest aimed at making warfare safer for humans. Comedian Louis Nye died in Los Angeles at age 92.

Today's Birthdays: Actor Fyvush Finkel is 84. Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record), R-Miss., is 65. Singer Jackson Browne is 58. Actor Gary Frank is 56. Actor Richard Chaves is 55. Actor Robert Wuhl is 55. Actress-TV personality Sharon Osbourne is 54. Actor Tony Shalhoub is 53. Actor Scott Bakula is 52. Musician James Fearnley (The Pogues) is 52. Actor John O'Hurley is 52. Actor Michael Pare is 47. Rock singer-musician Kurt Neumann (The BoDeans) is 45. Country singer Gary Bennett is 42. Singer P.J. Harvey is 37. Country singer Tommy Shane Steiner is 33. Actor Steve Burns is 33. Sean Lennon is 31. Actor Randy Spelling is 28. Actor Brandon Routh is 27. Actor Zachery Ty Bryan is 25. Actor Tyler James Williams ("Everybody Hates Chris") is 14.

Thought for Today: "If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days." — Dorothy Canfield Fisher, American author and essayist (1879-1958).

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