The Politics of the Bomb




North Korea's nuclear test shifts the debate back to national security, still perceived as Bush's strength. But having the world afire on your watch has its drawbacks.

The first of a slew of e-mailed Capitol Hill statements about North Korea's reported nuclear test came at 8:05 a.m. from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who decried "the desperate act of a criminal regime" and added: "We stand with President Bush and the international community in condemning North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il's reckless decision." Of course, President George W. Bush has been standing by the Speaker lately, and no one could be more relieved than Hastert and his staff to see the news spotlight shifting to somewhere else on the globe.

If Kim Jong-Il thought he was could take advantage of a President who was down politically, he may be in for a surprise. Osama bin Laden's electronic appearance in the closing week of the 2004 campaign didn't do much for John Kerry either. Republicans, while taking care to express appropriate concern about the possibility of an Asian arms race, said they were relieved to see Bush back in the bully pulpit, wearing his commander-in-chief hat and leading the world in pushing for punitive action by the U.N. Security Council. "Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond," Bush said this morning in the Diplomatic Reception Room, where a row of books added gravity. "This was confirmed this morning in conversations I had with leaders of China, and South Korea, Russia, and Japan."

The Republicans' theory is that their party benefits whenever the political dialogue turns to national security. "The whole thing with North Korea makes people realize the benefits of having a strong President like George W. Bush," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council. "This brings the focus back to the reasons people support the President." Writing Sunday in The Washington Post, Democratic pollster Vic Fingerhut warned his party, "Iraq Is a Loser for Dems, Too," arguing that for nearly 50 years, "poll after poll has shown that the Democrats have very limited credibility with the American public on foreign policy issues — particularly among the swing voters who have a disproportionate say in the outcome of U.S. elections."

White House officials assert that the test helps unite the international community in seeking to put the matter before the Security Council. The action was viewed as an especially sharp rebuke of the Chinese, who had spearheaded the six party talks meant to try to avert just such a test from happening. So the attention has shifted from Iraq to an inarguably dangerous rogue state, which Bush had put in his Axis of Evil in his State of the Union Address in 2002. Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, predicts that Bush will be boosted by the development, and that advocates of direct engagement with North Korea will now have a much harder time selling that to the American people. "It changes the subject back to national security, where he wins four out of five political debates (even in cases where he shouldn't)," said O'Hanlon in an e-mail, "and it seems to validate his hard-line approach to the unreasonable North Koreans (even though in my judgment it really invalidates his overall record since [North Korea's] nuclear arsenal has grown and now been 'certified' on his watch)."

Of course, having the world afire on your watch has its drawbacks. Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for national security and international policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, said the test "raises profound questions about the President's competence and wisdom," and could set off a nuclear reaction chain of testing and development by other nations worried that the arms race is back. "Every member of the Axis of Evil is more dangerous to America now than it was when he labeled it," Cirincione said. "The President still gives a great speech, but his policies are killing us." Even some conservatives questioned the President's approach. William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, said after Bush's speech that responding only diplomatically was "problematic," and suggested that U.S. could have imposed an embargo, suspended talks or intensified the inspection regime.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, aware she may become the next Speaker if the Democrats win control of the House in November, took the high road and issued a statement saying the reported test "should be a first priority concern of the world." But Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada went right at Bush, saying the President has made America "less secure" and calling for him "to immediately appoint a senior official to conduct a full review of his Administration's failed North Korea policy." Said O'Hanlon, the Brookings scholar: "I agree with Reid on substance, but on politics, Republicans tend to make hay out of this sort of thing." As they already are.

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Illegals in the Line of Fire



Thousands of illegal aliens are walking through one of the military's most important live-fire training grounds. Will building a fence stop them?

Viewed from a Black Hawk helicopter 1,000 feet up, there's no sign of the Mexican border in this southwest corner of Arizona's Sonoran Desert. No line in the sand. No fence. Not even a road. Yet it's clear we are flying over a major international thoroughfare. Hundreds of shiny footpaths and tire tracks weave through the desert below, where the temperature on the ground routinely reaches 115� F in the summer. You need to drink a gallon of water an hour to survive in heat like that, and the illegal aliens and smugglers who pounded these paths into the desert had another 80 miles to go before they reached the nearest paved road. But parched terrain wasn't the only peril they faced: these tracks all head smack into a live-fire range where Marine and Air Force pilots practice hitting targets—with very real bombs.

About 95% of all American fighter pilots train here at the 2.7 million-acre Barry M. Goldwater Range, which stretches 37 miles along the U.S.-Mexican border. In recent years, as less dangerous routes into the U.S. have been closed off by fencing, cameras and beefed up Border Patrol, more and more would-be immigrants risk crossing the live-fire zone. In 2005 alone, over 17,000 walked through the range. And that's a problem for the military. Every time an unauthorized person or vehicle is spotted on the range, training sessions are halted. In 2003, 450 training hours were lost to this kind of interference; last year the figure tripled to 1,381 hours, That leaves pilots going into combat with fewer flying hours, and it costs millions in wasted fuel and man-hours. Powerful people are taking note of this little-known price of illegal immigration. "We've had to discontinue something like 15% of the training days," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grumbled in May.

Paul Mayberry, deputy undersecretary of defense for readiness, wants to put a stop to the losses by making it more difficult to cross at this already forbidding place. "It's like a water leak," he says, "they take the path of least resistance." But how to make that path more resistant is a matter of some debate. In many ways, the give-and-take over how to secure this essential piece of military real estate reflects two dominant theories on how to secure our border: More walls or more eyes?

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, is a wall man; he wants to fence the southern boundary of the range. More cameras to watch the region might help, he says, but a physical barrier is essential. He hopes to replicate the success of the triple-layered fencing outside San Diego that led to a 70% drop in illegal immigration there. That's why he wrote Rumsfeld personally about fencing the range and co-sponsored the Secure Fence Act, a law on President Bush's desk that requires at least two layers of reinforced fencing to be built from Calexico, Calif. to Douglas, Ariz. — right across the bottom of the Goldwater Range.

But the Border Patrol agents who monitor this vast, remote area from a lone outpost called Camp Desert Grip are skeptical that a fence could be a practical solution here. Speaking before the Secure Fence Act was passed, Stephen Johnson, who runs the place, points out that Hunter's fence will cost at least $37 -million to build and be difficult to maintain. When the fence is cut — and it definitely will be cut, says Johnson — it would be costly to repair, given the absence of roads in the region. Walls are better suited to urban areas, where you only have seconds to stop someone coming over, says Johnson and other agents. In remote areas like the Goldwater Range, where agents have days to track down interlopers, maintaining fences seems wasteful. "People want to take what works in San Diego and apply it out here," Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said in June. "It won't work."

Agents at Camp Desert Grip favor more eyes: cameras, sensors, ground radar, helicopters and dune buggies, so that word gets out that anyone who comes this way will be arrested. With current sensing equipment, fewer than half of the 11,000 entries detected so far this year were apprehended. More eyes would mean more arrests and at a reasonable cost, says Johnson. A camera tower costs about $600,000 and can see three miles in every direction.

Up in the Black Hawk over the summer, Aguilar had brought his boss, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham, to see this area for himself. Faced with the vast terrain, Basham seemed convinced a fence was not the answer. But another thought dawned as he looked down on shimmering black lava fields below. "If they're willing to go through 80 miles of desert in this heat, you can't do much to stop them."

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Bush Takes on School Shootings

The President's conference gives him a chance to connect with disillusioned voters. But one prominent gun control group is crying foul.

When you're President, you get quick action. So once President George W. Bush made clear he wanted something done after a briefing on shootings at schools, Attorney General Albert Gonzales and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings quickly banded together for a day-long, administration-wide "Conference on School Safety," to be held Tuesday at the National 4-H Conference Center in Chevy Chase, Md.

Several Amish officials were invited to participate after their peaceful people were victimized last week by the highest profile school shooting since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. They elected not to participate because they stay out of public affairs, an administration official said. Other recent school shootings terrorized pupils in Wisconsin and Colorado. On Monday, as officials were making final preparations for the conference, a 13-year-old in a trench coat shot an assault rifle into the ceiling of his Missouri middle school.

The event, which is the first major undertaking of Bush's new domestic policy director, Karl Zinsmeister, gives the President a chance to connect with suburban moms at a time when polls show many voters are disillusioned with his administration. He will speak to a closing panel on ways schools and communities can work together to keep pupils safer. The administration's most popular official, First Lady Laura Bush, also will attend. Participants include students, administrators, law enforcement officials and crisis management experts. Officials say no new policy or funding will be announced at the event, which will feature panels dubbed "Preventing Violence in Schools," "Prepared Schools and Communities Are Safer," and "Helping Communities Heal and Recover."

It all sounds well-intentioned, but in the current polarized political climate, even a topic like improving school safety can't escape controversy. One prominent group is unhappy about not being included. Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote to Bush to offer help in putting together what the group called a "comprehensive" agenda, including prevention and law enforcement policies. Peter Hamm, the group's communications director, said the group hadn't received a reply. "We haven't oddly enough," he said. "They're certainly having a nice conversation about making sure your child has the support they need after an incident occurs, which is laudable. But the issue of prevention clearly is not on the table for this conference."

What is on the table, according to administration officials who gave TIME an exclusive preview, is that: —Schools need to do more planning for the possibility that their pupils will have to deal with violence. Schools should have an emergency response plan and need to devote more resources to physical security and threat assessments.

—Law enforcement can help prevent incidents with outreach to the community, and by offering schools specialized enforcement expertise. Schools, families and communities need to recognize warning signs of violence.

—After a school is attacked, administrators need to focus not just on returning to a normal routine but also on helping their students deal with post-traumatic stress.

—Schools that have been victimized also need to be wary of what the administration calls "high-stress events such as anniversaries."

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Today in history - Oct. 10


The Associated Press

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 10, the 283rd day of 2006. There are 82 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Oct. 10, 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Md.

On this date:

In 1813, composer Giuseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole, Italy.

In 1911, revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen launched their overthrow of China's Manchu dynasty.

In 1935, George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway.

In 1938, Germany completed its annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland.

In 1943, Chiang Kai-shek took the oath of office as president of China.

In 1956, the New York Yankees won the World Series, defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers, 9-0, in Game 7 at Ebbets Field.

In 1964, the 18th Summer Olympic Games opened in Tokyo.

In 1970, Quebec Labor Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped by the Quebec Liberation Front, a militant separatist group. (Laporte's body was found a week later.)

In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused of accepting bribes, pleaded no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion, and resigned his office.

In 1981, funeral services were held in Cairo for Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who had been assassinated by Muslim extremists.

Ten years ago: President Clinton joined Vice President Gore in Knoxville, Tenn., where the president moved to broaden the sweep of the Internet at 100 universities, national labs and other federal institutions. Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole hosted a rally in Cincinnati that featured his running mate, Jack Kemp, and retired Gen. Colin Powell.

Five years ago: U.S. jets pounded the Afghan capital of Kabul. President Bush unveiled a list of 22 most-wanted terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and associates. U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) of California won the race for the No. 2 House Democratic leader. Americans George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in economics; Americans William S. Knowles, K. Barry Sharpless and Japanese Ryoji Noyori won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

One year ago: Angela Merkel struck a power-sharing deal that made her the first woman and politician from the ex-communist east to serve as Germany's chancellor. President Bush dined in the French Quarter and stayed in a luxury hotel to showcase progress in hurricane-battered New Orleans. Israeli-American Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling of the U.S. won the Nobel Memorial Prize for economics. Milton Obote, Uganda's first prime minister, died in Johannesburg, South Africa, at age 80.

Today's Birthdays: Playwright Harold Pinter is 76. Former Illinois Sen. Adlai Stevenson III is 76. Actor Peter Coyote is 64. Entertainer Ben Vereen is 60. Singer John Prine is 60. Actor Charles Dance is 60. Rock singer-musician Cyril Neville (The Neville Brothers) is 58. Actress Jessica Harper is 57. Singer-musician Midge Ure is 53. Country singer Tanya Tucker is 48. Actress Julia Sweeney is 47. Actor Bradley Whitford is 47. Musician Martin Kemp is 45. Rock musician Jim Glennie (James) is 43. Actress Rebecca Pidgeon is 41. Rock musician Mike Malinin (Goo Goo Dolls) is 39. Actor Mario Lopez is 33. Actress Jodi Lyn O'Keefe is 28. Singer Mya is 27. Singer Cherie is 22.

Thought for Today: "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." — Niels Bohr, Danish physicist (1885-1962).

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