
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 5, 1994                   TAG: 9402080018
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BRIEFLY PUT . . .

IF WE can distract ourselves for a moment from the important news, about Tanya Harding and Michael Jackson, it may be worth noting a minor little item from the other day: that the Pentagon is preparing to launch a $30-billion satellite system, dubbed "Milstar" (as in millstone?), which will enable the United States to fight a sustained nuclear war with the Soviet Union, for as long as six months.

This brilliant program was born - you had to know it - during the Reagan years, but remains in President Clinton's defense budget notwithstanding a few problematic details, such as: There's no Soviet Union. A nuclear war isn't likely to last six months. There's no way of knowing whether the communications satellite system will work, except by having a nuclear war. The system costs $30 billion.

Clinton might want to take a look at this program if he needs some spare change to help pay for, say, health-care reform.

SPEAKING OF which, President Clinton continues to win points with his stated desire to raise cigarette taxes to help pay for health-care reform. On top of this positive development, seven physicians who have been surgeon generals recently teamed up in a call to arms for a new war on cigarettes. They want to stamp out smoking by the end of the decade. Good luck to them.

It'd be nice to save more than 400,000 American lives a year, now lost to the effects of smoking.

Meanwhile, Chrysler Corp. is talking about producing a family sedan with no ash tray. Another good idea, as an extension of Chrysler's interest in airbags and the like. No car is safe with a cloud of smoke hanging inside.

Keywords:
TONYA HARDING

by CNB