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Wednesday, October 14, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
In its effort to promote peace, the United States is getting involved in another country's war.
And the domino theory may illustrate how a superpower country, such as the U.S., can be reduced to the terroristic tactics of third-world countries.
Consider Thursday, when U.S. helicopter gunships sank three Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf after Iran fired upon a U.S. observation helicopter.
More important, covert activities on the part of the United States have surfaced to haunt Americans stationed in the Persian Gulf.
A search of the three gunships in Thursday's attack indicated that the Iranians possess U.S.-produced Stinger missiles, which are probably the world's most advanced shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles.
And now they've been turned against their mother country.
The United States provides the Stingers to Afghan rebels as they fight Soviet occupation. The Stingers have proved to be very effective against Soviet-made helicopters.
Incidents such as Thursday's attack in the Persian Gulf should prompt the United States to reassess its role in the Iran-Iraq war.
Pump the United States to reassess its role in the Iran-Iraq war. And the president should place the Persian Gulf occupation before Congress, which would then invoke the War Powers Act
But most important, the United States should avoid knee-jerk covert actions that emerge only to haunt it months later.
Right a wrong
Animals have rights, too.
The so-called LD-50, or lethal dose 50 percent test, has been the center of many attacks. It involves feeding a product or chemical to a group of animals until half of the animals die.
Opponents allege that the test is performed far more often than necessary. Thanks to their efforts and new measures by the Food and Drug Administration, the use of the test has declined by 75 percent during the last five years.
percent during the last five years The University of Kansas Medical Center also has been subject to attack for its animal testing program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has criticized the unsanitary, crowded and poorly ventilated conditions at the Med Center's current animal testing laboratory.
Fortunately, this situation also has been resolved in favor of the more humane treatment of test subjects. A new $5.5 million lab is scheduled for construction in November.
lab is seen. Few can deny the value and importance of animal tests. In many instances they result in safer conditions for humans. But it also is encouraging to see that ethical as well as scientific concerns increasingly are being addressed.
Humanity still can be served without rampant inhumanity to animal test subjects.
Bureau hypocrisy
rew things in this world are free anymore. But some students in Lawrence are thankful that one thing is — tuition at Haskell Indian Junior College.
Haskell has had no tuition since the school's inception in 1884. However, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, a branch of the Department of the Interior, recently planned to begin charging tuition of $850 in 1988.
Fortunately for the students at Haskell and for those planning to enroll there, Congress intervened with an appropriations bill, prohibiting tuition at Indian schools. The bill ensures that the school will remain tuition-free until at least 1989.
According to Jean Gibbs, director of admissions at Haskell, the tuition fee plan may have been proposed partially so that Indians would value their education more. She said many Indians could not raise the money for tuition in the first place.
Congress did the right thing in protecting the Indians' rights. Education is invaluable, and for the underprivileged, it can be a life saver.
Aside from tuition is principle. U.S. citizens cannot deny that native Americans have the right to receive a good education.
News staff
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
Jennifer Benjamin ... Editor
Julli Warren ... Managing editor
John Benner ... News editor
Beth Copeland ... Editorial editor
Sally Streff ... Campus editor
Brian Kabertline ... Sports editor
Dan Fuerlmann ... Photo editor
Bill Skeet ... Graphics editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Bonnie J. Hardy ... Business manager
Robert Hughes ... Advertising manager
Kelly Scherer ... Retail sales manager
Kurt Messeramith ... Campus sales manager
Greg Knijp ... Production manager
David Dernfort ... National sales manager
Angela Clarke ... Classified manager
Ron Weems ... Director of marketing
Jeanne Hines ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Bush bid stresses Navy career
'Gee whiz' candidate enters race, jogs with Iowa teenagers
By MERRILL HARTSON
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - As he stood in a living room in Bettendorf, Iowa, George Bush told how his mother suggested recently that he not talk so much about his World War II record.
"But I told her, 'People just have to know who I am,'" Bush said as he mingled with potential supporters and savored the moment, which came Monday, the day he officially declared his candidacy for president after nearly seven years as No. ?
Establishing his own political identity will be no easy trick for Bush, who lost to Ron Reagan in 1980, nearly waited while Reagan flirted with naming former President Gerald R. Ford as his running mate, and then accepted Reagan's invitation to join the ticket.
Bush has been in Reagan's shadow ever since, but now that he has formally thrown his hat into the ring, the vice president will begin to say and show what makes him tick.
Maybe he'll explain what drives him to throw his suit coat and don an aviation jacket when he's going into the airport.
Or what impels him, a 63-year-old with five children and several grandchildren, to jump into a jogging outfit and lead a bunch of panting teen-agers around a high school track.
And why he apologizes for an inappropriate remark comparing the quality of Soviet workmanship favorably to that in America, and then asking a podium to the floor, exclaiming, "Time to go!"
As Bush formally enters the 1988 White House sweepstakes, there will be inevitable comparisons with the Bush campaign style of yesteryear, and unavoidable questions about whether the Yale-educated millionaire will end up being perceived as practicing the late Hubert H. Humphrey's politics of joy.
Bush suffers from no shortage of optimism — the state-of-mind that keeps candidates in political contests, sometimes beyond common sense. Nor should anyone worry about his supply of adrenaline, the fuel that keeps the fire burning in the belly.
But is this "gee-whiz, gosh-darn, aw-shucks" stuff the real thing? Does Bush, in the privacy of his home and the solitude of his office, really say things like, "Well, you know, I'm catching the
Analysis
dickens" for this mistake or that
Bush, a never-say-die optimist nicknamed "Poppy" while growing up in Connecticut, wears his aviator's jacket sort of like the kid who flashes the denim jacket with the designer labels or the kid in Little League who never doffs the coat with his favorite teams' insignias. If they offered a uniform for vice presidents to wear, Bush would never be out of uniform.
He proudly boasts of his achievements — successful oilman, former member of Congress, head of the national Republican Party, ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to the People's Republic of China and vice president of the United States — and says these add up to a work resume second to none.
Despite this resume, Bush has often cafed over the label so many others have attached to him — a preppie who wears color-coded watch-bands and is as bland as oatmeal.
"George never cracks; he never whines. He flew strike after strike off the aircraft carrier San Jacinto during World War II . . . ," said his sister, Nancy Bush Ellis.
During the 1984 presidential campaign, Bush's sister and nephew were so incensed about newspaper papers portraying him as a wimp that they refused to three of the nation's leading newspapers.
Bush's nephew, James L. Bush, took exception to a profile that quoted an unnamed Connecticut delegate to the Republican convention saying that "Poppy is a cucumber sandwich." Retorted the nephew, "The cucumber sandwich was shut out of during World War II and returned to active duty."
And as recently as last Oct. 6, Bush told how his mother, 86-year-old Dorothy Walker Bush, admonished him to talk less of his war record, in a speech on Saturday at the United States Distinguished Flying Cross from the U.S. Navy.
The vice president had told an audience of youngsters in laowa last April that he often told his war story because that experience shaped many of his views of today.
"Do you ever worry about getting your education in a free country?" he shot back last week at a high school girl in Waterloo, Iowa, who asked
why the administration was spending great sums of money on defense.
While Bush shows no hesitation to talk of his accomplishments, his experience and his success, he also bends over backward to show his fitness for office, both literally and figuratively.
those three laps he ran last week with the kids near Waterloo continued a trend Bush started in earlier political jaunts. When he was chatting with the neighborhood folks in Bettendorf later in the day, he mused about how he'd run a bit and "everything seemed to check out OK."
A trim 6 foot 2, he still looks as though he could grab his first baseman's glove, trot to the field and play with his old Yale teammates
"Politics isn't easy." Bush told reporters in Manchester, N.H., on Feb. 8, 1980, during his first campaign for the presidency, when a breakfast rally was cut short by a bomb threat. Or when he replied that a near-collision of Air Force Two with a private plane in October 1984 didn't bother him because "you're talking to an old Navy pilot where we used to fly wing to wing."
Bush, who sees the glass as half-full, not half-empty, doesn't seem to brood over mistakes or setbacks.
As in the time that Bush, a young man trying to learn the oil business in Odessa, Texas, had too much to drink while hosting a Christmas party for customers of the oil drilling supply store where he worked.
worked in 1946.
In his autobiography, "Looking Forward," Bush remembers that he was so bad off that someone drove him home in the back of a pickup truck, and says that his wife, Barbara, hasn't forgotten it.
"Forty years later, I still have to take her word for it," he says of his wife, the daughter of the publisher of Redbook and McCall's magazines. He writes that she "had married him in Rye, N.Y., on Jan. 6, 1945."
Bush said in his book that he decided it didn't make much sense to worry too much about things that went badly, and said all that produced was an ulcer.
So when his off-hand remark that perhaps Soviet tank mechanics could show Detroit workers a thing or two raised a furor, Bush concluded an apology was in order, gave one, and then went on his way.
From the heart
Another blood drive has come and gone, but this last one has made KU history. There has never been such a great response from KU to the blood drive. The total pints of blood donated for the three-day
drive was 959, almost 300 pints more than in the spring.
This fall's blood drive could never have been so successful without the kind hearts of the donors, volunteers and American Red Cross staff. It was such a great feeling to see so many people who truly cared. Their patience was unbelievable. Because of the large numbers, some waited $1\frac{1}{2}$ hours before actually donating. I just hope these generous people who gave their time and blood know that they will make the difference for someone who depends on this gift for life.
The donors, however, are not all that are necessary for a blood drive. Without the conscientious staff at the Lawrence and Wichita Red Cross chapters and more than 400 sorority and fraternity volunteers, none of this would have been possible.
Panhellenic and Interfraternity Council want to sincerely thank all those who participated in the blood drive. The combination of donors, volunteers and the Red Cross made for a unique team of people who exemplified the true spirit of giving. We know that the benefits will be deeply appreciated.
Sara Denneh, Panhellenic Association vice president for campus affairs.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed