STATE
THE BATTALION
abated
prayer
that a court would strike
any legislation that
.1 a student to kneel or be
ther position other than
during the minute of
could be argued, for
e, that allowing someone
;I could make other stu-
vho are not kneeling feel
rinated against,
orth said.
itworth’s bill is patterned
Virginia law that requires
ite of silence in schools
ecifically lists prayer as
the silent activities that
s may choose. The U.S.
te Court last year reject-
allenge to the law.
m not trying to pass a bill
going to be struck down
U.S. Supreme Court,"
entworth, who also said
no doubt that if the Texas
s passed, it will be dial-
in federal court.
Weatherford of
hoe Bay told the commit-
she would pull her child
public school if the state
such a law.
ligious liberty is the free-
dee ide if, when, where
v one wishes to adhere to
il ritual,” Weatherford
bill, she said, under
religious freedom by
ig a spiritual ritual on
children.
diver closing arguments
then jurors would begin
ntist Clara Harris should
ng her orthodontist hus-
e parking lot of the same
e couple was married 11
re's Day.
I was seeing was real,”
s Junco, tearfully testified
1 don't know howto
ene was very mad."
said they watched indis
ove over her husband's
S
For Mature
Audiences
e
Aggielife: All alone and plenty to do • Page 3A Opinion: Understanding France • Page 5B
Volume 109 • Issue 95 • 16 pages
Texas A&M University
www.thebatt.com
Thursday, February 13, 2003
Aggies
By Blake Kimzey
THE BATTALION
If tradition held tough, the
No. 21 Missouri Tigers would
have flown back to Columbia
with a 10-1 all-time record
against the Aggies.
Instead, senior Bradley
Jackson’s winning floater with
two seconds left in the game
sent the Tigers packing with a
73-71 loss, and a 9-2 record
against the Aggies in Big 12
competition.
With A&M reeling from its
first back-to-back losses of the
year, and Missouri splitting its
past eight games, it was a must-
win game for both teams. Each
beat No. 21 Missouri
half was defined by scoring
spurts, as each team found ways
to go on runs of eight points or
more in each period.
Yet it was the Aggies who
prevailed by closing the door on
one of the most exhilarating
games of the year in the Big 12.
The Aggies went into the
locker room at halftime down
37-30, and needed a stern
speech from Head Coach
Melvin Watkins to get them
back on track.
“1 challenged them at the half
as much as I ever have. My
guys responded and we got the
job done,” Watkins said.
After leading a quiet revolu
tion in the men’s basketball pro
gram for the past five years.
Watkins is starting to. reap the
rewards of all that hard work.
Wednesday’s slim victory
against a top 25 team is a good
example of where the Aggies
are headed.
The Aggies are now fighting
for a position that will make
them eligible for postseason
play.
‘‘This is a good win that
keeps us on pace to accomplish
some of the things we want to
achieve,” Watkins said. ‘‘But,
we’re looking at things one
game at a time. If we do that,
then the postseason possibilities
will take care of themselves.”
It was not all good news for
Missouri Head Coach Quin
Snyder. His team has dropped
five of its past nine games and
are in a funk that could place
its final push of the season in
jeopardy.
“There were times when we
played well, but at times I was
questioning how hungry we
are,” Snyder said. “We have to
be more urgent. You only get so
many opportunities, and we lost
one tonight.”
Senior guard Bernard King,
however, made sure he did not
have a repeat performance from
this weekend. After scorching
the Tigers for 29 points, it was
his presence on the floor that
mattered the most. As the
Aggies’ leading scorer,
See Game on page 9A
John C. Livas • THE BATTALION
Aggie guard Bradley Jackson goes for the fastbreak layup in the first half
Wednesday night. Jackson put the Aggies over the top, defeating No. 21
ranked Missouri Tigers by scoring with two seconds left in the game.
Acting as William Shakespeare's best friend, Alfred E. pating in the MSC Literary Arts Committee's annual
Wolfram performed "The Shakespeare Man" in Shakespeare Festival, which concludes today with a
Rudder Theatre Wednesday night. Wolfram is partici- performance by the 7-F Players at 7 p.m. in MSC 201.
Powell sweeps aside
European concerns
NATO rejects U.S. war proposal
By David Espo
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Senior Bush
administration officials spoke dismissively
Wednesday of European calls for more
and better weapons inspections to disarm
Iraq at the same time the Pentagon took
new steps toward war.
“More inspectors aren’t the issue. The
issue is lack of Iraqi
compliance,” Secretary
of State Colin Powell
told Congress. He said
he intends to press
French and German
diplomats on whether
or not their proposals
amounted to “delaying
for the sake of delaying
in order to get Saddam Hussein off the
hook and no disarmament.”
France, Germany and Belgium rejected
a scaled-down U.S. proposal for NATO
preparations in case of war in Iraq, pro
longing the alliance’s worst internal crisis
since the end of the Cold War. Officials for
the three countries say they don’t want to
approve any actions that could undercut
efforts to settle the dispute peacefully.
A key portion of the dispute centers on
a request from Turkey for assistance in the
event of war against Iraq — protection that
the United States has said Turkey will
receive whether or not the alliance
POWELL
approves of it.
President Bush provided a personal
briefing for senior lawmakers on the loom
ing showdown with Saddam, and later
declared, “Because of the resolve of the
United States, the world will be more
peaceful and the world will be more free.”
At the Pentagon, officials said the mili
tary dumped another half million leaflets
over southern Iraq during the day as part of
a psychological warfare campaign. One
leaflet showed allied warplanes bombing
military tanks outside a mosque, warning
civilians to “avoid areas occupied by mili
tary personnel.”
Additionally, officials said the
Pentagon had activated 38,600 National
Guardsmen and reservists in the past
week, by far the largest such call-up since
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
For all the signs of war, about 30 poets
took turns reading antiwar verse in front of
the White House during the day, part of
what organizers said was a nationwide
campaign to discourage hostilities.
In Iraq, United Nations chemical
weapons experts set out to destroy
their first batch of banned Iraqi
armaments — 10 leftover artillery
shells filled with burning, disabling
mustard gas. Officials said it would
take four or five days to eliminate
the 155 mm mustard gas-filled
See Powell on page 2A
NASA: mission control
detected no damage
By Pete Yost
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — NASA’s top
official told Congress on Wednesday
that mission controllers detected no
unusual readings suggesting any insu
lating tile damage on the space shuttle
Columbia in the days before the craft
broke up over Texas.
During four hours of
questioning about shuttle
safety, NASA
Administrator Sean
O’Keefe promised skeptical
members of Congress that
he would take steps to
ensure the independence of
the investigating commis
sion which is trying to
determine the cause of the
Columbia tragedy.
“We had no indications
during the (16-day) mis
sion that would suggest a
compromise to flight safety,” O’Keefe
told a joint hearing of Senate and House
panels that oversee space programs. He
said there were no abnormalities that
would suggest a tile problem.
O’Keefe also said the agency is pre
pared to accept whatever blame the
investigating commission headed by
retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman Jr.
decides NASA deserves.
“There is nothing that is not on the
table” in terms of NASA accountability,
said O’Keefe. “We will be guided by
what the commission says” and “you
have our assurance that this distin
guished board will be able to act with
genuine independence.”
O’Keefe has fought to keep the
Columbia investigation out of the hands
of a presidential commission, such as the
one that investigated the destruction of
the space shuttle
Challenger in 1986.
O’Keefe said 4,000
sensors aboard the
Columbia — the oldest of
the four space shuttles
remaining after the 1986
Challenger disaster —
should have tipped off
those on the ground if the
delicate thermal tiles had
been damaged when
Columbia lifted off.
Eighty-one seconds into
liftoff, cameras captured a
chunk of foam insulation
from the shuttle’s external fuel tank as
it broke away and appeared to strike
Columbia’s left wing.
With the Gehman commission just
starting its search for a cause, House
Science Committee chairman Sherwood
Boehlert, R-N.Y, said the 60-day dead
line in the commission’s charter for
delivering a final report is “totally
See NASA on page 9A
a
We had no
indication during
the mission that
would suggest a
compromise to
flight safety.
— Sean O'Keefe
NASA Administrator
Nation braces for potential attack
By Ron Fournier
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Anti-aircraft
missiles guarded Washington’s skies
and Capitol police carried gas masks
Wednesday as the nation mobilized to
confront a potential terrorist attack.
Federal, state and local govern
ments tightened security, anxious
Americans stockpiled food and water,
and police responded to scores of
false alarms, including reports of sus
picious vehicles that shut down com
muter bridges in Washington
and New York.
The nation remained
under a Code Orange “high
risk” of attack status for a
sixth day, and no change was
in sight. Counterterrorism
officials said the level of
threat information pointing
to an imminent attack
remained high, but steady.
“If given the choice, al-
Qaida terrorists will choose
attacks that achieve multiple
objectives, striking promi
nent landmarks, inflicting
mass casualties, causing
economic disruption and ral
lying support through shows
of strength,” CIA Director
George Tenet told the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
Tenet said he is worried
that a new audio message
attributed to terrorist master
mind Osama bin Laden is a
prelude to a strike.
“He’s obviously raising
the confidence of his people.
He’s obviously exhorting
them to do more,” Tenet
said. “What he’s said is
often followed by an attack.”
Meanwhile, U.S. counterterrorism
officials were reviewing a transcript
of a second purported audio message
from bin Laden, but they could not
verify it was an authentic message
from the terror chief.
While the speaker mentions an
apparent intention to die in the com
ing year and uses some rhetoric simi
lar to bin Laden’s, officials said they
could not be certain of the speaker’s
identity without reviewing the actual
recording. The officials spoke on con
dition of anonymity.
Fearing the worst, U.S. officials
deployed Avenger anti-aircraft mis
siles and extra radar around
Washington since President Bush’s
decision Friday to raise the alert status
from yellow to orange, the second-
highest level. The Air Force has
stepped up its combat air patrols over
the capital, defense officials said.
FBI personnel assigned to rapid
response teams that would react to
any terrorist attacks have been told to
have a bag packed for three days’
deployment and put on standby.
U.S. Capitol police were told to
carry gas masks at all times. They
are in a small, handheld black knap
sack about six inches long. Every
officer has them, including those in
plainclothes who provide security
for leaders and in the congressional
chambers.
The weekly FBI bulletin circulated
to 17,000 law enforcement agencies
See Nation on page 9A
CHUCK KENNEDY • KRT CAMPUS
With the Washington Monument in the background,
a soldier, accompanied by a Humvee with mounted
antiaircraft missiles, patrols Washington, D.C. on
Wednesday, as the nation faced “orange” alert.