Arms

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Robyn Reid didn't want an abortion. But when her grandmother forcibly took her to an abortion clinic one wintry day in 1998, Reid figured she'd just tell the doctor her wishes and then sneak away. Instead, Kermit Gosnell barked: "I don't have time for this!" He then ripped off her clothes, spanked her, wrestled her onto a dirty surgical stretcher, tied her flailing arms and legs down and pumped sedatives into her until she quit screaming and lost consciousness, she told the Daily News yesterday.

Years ago, the United States had a firm position on arms control. Over many a year and many a negotiation, we didn't yield. Then our eternal adversary, the Evil Empire itself, did something typically sneaky. Those crumbums took all those U.S. proposals, turned a few of the letters backwards and presented them as their own. Imagine the distress! Here were all those folks like our president swearing over generations that they wouldn't do a deal with the Rooskies unless they agreed to our position - and here were the Reds agreeing.

There is less than meets the eye to the accomplishments emerging from the U.S.-Soviet summit in Washington. Observing the summit extravaganza, it is hard to escape the feeling of witnessing a grand event. Most Americans are excited to be watching the media event of the decade. And the majority wants to believe that diplomatic progress achieved by President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev will make the world a safer place in which to live. But the brutal truth is that beyond atmospherics the summit has little prospect of changing the nature of the U.S.-Soviet military competition.

I think every good, sensible American should stand behind the President and take up arms against the press. Marcelline Goelzer Somers Point, N.J.

Here are statements President Reagan has made on the issue of arms for hostages: "Our government has a firm policy not to capitulate to terrorist demands. That no-concessions policy remains in force, in spite of wildly speculative and false stories about arms-for-hostages and alleged ransom payments. We did not - repeat - did not - trade weapons or anything else for hostages nor will we. . . . Those charges are utterly false. The United States has not made concessions to those who hold our people captive in Lebanon.

Six years ago, federal authorities contended that three South African arms merchants had managed to smuggle U.S. artillery shell-powder supplies that were used by Iraq against U.S. troops in the Gulf War. But time and money and a beneficial change of government in South Africa has apparently healed all wounds, or at least tempered the feelings of U.S. diplomats and politicians who want to resume trade with South Africa. Back in Philadelphia yesterday, where the smuggling case originated in 1991, federal prosecutors obtained court approval of an unusual plea bargain under which the South African arms merchants consented to pay $12.5 million in fines.

Ballet dancers dance with their feet. Most modern dancers exploit the torso. Mark Morris' dances are often about what the arms can show us. Arms shoot out taut as arrows, like the poisoned love darts described in New Love Songs and Waltzes by Johannes Brahms. Shoulders wiggle like hips in the country-western Going Away Party. Hands flip-flap like nervous talkers; palms brush from a dancer's bum to fling out street curses. You can't watch the Mark Morris Dance Group - which appeared Monday and Tuesday at the Annenberg Center - without considering what the arms are doing.

When Steve Bedrosian won the National League Pitcher of the Month award for May, fellow Phils reliever Kent Tekulve was proud. "We work together as a unit," Tekulve was saying the other day. "Of the 10 saves he had (in May), I 'held' six or seven of them (putting Bedrosian into a save situation). And I was involved in his win. I take pride in that. " Tekulve also helps Bedrosian indirectly - Bedrosian's high-octane fastball suffers if he is overused, but Tekulve, the classic rubber-armed sinkerball pitcher, can work more often, helping Bedrosian stay out of lopsided games, such as Monday's 12-8 loss to the Cards.

WASHINGTON - Top Pentagon leaders said for the first time Thursday that the Defense Department backed the idea of providing arms to opposition groups in Syria. Until Thursday, the Pentagon had only said publicly that U.S. policy is to give only humanitarian assistance to rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Providing arms has been the subject of internal administration debate. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said President Obama made the final decision against arming the rebels.

A Northamption Township police officer acted properly when he exchanged gunfire and killed an armed man who earlier had murdered his former wife, Bucks County authorities announced Friday. Northampton Township Officer Timothy Friel was trapped in his seatbelt when he returned fire with his non-shooting hand and killing Kenneth Philipp, who had earlier fatally wounded his ex-wife. Friel received minor injuries in the April 18th exchange. Friel "stood fast, he did not retreat around the car, he sheltered and returned fire," said District Attorney David Heckler.

BEIRUT - Syria will supply "game-changing" weapons to Hezbollah, the chief of the Lebanese militant group said Thursday, less than a week after Israeli air strikes on Damascus targeted alleged shipments of advanced Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah. Israel has signaled it will respond with air strikes to any weapons shipments, meaning it could quickly get drawn into Syria's civil war if the Hezbollah chief's declaration is more than an empty threat. Tension has been rising in the region since Israel struck targets inside Syria on Friday and Sunday.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is preparing to send lethal weaponry to the Syrian opposition and has taken steps to assert more aggressive U.S. leadership among allies and partners seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, according to senior administration officials. The officials emphasized that supplying arms was one of several options under consideration and that political negotiation remained the preferred option. To that end, the administration has launched an effort to convince Russian President Vladimir V. Putin that the probable use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government - and the more direct outside intervention that could provoke - should lead him to reconsider his support of Assad.

WASHINGTON - Proceeding cautiously, President Obama insisted Friday that any use of chemical weapons by Syria would change his "calculus" about U.S. military involvement in the two-year-old civil war - but said too little was known about a pair of likely sarin attacks to order aggressive action now. The president's public response to the latest intelligence reflected the lack of agreement in Washington over whether to use America's military to intervene...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Thursday that the Syrian government had likely used chemical weapons on a small scale against its own people, but it stopped short of threatening military action against President Bashar al-Assad. In a letter to lawmakers, the White House said U.S. intelligence agencies "assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin. " Despite the caveats, the disclosure puts President Obama under new pressure to respond because it is the first time that the United States has joined other countries in suggesting that the Assad government is likely to have deployed chemical weapons over the course of the two-year-old Syrian civil war. A senior administration official acknowledged that any use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross the "red line" declared by Obama many times in recent months in warnings to Assad.

George Bunn, 87, a leading figure in the field of arms control who helped draft and negotiate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, limiting the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide, died April 21 at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He had spinal cancer, said his son Matthew Bunn. In 1945, while serving in the Navy, Mr. Bunn was on a ship bound for Japan when atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought an end to World War II. "He was convinced that the atomic bomb saved his life," his son said Thursday.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday that Israeli military leaders kept him in the dark, during three days of face-to-face meetings, about their assessment that forces loyal to the Syrian government had killed rebel fighters with chemical weapons. An Israeli general made the assertion Tuesday at a conference in Tel Aviv while Hagel was in the country meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. Hagel said Wednesday that the Israelis did not mention their finding even though the two sides had discussed at length common concerns about the threat posed by Syria's chemical-weapons stockpile.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon announced Friday that it has reached a preliminary agreement on a complex $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, in what would represent the latest major weapons sale to U.S. allies in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will attempt to finalize the arms package next week when he is scheduled to visit the three countries. Ultimately, the deal will need the assent of Congress. Defense officials said they have kept lawmakers apprised of the negotiations and revealed basics of the agreement to lawmakers on Thursday.

WASHINGTON - With the Senate gun-control debate on the near horizon, a National Rifle Association-sponsored report on Tuesday proposed a program for schools to train selected staffers as armed security officers. The former Republican congressman who headed the study suggested at least one protector with firearms for every school, saying it would speed responses to attacks. The report's release served as the gun-rights group's answer to improving school safety after the gruesome December slayings of 20 first graders and six adults at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.

IT'S HARD to figure out who is more clueless: the NRA, which released a report calling for armed guards in school one day after families of Newtown victims rallied in Connecticut's capital to support strict new laws to limit gun violence, or Republican members of Congress, who are threatening to filibuster new gun-control legislation little more than 100 days after the Newtown massacre. But this doesn't need to be a contest-Both can and should win the prize for being out of touch with the rest of the country.