OPINIONS OF OTHER NEWSPAPERS
‘Staying course’ worst option of all

Iraq is on the brink. The American public knows it. The world knows it.

But President Bush seems to have a deaf ear to other voices.

Responding to questions about Iraq and the Middle East last week, Mr. Bush said, “This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.”

In our opinion, it would be a serious mistake for the president to shut off a discussion of options in Iraq.

Yet the message he’s sending, intended or not, is that he remains committed to the floundering stay-the-course strategy.

That is clearly a course that a growing number of Americans find unacceptable. Just as important, the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, deserves greater consideration from the administration than the president’s recent remarks indicate it will receive.

If leaked accounts are accurate, the group’s report this week will, among other things, call for a gradual pullback of U.S. troops, serious diplomatic discussions with Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, and faster and better training of Iraqis to assume greater security roles.

Those are reasonable goals, ones that will have to be weighed against the risks and realities on the ground.

No one should expect the recommendations to be a magic elixir for Iraq, but they are options worth considering.

For instance, turning over greater security responsibility to Baghdad might force Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to actually lead and confront Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s support for sectarian violence.

Political engagement with Syria and Iran would risk encouraging both nations to make untenable demands about nuclear weapons and Lebanon.

But Iraq likely will remain in turmoil unless the disruptive influences of Syria, Iran and Mr. al-Sadr are contained there, either by force or agreement.

Everyone knows there are no good options in Iraq.

But everyone knows that the stay-the-course strategy we’re following now is the worst of them all.

Everyone, it seems, but the president.

Feds cut funding in favor of Trans-Texas corridor

Federal funding for hundreds of projects across the state of Texas, ranging from hike and bike trails to a Houston heritage tourism center, have been arbitrarily canceled by Texas Department of Transportation officials.

The diversion of already appropriated federal dollars from much needed local improvements to highway expansion is shortsighted and should be reversed.

Local organizations had already pledged 20 percent matching funds for the federal dollars, enhancement money that will go unspent if the projects remain canceled.

State officials acted after the Federal Highway Administration cut the amount of transportation dollars allocated to the state from gasoline tax revenue due to the costs of the Iraq War and hurricane reconstruction.

Faced with a choice of how to budget the remaining funds, TxDot chose to cancel federal grants for the local efforts and will apparently use the money to maintain the rest of its spending priorities, including projects to alleviate traffic congestion.

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, says the agency protected its favored mobility projects at the expense of cities and counties across the state, including 32 projects in the Houston- Galveston area.

Asample of those proposals includes districtwide graffiti abatement, Houston Ship Channel Turning Basin beautification, NASA Parkway enhancements, Spring Branch Creek trail and a shared-use bridge in Memorial Park.

Millions of grant dollars have already been spent in support of Buffalo Bayou improvements and freeway landscaping in the area.

Coleman believes the local projects were canceled to ensure that funding remains for start-up efforts on the controversial TransTexas Corridor, a vast tollroad project championed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

“It’s making a decision to end projects that create sustained economic life and quality of life in communities for more highway lanes,” Coleman said. Texas Historical Commission Executive Director Larry Oakes told the Chronicle he attributed TxDot’s action to the agency’s dislike of sharing its federal transportation dollars for local projects.

A TxDot official denied that, saying the grants program has been “near and dear” to the department since its inception in 1991.

He didn’t explain why such a beloved program would be unceremoniously killed without consulting either state legislators or local elected officials.

Chairman Williamson sent a letter to grant applicants informing them that state officials would not pursue further enhancement projects unless forced to by law.

State legislators should take him at his word and pass a bill in the coming session restoring the enhancement program and mandating that federal funds reach the local destinations for which they were appropriated.

-- Houston Chronicle