The Valley Independent from Monessen, Pennsylvania • Page 6

6A Valley OPINION FKlf4T 4, 2009 WWW.VALLEYINDEPENDENT.COM THEVflLLEYiHPiPEIIPEnT Eastgate i9, 'll Pennsylvania 15062 J. "1 a If mofc '100 yea Kx-Dtml M. Scaife, Publisher Publisher Robert R. Hammond General Manager Karen Strickland Advertising Manager linda G.Hutchison Manager Richard W.Guthrie Production Manager Mary Kozel Accountant OUR OPINION Football begins with focus on new coaches IT LONG AGO that Ringgold's Lloyd Price and Belle Vernon Area's Aaron Krepps were stars on the football field. Tonight, they'll be making their coaching debuts as the WPIAL's two youngest coaches at their alma maters.

Krepps, 25, will debut in front of his home fans as he guides the Leps against Laurel Highlands at 7 p.m. The new coach was a favorite of BVA fans earlier this decade before he on to become a star kick and punt returner at Washington and Jefferson College. Price, 26, will take the Rams on the road for a 7:30 p.m. game with Peters Township. He was a versatile athlete at Ringgold before making his mark as a linebacker at California University of Pennsylvania.

Krepps and Price are part of a crop of new area coaches that also includes Brady Barbero at California Area, Jim Ward at Yough and former BVA coach Lou Rood at Bentworth. All will quickly be thrown into the challenge of molding teenage athletes into cohesive teams. At their young ages, Krepps and Price represent a new generation of coaches that is emerging in the Valley. Both understand the importance of high school football in this area and will begin paving the road for other young men to follow in their footsteps. We wish all the new coaches well, and we share their excitement and passion for the game.

There's nothing like a football Friday in the Mid-Mon Valley. Do you agree? Do you disagree? The Valley Independent wants to hear from you. E-mail us at com or write a letter to the editor. Include your phone number to allow for verification. Please limit letters to 350 words.

We reserve the right to edit. ANOTHER VIEW Daily Herald, Arlington Heights, on the late Sen. Ted Kennedy: Which Ted Kennedy shall we remember today? It is perhaps an overriding commentary on the late senator's life that millions of Americans will be making that choice as they reflect on the political career of one of the nation's longest-serving and most prominent public figures. For many, the image that remains from Kennedy's tenure is that of the Senate playboy, the wealthy youngest son of a political family beset by nation-shattering tragedies whose hard drinking and romantic romps were nearly as legendaiy as his speeches from the Senate floor. For many others, the memory is of the tireless so-called liberal lion who, while raised himself in the most opulent splendor, devoted his career and tireless energies to helping and protecting the nation's most vulnerable citizens, its elderly, minorities, sick and poor.

In one sense, of course, the two pictures cannot be separated. Ted Kennedy the man was an amalgam of all the aspects of his personality and ambition. And it cannot be ignored that the event that permanently crippled his presidential aspirations mysterious tragedy at Chappaquiddick shrouded by questions of his judgment, his sexual morality and even potentially criminal behavior. Yet, Ted Kennedy the man was also a formidable public servant, and it likewise cannot be ignored that he placed his imprint on every significant piece of social legislation over the past 40 years. Kennedy's reflexive liberahsm and ties to special interests were, it must be said, too strong politically for our tastes.

Still, political and social contributions come from all sides, liberal and conservative, those who compromise and those who stand fast. In that regard, his mark was unmistakable and considerable. How to reach us The Valley Independent welcomes the input of our readers. Letters, e-mails and faxes must be signed and should include an address and daytime telephone number so the content of the message can be verified. (Phone numbers will not be published.) Send your comments: By mail to Your Opinion, The Valley Independent, Eastgate 19, Monessen, Pa.

15062. By e-mail to By fax to (724) 684-2603. All messages are subject to editing for clarification, brevity and libel. Messages should be kept to 300 words. (No poetry, please.) While letters usually are published in order of submission, those concerning timely local issues are given priority The get-Cheney squad "Mi "en sleep peaceftilly in their at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." George Orwell's truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the "rough men" who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, went too far in frightening Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the engineer of the September massacres.

Yet, it seems now indisputable that those CIA interrogators, with their rough methods, got vital intelligence that saved American lives, as Dick Cheney has consistently contended. According to The Washington Times, which reviewed the newly declassified CIA documents, those interrogators "produced life-saving intelligence that disrupted numerous terrorist plots." They elicited the names of al-Qaida agents who planned anthrax attacks on Westerners and a massive bombing of Camp Lemonier, the U.S. base in East Africa. They got the names of 70 recruits al- Qaida deemed "suitable for Western attacks" and of the men who made the bomb used on the U.S. consulate in Karachi.

lyman Faris, an al-Qaeda sleeper agent and truck driver in Ohio, is serving Pat BUCHANAN 20 years because of information the CIA got from KSM and associates. Other operations aborted include al-Qaida "plots to fly airliners into buildings on the West Coast, setting off bombs in U.S. cities and planning to employ a network of Pakistanis to target gas stations, railroad tracks and the Brooklyn Bridge." What were the "inhumane" techniques CIA interrogators used to uncover these plans for the mass murder of Americans? "Interrogators lifted one detainee off the floor by his arms, while they were bound behind his back with a belt," reports The Washington Post. "Another interrogator used a stiff brush to clean a detainee, scrubbing so roughly that his legs were raw with abrasions. Another squeezed a detainee's neck at his carotid artery until he began to pass out." The CIA, we are told, used mock executions to frighten captives and threatened to kill KSM's children and rape his mother.

Power drills were brandished in interrogation rooms. Were any children killed? No. Was anyone's mother raped? No. Was the power drill used? No. Was anyone executed in front of a witness to make him talk? No.

It was faked, as Sean Connery faked it in "The Untouchables" to get an underling to blab to Eliot Ness, aka Kevin Costner, about how he could take down Al Capone's mob. As for threatening to kill the children of our enemies, we did not do that in "The Good War." Instead, what we did was kill them in the thousands every night in air raids over Germany and Japan. In the Tokyo firestorm of February 1945, the Dresden raid in March, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, we killed grandparents, mothers, fathers, wives, sisters, daughters and sons of the enemy in the scores of thousands on each of those days. Can it be that the same United States that honored Col. Paul Tibbets and put his Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, on display in its Air and Space Museum is going to prosecute a CIA agent for faking an execution and threatening, but never intending, to kill the children of Khalid Sheik Muhammad? Why is Barack Obama allowing these prosecutions to proceed? In 2004, career lawyers at Justice looked over the same reports and concluded that prosecutions would not serve the national interest.

Obama has himself said he wants to move on. Now, he and Holder may not like what was done back then, but who does? And where is the criminal intent? These agents are not sadists. They were trying to get intel to abort plots and apprehend terrorists to prevent them from killing us. And they succeeded. Not a single terrorist attack on the United States in eight years.

Do we the people, some of whom may be alive because of what those CIA men did, want them disgraced, prosecuted and punished for not going strictly by the book in protecting us from terrorists? In its lead editorial Tuesday, "Following the Torture Trail," The Washington Post declaims, "The real culprits in this sordid story are the higher-ups, starting with former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney who led America down the degraded path of state-sponsored torture," But why is Obama yielding to the clamor of a left that will not be satiated until Cheney and Bush are indicted as Class A war criminals? Is that in the national interest? Is it in Obama's interest to tear his country apart to expose and punish these CIA agents? Obamacare by force? hat will happen if Democrats try the "go it alone" strategy to pass national health care? That's not even a question in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cut Republicans out of the healthcare issue from the beginning. House Democrats have been going it alone all along, and if they can agree among themselves on a healthcare bill, it will pass. But the Senate is another story. Republicans see the Senate as their great hope, and there's no doubt the GOP could do some serious damage to any Democratic bill.

But the unpleasant fact for Republicans is, Democrats have the power, on their own, to pass a bill that could ultimately lead to the liberal dream of national health care. Both Democratic and Republican staffers are studying Senate rules governing the process known as "reconciliation." Those rules allow the Senate to pass some measures with a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than a filibuster- proof 60 votes. Theoretically at least, Democrats could pass a healthcare bill with no Republican, even if some Democrats are not onboard. ByronYork But reconciliation is allowed only on proposals that deal directly with the budget or are primarily fiscal in nature. So Democrats could use reconciliation to pass parts of the healthcare bill that have a direct fiscal impact, but not other measures creating things like healthcare- supervision agencies.

If Democrats try to pass measures that are deemed "extraneous," Republicans could object and have the measures stripped from the bill. That is, for example, what undoubtedly would have happened to the notorious end-of-life provisions that have now been removed from the Senate Finance Committee's bill. In that same way, it's possible Republicans could kill a lot of what is currently in the healthcare-reform proposals. (In addition, any measure passed by reconciliation would be temporary, usually lasting five years.) The prospect of a graph-by-paragraph reconciliation fight has led to what some Republicans call the "Swiss-cheese scenario." Each time Republicans defeat a portion of the bill, they'll poke another hole in the Democrats' ambitions. Poke enough holes, and the Democrats' vaunted healthcare plan is Swiss cheese.

There's no doubt that prospect scares some influential Democrats. Sen. Robert Byrd is opposed to using reconciliation for health care, calling it "an outrage that must be resisted." Sen. Max Baucus calls it "not a good idea," and Sen. Jay Rockefeller says it could create "a bill that goes nowhere." They're warning their colleagues not to take the go-it-alone route.

But there's another way of looking at it. Sure, Democrats can't get everything they want if they have to go through reconciliation. But look at healthcare reform as an unfinished building. There are plenty of examples of past legislation that began somewhat modestly and expanded as the years went on. The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, has been enormously expanded.

Medicare and Medicare are far bigger today than when they were created. Programs grow over time as lawmakers add features and increase eligibility. The story could be the same for the current healthcare-reform proposals, through which Democrats, with no Republican support, could put in place the basic structure of a national healthcare plan. It doesn't have to be gold- plated, or even finished. That could come later.

"You can build a building that's missing certain features," says one old Senate hand. "Maybe the plumbing's not there, or the wiring. But the bottom line is, you have laid the foundation, and built the structure, and it becomes easier later on to add the plumbing, and add the wiring. You have set up a structure so that all you have to do in the future is make incremental changes." Veterans of the Senate tend to flinch from the sort of all-out warfare reconciliation could bring. But the fact is, reconciliation might in the end be the Democrats' best option.

And it might work. Democrats wouldn't get everything they want, but they could create the structure for future growth. Later on, they'll add the plumbing, the wiring and maybe a chandelier..