Say What? What They’re Saying On Other Editorial Pages Around The Country

Government gasses its own credibility

The latest admissions relating to U.S. troops’ exposure to chemical weapons in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991 have taken us to an entirely new place. It now is clear that, with intelligence available to the government since at least 1986, the exposure could and should have been avoided. It is clear that the CIA as well as the Defense Department has been complicit in a stonewall, if not a coverup. And it is clear that it is no longer good enough for administration officials to say - as acting CIA Director George J. Tenet did (last) week - that their performance “should have been better” and expect that to wipe the slate clean.

… Further inquiry may well show, in the end, that the nerve gas released at Khamisiyah did not cause any illnesses, and that the “gulf war syndrome” is in fact a host of disparate ailments caused by stress and other factors. But the government will have a hard time now persuading any veteran to accept its word on that.

From an editorial in the Washington Post.

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters?

Need tax help? Don’t disturb the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS telephone “helpline” has been a cruel joke on taxpayers for the past several years.

It is extremely difficult to get through. Most calls end in busy signals.

For those lucky enough to get a live employee on the line, there’s the wonderfully reassuring fact that the IRS frequently gives incorrect answers to even basic tax questions - and saying you did only what the IRS told you to do is not an accepted legal defense in an audit or in tax court.

From an editorial in The Parkersburg (W.Va.) News

Another first for Madeleine Albright: Batter up!

The photographs on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright throwing out the first pitch in Baltimore suggest that she may be the best politician-pitcher ever to perform this august honor (okay, April honor, though that sounds sort of sexist). Her pitching form appears eerily correct.

… The figure who Secretary Albright most resembles in our mind’s eye is Early Wynn of the 1954 Cleveland Indians. Mr. Wynn is in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

From an editorial in the Wall Street Journal

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