Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, Aug. 30

One hundred years ago, it wouldn’t have been surprising for elderly black people to report that armed law enforcement officers had entered their homes and unjustly interrogated them about their votes.

It’s shocking to hear that this may have happened recently in Orlando, Fla.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has been asked to investigate this issue. He should do so immediately. The interrogations might be, as Florida claims, part of a legitimate investigation of voter fraud. But if illegal behavior is found, the consequences must be severe.

With a close presidential election approaching, Ashcroft must send a strong message that voter intimidation is intolerable.

Unfortunately, the Florida situation is not unique. In Waller County, Texas, a district attorney recently threatened students at a historically black college with jail if they tried to exercise their legal right to vote in local elections.

In South Dakota’s June presidential primary, some Native Americans were prevented from casting ballots if they didn’t show identification. That is not required by state or federal law.

In Kentucky, some Republicans planned to put “vote challengers” in black districts on Election Day.

Both presidential candidates should denounce these kinds of tactics. Dishonest efforts to suppress minority votes sully democracy in America and must be stopped. …

Plenty of blame


The Des Moines (Iowa) Register, Aug. 26

There’s plenty of blame to go around when it comes to the abuses against Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib … . The Pentagon-appointed commission that reviewed the abuse found the soldiers themselves responsible … . Yet it was higher-ups who created conditions in Iraq that cultivated abuse.

So while seven soldiers face criminal charges, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials should also have to face the consequences of their mistakes… Rumsfeld should resign.

The commission’s report was another reminder of how many mistakes Rumsfeld has made in this war. The panel found too few American troops were deployed for the invasion, a failure to anticipate the level of resistance by insurgents and a lack of planning for a postwar occupation all failures of Rumsfeld’s leadership…

The father of one soldier involved in the abuse said his son was trained as a truck mechanic, not a prison guard.

But that truck driver became responsible for thousands of prisoners who, according to the report, consisted of “any and all suspicious-looking persons.” The “indiscriminate approach” of rounding up prisoners “resulted in a flood’ of detainees at Abu Ghraib that inundated, demoralized and fatigued interrogators.” …

Rumsfeld’s mistakes … have cost lives. The mistakes have ruined other lives, including those of the soldiers who would not have committed abuse if they had been properly trained and supervised.

It’s time for Rumsfeld to finally take responsibility. …

Peace falls from priority list


The Cincinnati Post, Aug. 27

In 2002, President Bush laid down a “road map for peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. That road map, to which Israel agreed, called flatly for Israelis to immediately freeze all settlement activity on the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli-Palestinian problem seems to have dropped far down the list of White House priorities. Perhaps that’s why, over the last two weeks, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced plans to build more than 2,000 new housing units on the West Bank.

This is a clear and perhaps fatal abrogation of Bush’s road map. And the administration’s response? To waffle. …

A cynical interpretation of the administration’s waffling response to expanding the settlements is that it helps both Sharon and Bush politically Bush with pro-Israeli voters here and Sharon with a governing coalition fragmented over his plans to pull out of Gaza.

It certainly doesn’t help the cause of peace.

The truth about spying


Dallas Morning News, Sept. 1

Is there an Israeli spy in the Pentagon? It wouldn’t be surprising. Whether Middle East analyst Lawrence Franklin, now at the center of an FBI probe, is an Israeli agent is another question one that must not be dodged or handled with quiet diplomacy.

First, some caveats. It wouldn’t be unprecedented to learn that our ally Israel has an agent working in the Pentagon. In the 1980s, U.S. naval intelligence officer Jonathan Pollard sold his country out by providing reams of top-secret information to Israel. More commonly, American allies such as France, Taiwan and Japan are suspected of running economic espionage operations against the United States constantly and we do it to our allies, too.

Plus, the Franklin situation is not remotely as serious as the Pollard case. Mr. Franklin (who is not Jewish, by the way) … is suspected only of passing a draft policy directive on Iran to members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful Washington lobby, which in turn relayed it to the Israelis.

… Given the close strategic collaboration that already exists between the United States and Israel, it’s hard to understand why the Israelis would risk straining their special relationship by cultivating an intelligence source inside Donald Rumsfeld’s office. …

Besides, American taxpayers should very much want to know if a trusted ally that gets a $2 billion annual subsidy from them has a spy snooping at the top levels of the U.S. government. Truth, even between friends, must out.