The Baghdad Scenario

...Second, what about other cases of anti-American provocation...

...In other words, we may no longer be strong enough to lead, but we are certainly strong enough to act...

...In a happier time Presidents kept the names of nominees secret until they were submitted for confirmation, and staunchly defended them...

...Reagan similarly stood by Judge Robert H. Bork, and Bush did not abandon John Tower, his nominee for Secretary of Defense...

...There is the danger that friend and foe might come to perceive Washington as quicker on the trigger where an anti-American provocation is involved than where a general threat to peace and stability is the issue...

...The Vietnam War ensued...

...This was supposedly under active investigation, but no conclusions have been published...

...That triggered a series of wars, starting with the one over Israel's existence, and controversy concerning the status of the Palestinians remains unresolved...

...The Clinton Administration, viewing the experience in Somalia and those ahead in former Yugoslavia, is taking a second look at the proposal for some form of standing multinational force that President George Bush shunned...

...Trial Balloons John H. Sununu, President Bush's Chief of Staff, described to me recently how he escorted Judge Clarence Thomas to Kennebunkport for a last interview before his Supreme Court nomination...

...Or is it, as a more conservative group held, any remark or hint in any setting, regardless of how informal...

...Vietnam was partitioned into North and South in 1954, when the French withdrew...

...of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Representative Barney Frank (D.-Mass...

...It is hard to imagine what kind of army it would take to implement the partition of Bosnia...

...The point of the story was President Bush's concern about premature disclosure of planned nominations...

...After nominations were made, the nominees were frequently left twisting in the wind, and ultimately withdrawn when a confirmation glitch arose...

...On the tiny island of Cyprus, the separation of Greek and Turkish Cypriots is maintained by a United Nations force of several thousand...

...The UN is pathetically short of peacekeeping units, and its ad hoc coalitions tend to be poorly coordinated...

...That would imply that homosexual orientation would be subject to investigation...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR The Baghdad Scenario For President Clinton's initial use of offensive force, a strike at Baghdad represented a well-nigh best-case scenario: It could be presented as a blow against the world's most notorious bad guy, who tried to kill our good guy...

...President Clinton says the Baghdad raid should serve as a warning to all state sponsors of terrorism, but it would be well to beware of empty warnings...

...All this was leaked so freely as to give the word "leak" a bad name...

...In the first place, how does one distinguish, in Iraq, between unilateral and multilateral concerns...

...India was partitioned in 1947 to create Pakistan (and then Pakistan to create Bangladesh...

...an open homosexual...

...Five years later, Reagan ordered an air raid on Libya in response to the bombing of a Berlin discotheque frequented by American GIs...

...Still, once the White House euphoria over the "qualified success" had worn off (the "qualified" refers to residential buildings hit by our Tomahawk missiles along with Baghdad's intelligence headquarters), some troubling questions emerged...

...In the car Sununu told Thomas there was only one road into the compound, and added that to avoid recognition by the press perhaps they should exchange eyeglasses...

...Korea was partitioned at the Yalta Conference as part of the price for bringing the Soviet Union into the battle against Japan...

...The Wall Street Journal has observed that Zoe Baird's career at the Aetna Life and Casualty Company may have been harmed because any issue involving alien household help or Social Security payments has become known as "a Zoe Baird problem...

...Clintons Gay Problem "I think we're coming toward agreement" on gays in the military, said President Clinton in mid-June...

...The result was a generation of misery and massacres, and one full-scale war...

...with planting a bomb on Pan American flight 103 during the 1988 Christmas season, killing all 259 persons aboard...

...The attack further offered an opportunity to demonstrate the current foreign policy gospel according to Warren M. Christopher...

...There have been long lists, short lists, and finalists who often turned out not to be final...

...For that matter, what about Syria and Iran, suspected of participation in the Pan Am 103 bombing...

...That, to put it mildly, is not the way the Clinton Administration has handled appointments...

...This was the core of the conflict between Chairman Sam Nunn (D.-Ga...

...Yet to be publicly identified as being on a "short list,'' then rejected, leads to the suspicion that the FBI background check turned up something horrendous...

...But that will not come about in time to rescue Bosnia...

...When the President withdrew Lani Guinier's nomination as Associate Attorney General for Civil Rights, her six-year-old son explained tersely to his kindergarten class, "He dumped her...

...Palestine was partitioned in 1948 into Israel and Jordan...

...This was while greeting the American hostages returned from Tehran and implied that President Jimmy Carter had not been sufficiently vigorous in accomplishing their liberation...

...It also seemed to depart from the President's line that the issue is behavior, not orientation...

...The reprisal on June 27 (Baghdad time) for the alleged conspiracy to assassinate former President George Bush in Kuwait last April also provided a chance to show the American public, and military, that Bill Clinton does not shrink from employing force, while using unmanned missiles that risked no American lives...

...When it came to dealing with Iran over American hostages in Lebanon, however, the Reagan policy looked more like ransom than retribution...

...If history is any guide, its partition will be an act of desperation, followed by desperate acts...

...What followed, of course, was the Korean War and North-South tensions that persist until this day, not to mention the danger of a nucleararmed North Korea...

...Is it, as one Pentagon task force maintained, only a statement in public or in the media...

...The draft leaked near the end of June to the conservative Washington Times retained the basic principlethat "homosexuality(not homosexual conduct) is incompatible with military service...

...Is being seen reading a homoerotic magazine "telling...

...Germany was, in effect, partitioned in 1945 into Eastern and Western occupation zones that crystallized into two states (with a divided Berlin in East Germany...

...Individuals of consequence such as Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt, Judge Kimba M. Wood and Judge Stephen G. Breyer deserved better than to be treated like trial balloons...

...One version of the draft order that was being prepared for the signature of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin (a Clinton Executive Order is now out of the question) said that commanders will not initiate investigations "solely" to determine sexual orientation, but that they will, as heretofore, investigate "credible information...

...Perils of Partition In Bosnia, a Europe weary of the search for a solution to ethnic conflict watched, more or less passively, as Serbs and Croats dickered over partitioning a state that is itself the product of Yugoslavia's division...

...And what if it turns out, as some intelligence agencies believe, that Syria and Iran (and Iraq, too, suggests Middle East expert Laurie Mylroie in the Wall Street Journal) are linked to the shadowy New York-New Jersey group that bombed the World Trade Center and planned further attacks on buildings and individuals until interrupted by the FBI...

...After almost a half century of Cold War, this has been undone...

...As the July 15 deadline for an order settling the matter approached, Clinton appeared to be caught between a repressive version that he could not in good conscience accept, and a more liberal version that might spur Congress to formalize the gay ban in law...

...Neither the United Nations nor the United States has yet acted—beyond sanctions falling short of an oil embargo—to force Libya to hand over two intelligence agents charged in the U.S...

...Was the plot against George Bush more deserving of a military response than Saddam Hussein's resistance to the removal of chemical equipment and the monitoring of missile test sites, which Clinton had warned could have "serious consequences...

...Richard M. Nixon fought for Judge Clement F. Haynsworth Jr., his choice for the Supreme Court, ignoring appeals from Republican Senators to withdraw a nomination facing defeat...

...The problem complicated the question of what should be investigated...

...The grim record of dismemberment in this century indicates that it may not be an effective way to avoid additional bloodshed...

...What constitutes "telling...

...It may seem out of character for a journalist to suggest that an open administration should not extend to risking the reputations of reputable people...

...What he was hoping for was a consensus among uniformed and civilian authorities in the Pentagon and the powerhouses in Congress that would get the irksome issue behind him...

...Information from whom, and about what...

...President Ronald Reagan, during his first week in office in 1981, pledged "swift and effective retribution" for terrorist acts...

...Tantalizingly close as agreement may have seemed, though, based on the "don't ask, don't tell" mantra, formidable devils lurked in the details...

...It was a joke, said Sununu, that the Judge apparently didn't get because he looked back in puzzlement...

...The Secretary of State has given the impression that the United States, although stymied by its allies in trying to save Bosnia, will proceed alone where its vital interests are at stake...

...Where partition works it usually requires constant vigilance and policing...

...Baghdad is not likely to be the last hard decision Clinton will have to make if he is to be consistent about responding to state-supported terrorism...

...He read up on prospective candidates long in advance so that he could make his decisions quickly, Sununu noted, and confided them to a bare handful of people prior to the official announcement...