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In standard form, presidential contenders have yet to trudge into the debate in any real way. In late August the Associated Press reported that Vice President Al Gore pledged to support the efforts to force the Navy to leave in a telephone call with Gov. Rosello. But when asked about it, Gore's spokesman said the vice president does not discuss personal telephone conversations.

Some members of the George W. Bush camp have also met with Puerto Rican officials about the matter, but he hasn't ventured an opinion yet.

Although Hillary Clinton has desperately tried to avoid coming down one way or the other on the matter, her would-be opponent, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani waded cautiously into the turbulent waters last week. He urged New York Democrats to stop pressuring President Clinton for a quick decision on whether the Navy should leave Vieques after nearly six decades there.

"I think the president of the United States should come to a decision on it after he gets his report back," Giuliani urged, referring to recommendations expected from the Pentagon task force. The panels is expected to recommend keeping Vieques open for only five more years.

As the mayor urged patience, a New York City Council committee began pushing for a resolution demanding that the Navy leave. Fifteen New York politicians of Puerto Rican descent, including U.S. Reps. Jose Serrano and Velasquez, were busy drumming up support for the House and Senate hearings. "We believe your present hearings on the president's clemency toward the Puerto Rican political prisoners focuses on the symptom rather than the fundamental problem that this Senate has failed to address: the ultimate status of Puerto Rico," the legislators wrote to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

The Vieques issue, they argue, is directly linked to the unresolved nature of Puerto Rico's status after nearly 100 years as a U.S. territory. For the past 47 years it's been a commonwealth. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and subject to military service, but they pay no federal taxes, cannot vote in presidential elections and are represented in Congress by a delegate with no floor-voting powers.

If they composed a state with real congressional representation, they'd have more power to protect their citizens and force the Navy to behave more responsibly or leave.

For years, Puerto Ricans' anger over the Navy's occupation of Vieques and their status as a commonwealth in general has simmered under the surface. But since Sanes' accidental death, Puerto Ricans of every political stripe have united to demand that the Navy either leave or stop their target practice altogether.

Since days after the death, hundreds of protesters have illegally camped out on the western tip of the island designated for dropping live fire, precluding the Navy from resuming bombing. Elaborate murals and spray-painted signs proclaiming "Fuera Marina Vieques" -- Navy out of Vieques -- now dot the island.

One protester, Puerto Rican Sen. Ruben Berrios, leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, has camped out on the ordnance-strewn beaches of the live-fire zone for more that to 100 days now. He vows to remain until the Navy decides to withdraw.

"Mr. Clinton can go into the next millennium as a protector of the ecology or he can be one of the dictators of his age," says Berrios, who like Clinton graduated from Georgetown University and Yale Law School. "The president cannot extricate himself from this situation -- the pressure is too great in all of Puerto Rico."

Since the early '40s, Vieques has served as a training center for U.S. forces based in the North Atlantic. Troops trained here have been deployed in every conflict since World War II, including Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War and Kosovo.

Navy spokesman Roberto Nelson worries that unless the Navy can resume practice, the troops scheduled to train here will not be prepared to face combat.

"It's not a game," warns Nelson, who works at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station on Puerto Rico. "In the military the penalty you pay for improper training is people die."

But there is another reason that the Navy doesn't want to close down operations on Vieques: the money it generates from other countries who also use it for training their militaries. Up until early August, the Navy advertised the "Atlantic Weapons Training Facility" on a Navy Web site, promoting the "one-stop shopping" and "scheduled as requested" advantages of the area and that the "ideal moderate tropical climate permits year round ops with practically no cancellations."

When the Puerto Rican government discovered the Web site and raised questions about it, the Navy shut it down.

Anti-Navy sentiment continues to reverberate throughout Puerto Rico. Walk down any street in Vieques and you will overhear impassioned discussions about the latest developments in the ongoing controversy. Citizens are constantly wondering what the Navy's next move will be, and allegations fly about a rumored epidemic of cancer many islanders believe the constant bombing has caused.

Talk of cancer is nothing new. A study conducted by the government of Puerto Rico in 1997 found 482 cases of cancer between 1960 and 1989, a rate that is 27 percent higher than any other municipality in Puerto Rico.

To make matters worse, the Navy has recently admitted to using napalm and uranium-tipped bombs on the island after years of denying it. Investigators from a federal cancer-monitoring agency, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, are now investigating. The inquiry could take six months and delay any kind of White House action or involvement, which means the issue could still be playing itself out in the middle of campaign 2000.

In the long run, Vieques may well make the clemency controversy seem like a footnote, but it doesn't necessarily have to become another political pitfall in the first lady's quest for the Senate. If Hillary plays her cards right, Vieques and all the thorny issues that go along with it could provide a wonderful opportunity to win back the good graces of her Hispanic brethren in New York.

Of course, that depends on her husband's next move and the political fallout it causes. Will he or won't he side with Puerto Rico this time? And what will be her response? Only their pollsters know for sure. Either way, you can bet Hillary will do a little more consulting this time around.
salon.com | Sept. 22, 1999

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