The Kerrville Times from Kerrville, Texas • Page 4

Page 4A Opinion KerWille Daily Times July 19,1993 Kerrville Daily TIMES TOl! NBWSWPHl OP TUB HILL COUNTRY STEVE F. McPHAUL Publisher LARRY HUNTER Managing Editor CLINT SCHROEDER City Editor EDITORIAL Let's make sure need exists for power boat ban Ban is a strong word and when a governmental entity uses that word it should be with great care. Last week a Kerr County living along the Guadalupe River near Ingram Lake asked the Kerr commissioners court to consider banning power boats from the river downstream of the lake. The wave action caused by the wakes from the boats, he said, was causing more rapid deterioration of his property line along the river. But our county judge took the concept further; he suggested the county might consider banning power boats from Ingram Lake and the areas upstream of the lake.

He suggested the lake was too small for power boat-related recreation such as water skiing. The judge's proposal is extreme and we are not particularly fond of the riverside resident's suggestion that power boats be banned from the river upstream of the lake. The lake and the river are prime recreational assets to this area. Any measures to inhibit the use of either should be viewed with all care. Fishermen use power boats large and small to get bet- ter access fishing spots, others like to use their power boats to pvuTsTdiers in the tight area near the dam and Jet Ski (and other similar personal water vehicles) enthusiasts consider the lake a great place to enjoy a warm afternoon.

With all of these different recreation- ists making use of the lake and nearby river, you would think that over-crowded conditions might exist. Apparently they don't. No serious injuries related to skiing and power boating have been reported in recent years. Bans based on safety concerns should have evidence that a hazard exists. We see little evidence of unsafe conditions.

As for protecting the shore line, we realize wave action eats away at the shore. That's life along a shore line. If someone really wants to protect their shore line, they should figure out a way to ban floods. Those are the monsters that really eat up the shore line. If the county really wants to do something that will improve life along the river, they should look into the matter of illegal and dangerous obstructions across the Guadalupe.

With the number of canoeists and tubers making use of the river, these man-made barriers and bridges impede the legal rights of others to use the river. But before we ban anything, let's make sure that the community has an opportunity to discuss it and please, let's make sure there is a real need for the ban. Berry's World TELL WE A64IN THE TIME YOU SAW TINA TURNER IN CONCERT 6RAHDPA Nuclear test ban has flaws £1 IJrtJ I "Guess who hasn't paid, or withheld, Social Security?" In Seoul, Tom Brokaw asked President Clinton a question knowing very well that Clinton would not answer it. The question was: Might the administration engage in a pre-emptive strike against North Korea in order to abort the construction of a nuclear bomb? Clinton's answer was in the well-known mode. The trick is to rephrase a question like that in such a way as to change its meaning-, then proceed to answer the transubstantiated question; then look pleased with yourself.

What the president said was that he was determined to maintain United States forces in South Korea and in Japan, which would communicate to North Korea the inflexibility of our commitment to security in that part of the world. Everything Clinton does that touches on nuclear policy is vital these days, if we take into account that North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya are further advanced in the construction of a nuclear weapon than we were in January of 1945. The bellwether of a mature policy on nuclear weapons is our attitude toward testing. At just about the time Clinton was seeking to be persuasive in South Korea, he was scuttling a schedule of nuclear tests recommended by his own security staff. That decision no all the Rockettes of Eastern Seaboard liberalism, led by choreographer Anthony Lewis of The New York Times, to cancan their delight.

The purpose of maintaining a nuclear inventory is to maintain a credible threat to uppity Third Worlders who wish to acquire the means to terrorize the world. James Schlesinger, former secretary of defense and former head of the CIA, reminds us in The Wall Street Journal that it is not possible to guarantee a functioning nu- William F. Buckley Jr. On The Right clear arsenal without occasional testing. He tells us that the same people wYio wouldn't let six months go by without testing their lawn mowers are prepared to hazard the credibility of our deterrent force by simply assuming that there is nothing in their composition that might go wrqng.

He reminds us that for twq years after Pearl Harbor our torpedoes, which had gone for years untested because of the! skeletal defense budget in the '30s, were unserviceable. Schlesinger makes that point, and a second point, that by refusing to test, we constrain our allies to put off tests, which mefms specifically that Great Britain is prevented from checking its Trident missile on which its entire strategic security is based, and which it purchased from us at great cost. The second indication of our attitude toward nuclear weapons has of course to do with the pursuit of a defense system against missiles aimed our way Patriot-plus program that, however, alarms the same gentry who oppose nuclear tests. Opposition to underground testing even when severe precautions are taken against radioactivity, and opposition to continued scientific exploration of defense technology, aren't the fruit of hard analytical thought. It js a sign of a kind of fetishism.

Anything that touches on the nujdear question is, for some pepple, unclean and therefore to bei avoided, like lust for your neighbor's wife. But the trouble with this, as Peter Rodman points out in his essay Grown-up's Guide to Non-Proliferation," National Review, July 5) is that we live in a dirty world. We have to rid ourselves of a sense of guilt that paralyzes those instincts in us which are most to be nourished, namely our conviction that we can detect the difference between a North Korea and a Great Britain; that to encourage Great Britain to refine its nuclear arms must not embarrass us when talking a different language to such as North Korea or Iran or Iraq. Rodman writes: "According to The New York Times, the administration is looking for ways to 'reassure North and is 'wary about leaving North Korea feeling The danger of escalation and general lunacy on the Korean peninsula is not widely thought to come from Seoul or Washington. It is we who should make the demands." Clinton's emphasis must be on the non-proliferation treaty and its enforcement worldwide.

The North Koreans threatened only a few months ago to opt out of that treaty. That was the time to announce exactly what measures we were prepared to take to enforce compliance. Only just before the crisis point, North Korea said, "Well, well think about it." And the pressure suddenly lifted. The process is thoroughly refined in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein plays with us and with the United Nations on the matter of inspection. It is regularly practiced in Belgrade, where Slobodan Milosevic makes us dance about as, day after day, he goes from capitulation to ultimatum.

North Korea is picking up the rhythm: How to keep the United States jittery but undecided, while we pursue our weapon a stitch at a time. COPYRIGHT 1993 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Soft spots in the film The Firm' If you haven't read the smash novel "The Firm" by John Grisham of Mississippi, you might enjoy the recently released movie of the same name, which stars Tom Cruise. My problem, however, is that I did read the novel before I went to see the movie. The movie was terrible. I nearly went to sleep.

If it hadn't been for Maude and Clyde, an elderly couple who were sitting behind me, I might have. Maude had read the book, too, so she spent the entire movie complaining to Clyde how the filmmakers hadn't followed the book. Clyde, meanwhile, had no business at the movie in the first place, since he apparently couldn't hear it thunder. Lewis Grizzard Whenever Maude would say, a lyde, this isn't the way it hap- in the book," Clyde would say, "What's that, Maude?" Maude would go up a de- cijbel level or two repeating her statement for him. They really butchered John Gjrisham's book, which is about a law student who recently gra- played by Tom Cruise, and is taking a job with a Memphis law firm run by the Mafia.

I didn't like some of the casting in the movie, either. Holly Hunter plays the hotblooded, chain-smoking, wig-wearing secretary of a private detective who helps nail the firm. Holly Hunter is a Sunday school teacher. Wilford Brimiey plays the firm's evil head of security. Wilford Brimiey sells oatmeal on television.

Hal Holbrook plays a bad guy. Hal Holbrook is Mark Twain, for crying out loud. Gene Hackman plays attorney Avery Tolai, a weasel in the book. Gene Hackman is no weasel. Gene Hackrnan saved all those people aboard the Poseidon.

1893 BY COWLES SYNDICATE. INC. Letter from Washington Secret Service has own mystique By GREG BASSETT Thomson News Service i WASHINGTON Images of U.S. Secret Service agents in action are etched in the minds of most Americans. The men and women charged with placing their bodies between flying bullets and our leaders are a testament to public service and self-sacrifice.

A new movie starring Clint Eastwood, "In the Line of Fire," adds to the Secret Service mystique. Focusing on the life of a fictional agent who blames himself for the 1963 tragedy in Dallas, the movie is an overdue examination of what is going on just below the calm exteriors of those sworn to protect the president When we think of the Secret Service in action, Clint Hill is probably the first agent who comes to mind: It was he who climbed to Jacqueline Kennedy's rescue seconds after the president was fatally shot in Dallas. Of all the agents nearby, Hill was the one who first saw something was wrong. But Hill who climbed across the trunk of the too late to save the president; all Hill could do was put his suit jacket over the president's head and try to comfort the first lady on the ride to Parkland Hospital. Tim McCarthy is probably the second agent we think of.

In 1981 he dove, arms outstretched, into the line of gunfire and literally took a bullet so Ronald Reagan might live. The other memorable agent from that spring day is Jerry Parr, the man who hurled Reagan into the back of the limousine when John Hinckley began shooting. Medical experts agree that if Parr hadn't quickly realized that Reagan had indeed been therefore made the decision to go immediately to the hospital instead of the White House Reagan would not have survived. Heroics aside, Americans have long held a deep fascination with Secret Service agents. On campaign stops and other assorted presidential visits, spectators often pay as much cr more attention to the men and women guarding the president as to the president himself.

Their dark suits with the gold stars on the lapel, their equally dark sunglasses, white ear pieces, impossibly shiny shoes and never-smiling faces make them a most mysterious lot. The undeniable impression they leave whether they are talking into microphones in their sleeves, or doggedly scanning a crowd for even the most vague sign of a threat is that they are people not to be messed with. The Secret Service does more than protect presidents. An agency of the Treasury Department, the majority of its agents are primarily responsible for squashing counterfeiters. It wasn't until President William McKinley was shot in 1901 the third president to be assassinated that Congress agreed presidents needed a special protective force.

Today the Secret Service has an annual budget topping $500 million. Recently I met a retired agent who protected, among others, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and presidential candidate George Wallace. This agent was just six feet away when Arthur Bremer ultimately crippled Wallace during a 1972 campaign stop in Maryland. The Wallace shooting, he said, was the Secret Service's worst nightmare: Once Bremer produced the handgun for all to see, agents had just 2.3 seconds to grab the weapon. The former agent recounted how officials reenacted the shooting almost daily for two months in an attempt to figure out what went wrong..