Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, June 12, 1987
pinion
Abrams’ word games:
Americaiis not playing
On Nov. 1, 1985,
President Reagan
ordered
polygraph tests
for government
officials with
access to secret
information.
Almost two
months later (Dec.
20), Secretary of
State George
Richard
Cohen
Shultz was asked at a press conference if
he would take such a test. He exploded.
He would sooner resign, he declared.
George Shultz abhors lie-detector tests.
He has no problems, however, with
liars. i
he personally responsible for anything
he does. Having promised the sultan of
Brunei confidentiality and not having
permission from Shultz to tell the truth
to Congress (even behind closed doors),
he lied. Abrams had his priorities on
backwards. Ethically dyslexic, he
concluded that his covenant with the
sultan took precedence over one with
Congress and, through it, the American
people. Given a choice of breaking one
or the other, he chose us. It never
occurred to him that there was a third
and more honorable option —
resignation.
The person in question is his
subordinate, the Assistant Secrdtary of
State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliott
Abrams. For two days, Abrams sat
before Congress’ Iran-contra
committees and played word games
about the word games he had previously
played: His earlier assertion that the
administration had not solicited private
funds for the contras was, well, hot
precisely true. He himself had put the
touch on the sultan of Brunei for $10
million.
Abrams’ equally categorical denial
that the United States had anything to
do with the contra-resupply effort was,
again, not quite on the mark. As
coordinator of the anti-Sandini$ta
effort, Abrams had diligently turned
himself into two of the three monkeys.
Having been asked by Shultz to keep an
eye on Lt. Col. Oliver North (“monitor
Ollie,” Abrams said he wrote in his
notebook), Abrams neither saw nor
heard any evil. As for speaking it, he
took care of that himself. He lied.
Of course, Abrams never used that
word — lie. Instead, he employed the
all-purpose Washington prefix, “mis,”
as in “misspoke” or “misinformation.”
Abrams, it turned out, had “misled”
Congress on both counts. He had
solicited funds and he had, despite a
heroic attempt to remain ignorant, a
It is apparent to almost everyone that
the American value system has been
urban-renewed. In so many ways, what
was once not permissible is now
commonplace — divorce, premarital
sex, extramarital affairs, cheating in
school and cheating in business. But
lying remains the bottom line, the one
handhold Americans still cling to. The
recent episode regarding Gary Hart is
instructive. Commentators and public
officials refused to take a position on
adultery, but not on the suspicion of
lying. It hardly matters that the former
is usually not possible without the latter.
Lying is where Americans draw the line.
!
And for good reason. The unstated
assumption of democracy is that the
people be told the truth. Without it,
neither they nor their representatives
can make informed decisions.
Americans seem to understand this, just
as they understand that lying and
government occasionally go hand in
hand. Still, they insist on an absolute
(and often unattainable) standard
because without it there are no
standards whatsoever. The Watergate
burglary — a crime, after all — seemed
secondary to the lying that covered it
up. Everything else—-obstruction of
justice, the burglary, dirty tricks — was
subsumed in that one word: lie.
whiff of what Ollie was up to. To this, he
essentially appended the phrase “tough
nuggies.”
He asserted he had the full faith and
confidence of the secretary of state and,
in case anyone should doubt that, the
next day Shultz himself weighed in.
From Venice, he “adamently” insisted
that the White House give Abrams a
vote of confidence. For once, the White
House did precisely what Shultz asked.
Somewhere on the outskirts of
Washington, arriving cars ought to be
searched for hidden ethics. Abfams, for
sure, came to town with an empty trunk.
The word “lie” is not in his lexicon nor is
In his own modest way, Abrams (with
the support of Shultz) has brought the
ethic of the adulterer to government.
His defense is predicated on the
reasoning that he had no choice but to
lie. The lie is inseparable from the act —
a Siamese twin of the first deceit.
But now both Congress and the
American people are in the position of
the cuckolded spouse: how can we ever
trust Abrams again? The assurances of
Shultz don’t count because he’s not the
one who was lied to. We were.
It hardly matters that Abrams has the
confidence of hi$ boss or the White
House. He does not have ours. It’s time
he moved out and took a place of his
own.
Copyright 1987, Washington Post Writers Group
Mail Call
Going out on little cat feet
EDITOR:
I hope at least one Aggie out there likes cats enough to help.
I live in Married Student Housing which has an absolute no-pets policy. Sad to
say, many student do keep pets. Some people, upon leaving, abandon their
animals, thus producing strays.
That is how I came to have two neutered and declawed cats. They required
medical care for malnutrition. These cats have lived with me for ten months. My
family has grown attached to them.
Aggies believe in an honor code. So do I. Unfortunately, someone interpreted
this to mean informing on rule breakers. As they say, “No good deed goes
unpunished.”
My cats need a temporary home. If you have room for two cats for a semester
or two call me at 846-2801. I will pay for food, litter and medical bills. This is your
chance to do an Ag a favor.
Alan W. Brooks
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Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station TX
77843-4111.
Q. At what ag*e should we start
teaching’ about AIDS ?
Cocaine and sports don’t mi
Winning sports
seasons and the
related revenues
be damned. It is
time to clean up
the drug problem
in college and
professional
athletics.
I have always
believed that all
athletes harbored
the greatest
DA
Jensen
respect for their bodies and talent. I also
believed that coaches were the vehicle
used to improve an athlete’s
performance through training and
concern.
I was doubting my beliefs al ter
learning about the cocaine-related
death of University of Maryland
basketball player Len Bias. Now I know
I was right to doubt them with the
advent of University of Maryland coach
Lefty Driesell’s remarks on cocaine use.
1 am shocked, but by now I should be
conditioned to shock.
Driesell said he is a firm believer that
if you know how to use cocaine and use
it properly, it can make you play better.
I don’t know how he can promote that
view when medical documentation
clearly indicates cocaine is not only
addictive, but potentially deadly.
Len Bias was a talented athlete who
died a tragic, unnecessary death. I was
shocked to see a man who seemed to
have so much advantage in life
knowingly destroy himself.
I know many teen-agers idolize
athletes like Bias. They dream of
following their idol’s path to personal
fame. They are influenced by their
idol’s actions.
I think in view of these facts athletes
have a social responsibility to provide a
good role model to the youth who
idolize them. They should act iti a
responsible manner.
The University of Maryland has
committed a social injustice by giving
Bias an honorary degree.
All the youth who looked up to Bias
are getting signals from the actions of
the University and the player.
The signal indicates that even if you
break the law, fail out of school and ruin
your body with drugs you can still he
successful. The signal does not indicate
that the consequences can be death.
1 v ery youth believes ilie\ will ha
the power to stop the abuse beforeil
meet with the grim end their heroml
1 feel sorrow because <>1 Bias'de;
think he was being exploited by his
coac h. 1 know he could have beens«
if his drug problem was confronted,
ignored.
Athletes cannot be expected to
an illegal drug when their coaches
believe it is harmf ul. In fact, maybe!
coach’s positive attitude toward ill
drugs is an inducement for an athktti
try to enhance their performance
through its use.
It is time to put responsible,etiidi
people in positions of authority in!(|
before exph Station of talent and Hexas
individuals becomes commonplace
Ki et/.seh
_feigned
By making Bias a mat lyrwehavf anreof d
taken away the valuable lesson that || i: -
imprcssionable youth, athletes and liir
genet al population < ould haveleanj
from his death.
Cocaine is lethal.
D. A. Jensen is a junior journalism
major and a columnist /bribe
Battalion.
Pa
of I
Summer vacations and other disaste
Boy, oh boy, here
we are at the
advent of vacation
time, and am I
ever excited.
Carol
Rust
You see, the
advent of summer
vacation time
Guest Columnist
brings back lots of childhood memories,
which is the primary reason I’ve started
taking vacations in the spring and fall.
There was the one July our family
borrowed a large tent from a family and
attempted to stuff an even larger crop
of squabbling siblings into it, us still
clamoring over color books or Dr. Suess
readers when we arrived in the country
for our first — and last —- Family Tent
Camping Trip.
Loc al 11
if other
22ncl yec
une 19, c
nonlv cal
■Hat ion
ian, said
eenth is i
“It kinc
piving,"
|| day I
( vant to le
ausc we
[it it.”
The Ei
vhich lre<
iherica s
Jnion, vv,
)y Pres ii
lovvever,
Texas uni
Ion Gran
In the car on the way down, my
brother kept scribbling on my Dr. Suess
book, “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish,
Blue Fish” until the title should have
been “One Fish, Two Fish, Brown Fish,
Brown Fish” and I had hell to pay at the
school library the following Monday.
But it was nothing like the hell our
whole family was fixing to go through,
unsuspecting as we were back then.
What we didn’t know is that we’d just
pitched the tent (and not without some
aggravation, pine splinters, sweat up
our nose and hurt feelings) right over
the exact perimeter of a teeming seed
tick metropolis. By the time we
discovered this, my little brother had
already gotten stung on the face by a
yellow jacket, shortly after my mother
sprayed insect repellent into his eyes by
accident.
on account of me slamming my pinkie
when one of my other little brothers
“helped me” close the back of the station
wagon. By that time, though, I was
fairly well engrossed in the amazing
purple colors that spring up
underneath fingernails when they’re
slammed in the backs of station wagons
and didn’t sulk too much. But I never
let my little brother forget about it, at
least not until the start of school that
fall.
We’d pitched the tent under the
shade of a grove of pine trees, not quite
out of the olfactory reach of several cow
paddies in the pasture. But all in all, it
seemed like a perfect site, we kept
remarking to each other, after we finally
got baking soda on my little brother’s
yellow jacket sting and got him to stop
hollering.
Coi
since we could apply insect sprayooflH
about any part of our body and kiPlj^JI J.
few. It wasn’t long before we quit | fj
spraying our arms and ankles andii’fa
turns in the tent for some realgentX'Jy
It was then 1 learned that seed ticks AUSTIN
to get VERY PERSONAL. Witha el <^ seal
flashlight in one hand and spray
other, we attacked the tribes incur j Ues|i()i ^ ^
troubled trousers. Hdeath ol
. [I Mark Set
I his may come as news to some®| 1 i Kappa
you, but the venom of 83,496seedijersity <>1 I
all at once can make you very sick lisdormito
: Authoriti
I’m not sure when Dad and Momfrom 16 to :
tired of fighting the losingbattle,biiHrateniit
the camp fire had died into embers
we were almost out of insect spray | in c yoi
merger, told
We packed up and headed backi | 'F r ^' ns > “VV
our house and out of the olfactory4 ‘ l ^ a PI H
... rap aiterw;
of cow paddies. ■ > >•
Actually, she sprayed the spray in
another direction altogether at one
yellow jacket and my little brother
umped into the line of fire in a
desperate attempt to get away from
another. It didn’t work. He got the
double-whammy: insect spray and sting
both.
We were feeling kind of earthy, like
pioneers in the wilderness, the first folks
in a new territory, the Waltons before
they built their house.
But all the while, the pepper-sized
population was crawling up our legs in
black masses. We didn’t know this then.
She was feeling so bad about that, she
barely had time to sympathize with me
By the time we did, it was almost dark
and the little buggers were hard to spot.
But luck was on our side, we figured,
It wasn’t long before dawn,so
stayed up for cartoons. Mom and Mound that
were sick in bed. baldenHed
sponsored t
Sitting in front of the TV, my inti drinkin
brothers and I didn’t feel earthy. PMhe pled
feel like pioneers in new territoryUf”'" 1 'he st
Waltons bef ore they built theirhou4 ran(, j UI > 1
7 proximaleh
We felt safe. 'T u t i
left Seel
Carol Rust works for the Beaimo'
Enterprise.