War And Peace

It is eerily appropriate that PBS' Frontline series scheduled the documentary "War and Peace in Panama" for tonight.This hour, which will be on Maryland Public Television, Channels 22 and 67, at 9 o'clock, looks at Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama by United States troops that deposed dictator Manuel Noriega in December, 1989, and conditions in the Central American country since.The footage and interviews resonate with the recent and current images of our latest military incursion, that into Iraq.

Academy joy, sorrow: One grad freed by Iraqis, another 0) killed in crashJoy in Annapolis at the release of Naval Academy graduate and Marine bombardier Lt. Jeffrey N. Zaun, 28, of Cherry Hill, N.J., freed after more than 40 days as a prisoner of war by Iraq, is tempered by the death of another former mid.Marine Corps Maj. Eugene "Gene" McCarthy, a 1977 graduate of the academy, was killed Feb. 2 when the AH-1 Cobra helicopter he was piloting crashed in...

Hail to Mrs. Chief: Barbara Bush stopping in Dundalk, Fort 0) MeadeFirst lady Barbara Bush stopped in Baltimore County today to open the local warehouse operation of the International Book Bank, a private, non-profit group that sends books to Third World nations.Bush was joined by Gov. William Donald Schaefer and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke for ceremonial ribbon-cutting to celebrate the company's move to new quarters close to the city line in Dundalk.She also noted the grant of $48,000 from the U.S. Information Agency that will enable the book bank to send 120,000 books this year to Eastern Europe.

FOR MANY families, early evening is the worst of times. Even without a war.Children and adults, both in their own worlds for the last eight or 10 hours, are coming back together, bringing with them the joys and frustrations of their day, expecting support and comfort, as well as food.Parents are tired, kids are tired. And still there are dinner and homework and phone calls and chores and, in most homes, tension.War can make it worse.Even in families not directly affected by the Persian Gulf war, anxiety levels may be higher than usual, experts say. Children may be troubled by what they've talked about in school; adults may be upset by the news they've heard -- or not heard -- during the day.Add to this mix the nightly news with film of bodies being carried from a bombed-out structure or the on-again, off-again promise of peace.

Whitney Houston appears to have scored big at the Super Bowl -- her rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" to kick off the game will be released as a single, an Arista spokesman said yesterday.Although the CD and cassette singles won't be in stores for several days, followed a week later by a video of the performance, radio stations already are playing the stirring version of the national anthem."The audience seems to like it, and we've had some requests for it," said Roy Sampson, program director for V-103 FM, where the song can be heard several times a day. "We're playing it in support of the men and women in the Persian Gulf."

Imagine that you hate war -- its senselessness, its destruction, its all-out inhumanity -- and so you write a song expressing all that.But no one's particularly interested in hearing it . . . until an actual war starts."

WASHINGTON -- A practical political result of President Bush launching a shooting war, after congressional debate and acquiescence, has been to put disagreement with the war off limits for most elected officeholders who want a political future. It is not enough for them to say they support the troops in the field; they have to support Bush as well, or likely be cast as doing neither.While it is understandable that this is so, there is something basically disingenuous about politicians now embracing the war who believed in all sincerity that it was a major mistake to go to war rather than give economic sanctions more time to work.

THE REV. MICHAEL ROGERS SAT in his office last Friday afternoon and polished his Sunday sermon."I'm usually not an overtly political kind of preacher," said Rogers, the pastor of Valley Presbyterian Church in Lutherville.But this sermon -- on the first weekend of the Persian Gulf war -- would be different. It had to be, with the world's attention focused on the conflict and so many people turning to their religious leaders for guidance and comfort.For his part, Rogers yesterday delivered a sermon entitled "The True Ruler of Iraq," based on the second Psalm in the Bible.

THIS IS an unusual, perhaps unique, moment in American history, as the nation nears an apparent deadline on which it is likely to declare war. A year from now, perhaps only months or even weeks from now, we may well be looking back at this period to try to figure out what happened.There are several possible outcomes for the crisis in the Persian Gulf. It is still possible JimCastellito find a peaceful resolution. But the Bush administration seems determined to use force against Iraq to get it out of Kuwait.

It is a cold and blustery morning in Washington, D.C., and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is as silent as a tomb.A middle-aged couple stand there.The man is heavy-set and tough. He wears a lumberman's jacket and has the weathered face of a working man. The woman is dressed as though for church. She wears heels and she has pinned a corsage to the front of her dark woolen overcoat."This is for my eldest boy," explains the woman quietly as she kneels and lays a small wreath at the foot of the wall.