Armed Forces Radio And Television Service

A lot has been said and written about Jack Buck's broadcasting skills this week. He'll be long remembered for his distinctive voice and an ability to say so much with so few words. But Buck, who died Tuesday night in St. Louis, will be equally remembered for being a good person. His son Joe Buck said, "He always emphasized three things--be a good person, be a good father and be a good son." It was a plus that his son also succeeded in sports broadcasting.

Negotiators for the Liberian government and two rebel factions signed a power-sharing agreement Monday that aims to end 14 ruinous years of war and will put power in the hands of non-combatants as the country prepares for elections by 2005. The agreement was signed in nearby Ghana, as Liberians struggled to put their lives, and their country, back together under the eyes of West African peacekeepers and about 200 U.S. Marines. Shops and some banks reopened in the capital, Monrovia.

Thanks to the high lottery number that kept him out of the draft in 1970 when he graduated from the University of Dayton in Ohio, Joe Reiling missed the war in Vietnam entirely. In fact, he has never held--much less fired--a rifle, saluted a 22-year-old second lieutenant or picked up a cigarette butt in the service of his country. Nevertheless, when Reiling went to see the film "Good Morning, Vietnam" in 1987, he had a sense of empathy with Airman Adrian Cronauer, played by Robin Williams, who transformed the Armed Forces Radio Network from a purveyor of Muzak and spots on the Uniform Code of Military Justice to something on the cutting edge of both radio broadcasting and music.

Terry A. Anderson prided himself on being a quick study when it came to the Byzantine world of Middle Eastern politics. And when three well-armed men snatched him off a Beirut street on a bright Saturday morning 2,455 days ago, the Associated Press' chief Middle East correspondent instantly realized that he had badly miscalculated. "Terry had the look of a man who knew he was doomed," recalled AP photographer Don Mell, who was with Anderson but was not abducted by the Islamic Jihad kidnapers.

Long after the war machines are stilled and killing grounds revert to tourist haunts, some of the most enduring images and sounds of the Persian Gulf conflict may well linger in the debris of popular culture. By the start of the aerial assault on Iraq last week, many of America's organs of pop culture already were geared for war. For six months, Saddam Hussein has been vilified by novelty songs on the radio and effigies burned at shopping centers and crushed at sports truck rallies.

In the remotest corners of this jungle-covered nation, antennas sprout from wooden shacks. A pulse of electricity comes from small generators, traveling over lines slung between tree limbs slashed from the forest. Inside those homes is the warm glow of the 20th Century: television. Nearly 400 miles northwest of here, in a seaside palace in the capital, Libreville, President Omar Bongo likes to watch a bit of television, too--when the television cameras are not watching him.