Kuwait

Kuwait ended an embarrassment when it wound up martial law tribunals of alleged collaborators and commuted 29 death sentences already handed down. U.S. and allied pressure to improve on the human rights front clearly had something to do with that.But that should not be the end of it. Kuwait remains a disappointment to its friends in the aftermath of the gulf war. The return to civilian rule means the armed men on the corner change their army uniforms for police uniforms. It leaves guns in the hands of Kuwaitis, in some cases to use against Palestinian and other guest workers as they please.

A soldier in the Maryland National Guard received a Christmas morning telephone call from President Obama expressing his gratitude - and that of the American people - for her service. Sgt. Samantha Sherrill, an air traffic controller with 29th Combat Aviation Brigade and a Randallstown native, received the call after she and her fellow members of the 29 t h 's F Company, 1st Battalion 111th General Support Aviation Battalion, flew to Kuwait on the last aircraft out of Iraq in support of operations.

IN HIS URGENT arguments during the fall and winter of 1990 for military action against Saddam Hussein, President Bush made much of the Iraqi leader's cruelty toward the Kuwaiti people. Bush's allegations of atrocities by Iraqi forces generally went unchallenged. Hussein's violent disposal of dissident Iraqis was a matter of record, so few politicians, journalists or human rights investigators were prepared to question the president's campaign to paint his opponent as Adolf Hitler reborn.Some claims were no doubt true, but the most sensational one -- that Iraqi soldiers removed hundreds of Kuwaiti babies from incubators and left them to die on hospital floors -- was shown to be almost certainly false by an ABC reporter, John Martin, in March 1991, after the liberation of Kuwait.

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By invitation of Kuwaiti officials, Gov. William Donald Schaefer is accompanying the emir of Kuwait on his return to Kuwait City today. Some Maryland lawmakers say Schaefer should tend to business at home.The Evening Sun wants to know what you think about Schaefer's trip.Call SUNDIAL, the Baltimore Sun's telephone information system, on a Touch-Tone phone. The call is local, and answers will be registered between 10 a.m. and midnight. The SUNDIAL phone number is 783-1800 or, in Anne Arundel County, 268-7736.

GOVERNMENTSince the sheikdom of Kuwait was founded in 1756, it has been ruled, sometimes under British guardianship, by the Sabah family, who were chosen by its first Arab settlers. At the time of the invasion by Iraq on Aug. 2, the emir of Kuwait was Sheik Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, who was head of state, leading a Cabinet with 10 appointed ministers and four elected ones. The constitution, framed in 1962, allowed the vote to literate, native-born Kuwaiti males over 21 years of age whose families had resided in Kuwait since 1920.

The tragedy on Jerusalem's Temple Mount is no reason to link Iraqi evacuation from Kuwait to Israeli evacuation of the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria. That is what Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein demanded, to cloud the issue of his total aggression against a friendly, fellow Arab, Islamic state that had been subsidizing him. The linkage is specious and fraudulent. It is a false distraction.Kuwait is not a quid pro quo for the West Bank and Gaza. Kuwait was not a sympathizer of Israel but a supporter of the Palestinians.

Resumption of oil shipments this weekend is the first good news from Kuwait since its liberation by allied troops last February. Nearly half the 600 oil well fires set by Iraqi soldiers are out, with 15 more extinguished each week. Slowly the facilities are being restored.Kuwait's export resumption will start small at 140,000 barrels a day, rising to 400,000 barrels by New Year's, much less than the 2 million barrels daily before Iraq's invasion last August. It nonetheless symbolizes the start of a return to normal, both for the oil industry worldwide and for Kuwait as a city-state with a life and a purpose.

KUWAIT'S ruling al Sabah family was notably generous with its political promises after it was driven into exile last August by Iraq's invasion. The assurances were virtually non-stop that the emir and other top leaders would assure that post-liberation Kuwait could look forward to a new political order based on more representative government.Now, after the tremendously costly U.N.-led intervention to free Kuwait from the invading Iraqis, that pledge so far remains unredeemed.Now the emir says merely that new parliamentary elections are indeed planned, but not for another 16 months.

THE SCRIPT for Kuwait's first postwar trial of alleged pro-Iraq collaborators might have been written in Baghdad by Saddam Hussein -- or in Prague, by Franz Kafka. After less than three hours of hearings a martial-law court convicted and sentenced six people in a process that one Western diplomat described as "bizarre." To the bewilderment of defense attorneys, no witnesses for the defendants were allowed nor were the attorneys permitted to cross-examine their clients. Allegedly incriminating evidence wasn't made public.

State to begin testing speed technology The State Highway Administration will begin testing next week on a system designed to help motorists move to reduced lanes more safely. A five-week study is planned for the Variable Speed Advisory technology, a traffic management tool that aims to permit lane merges without sudden stops or backups. Using roadside sensors, speed trailers and vehicle recognition software, SHA officials will gather information to determine if giving advisory speeds and travel time information helps reduce congestion.

Pfc. Christopher Pfeiffer, 20, a Westminster soldier accused of deserting his Army unit, is slowly making his way home after paperwork problems threatened to strand him in Kuwait a second time. Pfeiffer's superiors notified him last week that he might be discharged from the Army. They said he failed to return to his unit after coming home over the summer on authorized leave to take care of his sick wife and newborn daughter. Pfeiffer's family said he did everything he could to contact his chain of command and either further extend his leave or make travel arrangements back to Afghanistan.

Marialou Anobas doesn't use the word "lucky" to describe herself because, as she sees it, surviving a hotel bombing and winning the lottery in the same lifetime requires more than just good fortune. Instead, the registered nurse will simply say somebody has a plan for her life, and the winding road that led her from her native Philippines, to Saudi Arabia, to Kuwait, to the United States, to winning $250,000 in Tuesday's Mega Millions drawing becomes more fulfilling every day. Anobas was one number away from claiming the $60 million jackpot.

WASHINGTON -- Federal agents are investigating whether several large food companies charged the government excessively high prices for supplies to U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait, administration officials said yesterday. Widening their previously disclosed inquiries into contract fraud and corruption in Kuwait and Iraq, investigators from the Justice and Defense departments are examining deals that the Sara Lee Corp., ConAgra Foods and other U.S. companies made to supply the military, officials said.

Kuwait City, Kuwait -- Across a broad belt of growing instability that stretches from North Africa through the Persian Gulf to Pakistan, the United States is sliding into a hazardous new era, lacking the grand strategy to guide it through the complex perils ahead, and short of the military forces ready to safeguard America's vital interests, according to U.S. military officers and outside strategists. Attention is riveted this week on Iraq, as Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush prepare to report on the state of the war and their strategy for salvaging the U.S. intervention there and bringing troops home.

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait -- As the Humvee began to flip over, no one was holding Maryland National Guard Army Cpl. Joseph Giles the right way. So the gunner's 5-foot, 5-inch frame, weighed down by a Kevlar helmet and armor-plated vest, began to slip out of the arms of the four other soldiers and inch toward the open hole on the top of the military jeep simulator. Eventually, the crew from the 1st Battalion, 175th Infantry Regiment corrected, but the lesson wasn't lost on the war-bound soldiers.

An acrid cloud of black smoke hung over Kuwait City on Monday, the result of up to 600 oil wells set on fire by Iraqi soldiers in their "scorched earth" policy. It was the worst day yet of pollution from the fiery oil fields. Visibility was cut to 500 yards; the city's temperature plunged from near-90 degrees to 60 degrees; at noon, drivers had to use their car lights to navigate the streets.This is Iraq's final gift to the Kuwaiti people: an environmental nightmare that poses grave health hazards to those in the country and people in nearby nations as well.

Tammy Duckworth knows what it's like to be a soldier who kissed her spouse goodbye and went off to war in Iraq. She also knows what it's like to come home grievously wounded. Now Duckworth, the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs director who lost her legs during her 2004 deployment, is experiencing yet another reality of military life. Her husband, Maj. Bryan Bowlsbey of the Illinois National Guard, arrived this month in the Middle East for his first tour of duty, directing convoys from Kuwait into Iraq several times a week.

The transcript of a secret military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon last week quoted Mohammed as claiming responsibility for planning 31 al-Qaida attacks and plots from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 - which killed nearly 3,000 - to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine. Mohammed also said he beheaded Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan. ?I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z.? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed