Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide for Reeves County, Trans Pecos, Big Bend of West Texas

OPINION

Tuesday, February 24, 1998

SQUARELY

PEGGED

Heart is back home

for ex-Pecosites

Sam Gonzales says he enjoys reading the online newspaper every day and urges us to keep up the good work.

Homesick students in colleges and universities around the country log on frequently to touch base. Last week, I counted 33 different schools where students or faculty accessed the Enterprise web site. A few of those were one-page hits and may have been someone just browsing. But most stayed around to read several pages.

The Univeristy of Texas at Austin generated the most visitors - 10. I know one of those was a business "hit," because Angela Dorsey accessed our tourism site from UT to check on our link to The Veranda Country Inn in Fort Davis. She linked theveranda.com to our site, in an reciprocal agreement.

Other UT students have told us they read our paper regularly, and the stats report shows it. Second in number of visitors was Northside ISD. I don't know where Northside is, but we got six different visits from that address. Two came from UTPB, the Odessa branch of the University of Texas. One even came from ITS.Hawaii.

Some "name" universities you might recognize are Devry, Concordia, Trinity and Dartmouth. More familiar to this area are TAMU (Texas A&M University), TTU (Texas Tech University), TWU (Texas Women's University), SMU (Southern Methodist University) and UNM (University of New Mexico, aka Loboland).

Others are UNH, LFC, Udel, CMU, UAkron, Clarkson, PSU, UNT, athscsa, SHSU, MSU, SRU, MTU, NCSU, dhcp. Washington, UMich and UWM.

Whitney ISD also registered several visits. Lamesa ISD is a regular on the weekly stats report. Do you know anyone there?

Here are a few non-education sites from around the world: Hawaii-aloha.net; helsinki.fi, iwakuni.jp. You probably can guess that fi stands for Finland, and jp stands for Japan. We have a regular reader in Germany, too - Bena Stickels - but I don't know the initials for that country.

You may know some of these people who catch the local news from a long way off. And maybe you know a bunch of others who don't read us online but would like to know what goes on here. Tell them to check us out at www.pecos.net/news

Then send us an e-mail message updating all of us on what they are doing, like Kim Balog did. We'll publish it in the print edition so everyone at home can read it, and everyone else can read it online.

Online technology is not really new. Listen to The Preacher in Ecclesiastes:

"Is there anything of which one can say, `Look, this is something new?' It was here already, long ago, it was here before our time." Eccl. 1:10

EDITOR'S NOTE: Peggy McCracken is the Webmaster of the Pecos Enterprise whose column appears each Tuesday. She can be e-mailed at: news@pecos.net.

Our View

U.S. right to accept U.N. deal with Iraq

The United States has accepted the agreement with a wait-and-see attitude. We're glad and thankful. No one wants war, but by the same token, we should never hesitate to take strong stands on what we believe is right and be willing to use the force necessary to back up our words.

We need to remember that the Iraqi people are the ones being hurt and they have long been friends of the United States. It should be remembered by us and them that the technology and know how of Americans is what developed the oil resources of the Persian Gulf.

It was during that time in the 1950s and 1960s that we as people got to know one another and developed strong bonds. We should not let a despot like Hussein stand in the way of that relationship. In time, he will no longer be at the helm of the Iraqi government, much like what has happened in Iran which has expressed an interest in renewing relationships with the United States.

The United Nations has displayed the ability to become involved and negotiate peace, the purpose for which that organization was intended.

Hussein should realize that while the United States and the world have accepted this agreement, any violation of it will give our country more support than ever for military action.

And we should not hesitate to take that action if, God forbid, it be necessary.

The spread of nuclear weapons and biological warfare should not be allowed and every step should be taken to prevent it.

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