Sports: A&M wins Invitational tourney • Page 5
Volume 109 • Issue 12 • 12 pages
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KHrmaJ scnsatHjo ^p^'HDAD. Irat| (AP) — U.S. and
aial half o» Briiish warplanes bombed Iraqi instal-
laions in the southern no-fly zone
Sunday, an Iraqi military spokesman
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Opinion: The last days of college radio • Page 11
BATTALION
www.thebatt.com
Monday, September 16, 2002
.S. planes attack Iraqi sites in no-fly zone
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Central Command headquarters at
MacDill Air Force Base in Florida said
coalition aircraft responded to Iraqi
ground fire by launching precision-
guided weapons to strike an air defense
communications facility.
The Iraqi spokesman told the offi
cial agency ITS. and British war
planes bombed “civil and service
installations.”
“Our heroic missiles and anti-air
craft units fired at the aircraft, forcing
them to flee back to Kuwaiti territo
ries,” the spokesman said without pro
viding further details.
Sunday’s raids brought to 38 the
number of strikes reported this year by
the U.S. and British coalition formed to
patrol northern and southern Iraqi
zones after the 1991 Gulf War. The last
attack was Sept. 9.
The latest strikes also come three
days after President Bush told the
U.N. General Assembly that
Baghdad must grant access to U.N.
weapons inspectors or face con
frontation. Bush accuses Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein of stock
piling weapons of mass destruction
and sponsoring terrorists, and says
he must be toppled.
Arab leaders oppose a U.S. attack
against Iraq, but want Baghdad to
comply with U.N. Security Council
resolutions concerning weapons
inspections and disarmament to avert
any conflict with the United States.
Attacks and counterattacks in the
no-fly zones have been ongoing for
several years. The numbers ebb and
flow, and the Pentagon says there is no
particular increase now.
Iraq considers the patrols a violation
of its sovereignty and frequently shoots
at the planes with anti-aircraft artillery
and surface-to-air missiles. In response,
coalition pilots try to bomb Iraqi air
defense systems.
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Tough men
Saudi warns Iraq
to move quickly
Jim Sluder (left), a junior international studies major, slugs
it out with Jay Warren (right), a junior political science
major, at the Toughman Contest held Friday night at Reed
JP BEATO III • THE BATTALION
Arena. After three one-minute rounds, Sluder won the bout
with a unanimous decision and moved on to the next round
of the contest.
DUBAI, United Arab
Emirates (AP) — The Saudi for
eign minister said Sunday the
kingdom would be “obliged to
follow through” if the United
States needed bases in the king
dom to attack Iraq under U.N.
authority.
The comments to CNN by
Prince Saud al-Faisal would
mark a significant shift in Saudi
policy. In an interview last
month with The Associated
Press, Saud declared that U.S.
facilities in the desert kingdom
would be off limits for an attack
on Iraq.
When asked by CNN specifi
cally if Saudi bases would be
available to Washington, Saud
said: “Everybody is obliged to
follow through.”
Saud said, however, that he
remained opposed in principle
to the use of military force
against Saddam Hussein or a
unilateral American attack.
The remote Prince Sultan Air
Base south of Riyadh hosts most
of the 5,000 U.S. troops based in
Saudi Arabia.
Saud's apparent policy shift
came as world opinion shifted
toward taking some collective
action to contain Iraq, accused
by the United States of stockpil
ing weapons of mass destruc
tion, harboring terrorists and
defying the United Nations.
Last week. Foreign Minister
Ahmed Maher of Egypt, among
the most influential Arab states,
said his government would sup
port a U.S. strike on Iraq if it
were under U.N. auspices.
Saudi Arabia has joined
Iraq’s other Arab neighbors in
cautioning the United States not
to attack, saying it would only
further destabilize a region
made volatile by Israeli-
Palestinian fighting.
Also Sunday, Saud urged
Iraq to quickly allow the return
of U.N. weapons inspectors to
head off a Security Council res
olution that could open the way
for military attacks.
“Timing is important, and
allowing inspectors back
before a Security Council reso
lution to that effect would be in
Iraq's favor,” he told the
London-based Arabic-language
newspaper Al-Hayat.
“We are afraid that (a refusal)
would harm the Iraqi people and
increase their burden. We are
worried about Iraq’s unity, sta
bility and independence,” al-
Faisal said.
In New York Saturday,
envoys from Arab League issued
a similar plea during the General
Assembly, saying Iraq should
heed international calls to allow
inspectors back and avert a con
frontation with the United States
that could further destabilize the
See Saudi on page 2
Officials say Vision 2020 progressing as planned
By Lauren Bauml
THE BATTALION
I Administrators say Texas A&M has taken
the first steps toward achieving Vision 2020.
I Vision 2020. announced in 1997 under
former University President Dr. Ray M.
Bowen, is the comprehensive plan to get
A&M ranked among the top ten public uni
versities in the nation.
I With construction, increased diversity
and programming, A&M administrators say
the school is moving toward its goals for the
year 2020.
I The 2020 plan includes elevating faculty
teaching, research and scholarship, and
attracting professors whose main passion is
that of teaching, rather than researching.
A&M has room for improvement when it
comes to faculty teaching, said freshman
Jonathan McAfeer, a computer engineering
major who said his first two weeks of class
es at A&M have been disappointing.
“Professors need to be more friendly and
approachable,” McAfeer said. “They come,
lecture, and leave, and do not encourage stu
dents to walk up and ask questions.”
Dr. David Prior, interim provost and
executive vice president. said the
University’s departments are working slow
ly toward increasing faculty standards and
fulfilling another 2020 goal that has become
a buzzword on campus: diversity.
“Each individual college is showing
progress, but it is not consistent,” Prior said.
“Diversification includes both the faculty
and student body, but diversifying this cam
pus cannot happen in a matter of minutes.”
Diversity is what the Vision 2020 report
says is a need for the population at A&M to
be representative of the population of Texas.
According to the 2000 Census, the state is
32 percent Hispanic and I 1.5 percent black.
At A&M’s main campus this spring, the
most recent full-term semester for which
figures are available, Hispanics made up
only 8 percent of the student body and
See Vision on page 2
VIS1QN^I2Q2Q
THE ADMINISTRATION’S MAIN FOCUS
Imperative One:
Imperative Two:
Imperative Three:
Imperative Six:
Imperative Seven:
Elevate faculty
Strengthen graduate programs
Enhance the undergraduate
academic experience
Diversify and globalize the A&M
community
Attain resource parity with the best
public universities
RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION
Voter registration drive [Calls tracked from U.S. to
hopes to increase turnout overseas al-Qaida locations
By Sarah Darr
THE BATTALION
A&M students are aligning themselves with a
national movement to get voters registered and out
ai the polls this November with the hope of having
a record turnout in a non-presidential election.
Texas A&M graduate student Kelly Norton is
bringing the promise of the non-partisan, non
profit organization Freedom’s Answer to campus
next week in the form of a voter registration drive.
Voter
When:
Where:
Goal:
September 23 - 27
Rodder Fountain
Get students registered
for Noirember elections
RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION
The drive targets the campus’ 18- to 24-year-old
demographic, an age group typically under repre
sented at the polls, Norton said.
An information table will be set up by the
Rudder Fountain each day from Sept. 23 to 27,
with students handing out information about
the candidates running for the Nov. 5 state and
local elections.
“We will show the world that the Sept. I 1
attacks only strengthened our nation’s commit
ment to stand together for freedom,” Norton said.
The Bush School’s Student Government
Association is providing assistance at the infor
mation table, a joint effort with the Public Service
Association at the Bush School, said Richard
Rolison, graduate student and executive chairman
of the Student Government Association.
Rolison said that the country’s younger genera
tion didn’t have anything to solidify students’ right
to vote before the attacks on the country last year.
“Sept. 1 1 showed our generation the price of
freedom,” Rolison said.
See Vote on page 2
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government agents
have recently uncovered numerous calls from dif-
ficult-to-track prepaid cell phones, Internet-based
phone service, prepaid phone cards and public pay
phones in the United States to known al-Qaida
locations overseas, federal officials said.
The calls are one piece of a growing body of
evidence pointing to the presence of suspected
members of terrorist sleeper cells operating on U.S.
soil, and a growing sophistication on their part to
keep their communications secret, the officials said.
The officials, who spoke only on condition of
anonymity, said the effort to follow the phone call
trail has involved numerous federal agencies and
is the result of improved post-Sept. 1 I coordina
tion between the traditional law enforcement of
the FBI and the intelligence gathering of the
National Security Agency, America’s premier
overseas electronic intercept agency.
“Things have really improved, and that gives
us the ability to better track terrorists both in the
United States and abroad, and prevent things
before they happen,” one senior law enforcement
official told The Associated Press.
The officials said the process works like this:
U.S. intelligence learns of a communication to
known al-Qaida locations overseas and then
alerts the FBI and other law enforcement agen
cies, who try to track down the source and origin
of the U.S. callers.
Authorities said the calls point to the clear pres
ence of one or more sleeper cells in the United
States and attempts by al-Qaida sympathizers in
America to make their calls difficult to track, using
tactics invented by U.S. criminals in the 1990s.
With Friday’s arrest of five American men of
Yemeni descent in a Buffalo, N.Y. suburb.
Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson said
that U.S. law enforcement “has identified, inves
tigated and disrupted an al-Qaida-trained terrorist
cell on American soil.”
In other recent steps to disrupt suspected domes
tic terrorist activities, the indictment of several men
in Detroit cited the possible presence in the
Midwest of a “combat squad” of terrorists. Also,
the government in the past few weeks charged a
man with trying to help al-Qaida set up a terrorist
See al-Qaida on page 2
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