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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 2003)
STATl HE BATTAUol ' Asia Agcielife: Call of duty • Page 3 Opinion; Percentage plans • Page 11 f ■ 1 "W ▼ 1 lli^ icther 20,000 or! other military inst se, which compn nd other suppon j Volume 109 • Issue 79 • 12 pages Texas A&M University www.thebatt.com Wednesday, January 22, 2003 s generally '.ubo. s cement. Green eady to head oi is been there,”Grs lined and readyfo Army’s only dig: sory equipment a cate U.S. andene ving a commands Green said. 108th and 35th.' ed to deploy in # [uipment for thed; ' 3 missile defer; rail cars Jan. lx early Mono; ill were trying tote ests registered ate :h caught fire Sate itroymg the three-st ere 205 guests r uests may be travr ;fore hard to read'. A&M hosts Chu to discuss role of military By Rolando Garcia THE BATTALION A top Pentagon official rebuffed recent efforts to revive the military draft and said America’s all-volunteer fighting force should not be tampered with during a speech Tuesday night at Texas A&M. “The motivation and quality of our peo ple is higher than we enjoyed during con scription,” said David Chu, the undersecre tary of defense for personnel and readiness. “The military treats people as their most valuable asset, and this change in outlook has been at the heart of the success of the volunteer force.” Chu discussed U.S. military prepared ness and the military’s new role in the war on terrorism to a capacity audience at Rudder Theater, made up of mostly Corps of Cadets members. Critics of the looming military action in Iraq have urged a return of the draft, which was phased out in the early 1970s to ensure that those on the front lines are not drawn disproportionately from low-income groups. However, Chu said, America’s bold experi ment in moving to an all-volunteer force has been a stunning success. Rather than coer cion, the military uses better compensation and benefits to entice recruits, Chu said, and the result is a well-trained, highly motivated fighting force. He noted that western European countries, which had long relied on conscription armies, are following America’s lead. “Volunteer forces are the wave of the future,” Chu said. Chu also addressed criticisms that the Bush administration is focusing too much on Iraq and ignoring North Korea, which recently announced that it is moving for ward with its nuclear weapons development program, violating its previous agreements. Chu said Iraq and North Korea present seri ous threats, but must be dealt with different ly, since North Korea has already developed weapons of mass destruction while Iraq is close to acquiring them. Chu also said that if necessary, the mili tary is prepared to handle wars in Iraq and on the Korean peninsula. “Our forces are prepared to do whatever the president requires,” Chu said. However, the increasing demands on the military are stretching active duty resources thin, Chu said, and substantial numbers of reservists have already been alerted for pos sible mobilization. See Military on page 10 I I a-lot aunt. in.-9 p.m.), !:30 p.m.) arly. Nails Best!! per sellers are part of life on campus By Janet McLaren THE BATTALION For Texas A&M students, the I familiar sight of newspaper salesmen offering papers to passing students from their tables in the MSC is as much a part of beginning a new semes ter as moving back into the dorm or starting classes. Every year, the University extends official letters to tele- | phone, cable, newspaper and S other companies, inviting them ; to solicit their wares on campus. Administator of University ; Concessions Sharra Durham I said the University invites these vendors as a service to students. “The back-to-school vendor process is related to the start-up services we try to offer stu dents,” she said. “The conces sions committee reviews any companies that make special | requests to sell on campus, but that is fairly rare.” Vendors are required to ! obtain permission from building proctors for each location at which they plan to sell. They must then be granted a solicita tion permit and attend an orien- : tation meeting outlining the = guidelines they are expected to ! follow. The rules stipulate a limit of ] two people at each table, require vendors to remain behind their tables at all times and prohibit the vendors from shouting or yelling to get students’ atten tion. Julian McMurray, long-time independent distributor for the Houston Chronicle, said rules controlling the behavior of newspaper vendors are better I enforced now than when he first See Sellers on page 2 starter JOHN C. LIVAS • THE BATTALION The Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Dr. David Chu addresses a packed Rudder Theater Tuesday night about issues facing national security . Kuwait terror attack kills 2 U.S. soldiers A plume of smoke billows as firefighters run through an industrial fire drill at the Brayton Fireman Training Field on Tuesday afternoon. Emergency response JP BEATO III • THE BATTALION instructors at the TEEX Emergency Services Training Institute provide practical training under real fire con ditions. By Steven Gutkin THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A gunman ambushed two Americans driving near a U.S. military base Tuesday in Kuwait, killing one and wounding another in what U.S. officials branded a terror attack. The shooting was the first assault on U.S. civil ians in Kuwait and the third on Americans since October in the oil-rich emirate, where pro- American sentiment is usually strong and where thousands of U.S. troops are assembling for a pos sible war on Iraq. The victims — civilian contractors working for the U.S. military — were traveling in a four- wheel-drive Toyota when they came under a hail of bullets. The U.S. Embassy identified the man killed as Michael Rene Pouliot, 46, of San Diego, an employee of a software development company. Tapestry Solutions. Tapestry identified the injured man as another employee, David Caraway, a senior software engi neer. He was in stable condition in a Kuwait hos pital after surgery to remove bullets, including two from his chest. He also had arm and thigh wounds, a hospital official said. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. U.S. and Kuwaiti officials said they believed a sin gle gunman fired a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the vehicle. The attacker then fled. “We condemn this terrorist incident, which has tragically cost the life of an innocent American citizen,” said U.S. Ambassador Richard Jones. The gunman apparently hid behind trees and bushes beside a stoplight at an intersection on Highway 85 three miles from Camp Doha — a U.S. military installation housing some 17,000 American troops stationed in Kuwait, where 8,000 U.S. civilians also live. In Washington, the White House said Americans were working with Kuwaiti investiga tors to determine who was behind the attack, which underscored the hostility some feel toward Americans even in Muslim nations considered sympathetic to the United States. “The president’s heart goes out to the families affected by this attack,” spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “It’s a reminder of the dangers and risks ser vicemen and women face every day.” The men attacked Tuesday were in Kuwait See Attack on page 10 Study shows marijuana is gateway drug sbruary 17, 2003 By Lindsey Tanner THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A study of Australian twins and marijuana bolsters the fiercely debated “gateway theory” that pot can lead to harder drugs. The researchers located 311 sets of same-sex twins in which only one twin had smoked marijuana before age 17. Early marijuana smokers were found to be up to five times more like ly than their twins to move on to hard er drugs. They were about twice as likely to use opiates, which include heroin, and five times more likely to use hallu cinogens, which include LSD. Earlier studies on whether marijua na is a gateway drug reached conflict ing conclusions. The impasse has com plicated the debate over medical mari juana and decriminalization of pot. Because this study involved twins, the findings would suggest that genet ics play a subordinate role in drug use. The study appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association and was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. It does not answer how marijuana, or cannabis, might lead to harder drugs. “It is often implicitly assumed that using cannabis changes your brain or makes you crave other drugs,” said lead researcher Michael Lynskey, “but there are a number of other potential mechanisms, including access to drugs, willingness to break the law and likelihood of engaging in risk-tak ing behavior.” Lynskey is a senior research fellow at Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane and a visiting assistant psychiatry professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where some of the research was done. Lynskey and colleagues acknowl edged the study has several limitations, including relying on participants’ reporting of their own experiences. In an accompanying editorial. See Marijuana on page 2 Evidence for marijuana as a gateway A recent stiKty of Australian twins adds some validity to »ie image of cannabis as a gateway drug, in order to remove differences in environment and genetics, researchers found 311 sets of twins in which one twin used cannabis before ago 17 and the other bad not. They were then questioned about lifetime drug use. Percentage of twins ever using various drugs | ] Used marijuana before age 17 m Did nol A&M officials ensure NASA internships despite theft 10 20 30 40 50 60 SOURCE: Journal of tho Amaricau MeOeat Awociank*' By Esther Robards-Forbes THE BATTALION Following the theft of precious lunar samples from the Johnson Space Center by three of NASA’s student interns, Texas A&M officials say they want to ensure students will still have a place interning at NASA. Three Johnson Space Center interns pleaded guilty to charges on the theft of lunar samples called “moon rocks” ear lier this month. Tiffany Fowler, 22, Thad Roberts, 25, and Shae Saur, 19, were arrested in July by undercover FBI agents in con nection with the theft of the samples from a Space Center safe. None of the interns were from A&M. An advertisement was placed in early May on a Web site for the Mineralogy Club of Antwerp, Belgium offering rocks from every Apollo mis sion to interested buyers. The samples advertised matched the inventory of a safe that went missing from the Johnson Space Center two months later. The asking price for these priceless items was $ 1,000 to $5,000 per gram. Roberts, who graduated from the University of Utah in 2001, was spend ing his fourth summer with NASA working in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. Fowler was on her first tour with NASA after graduating from Texas Lutheran University with a degree in biology and See NASA on page 2