RESIDENTS SPLIT OVER INVASION

Six people at the SEMO District Fair Thursday night indicated the division surrounding America's preparations to invade Haiti.

President Bill Clinton Thursday night said Haiti's time was up and that the United States was preparing to invade.

Diana Siebert, fifth-grade teacher at Guardian Angel in Oran, said she hated to see a fight.

"I think we need peace in the world," she said. "I just hope it doesn't get too rough for the Haitian people."

Walking with Siebert was Pat Allen, owner of a catering business in Cape Girardeau. She said she has a brother in the military who she felt was headed to Haiti.

"He called the other day and said he couldn't say where he was going," Allen said. "He said I'd probably hear about it over the weekend."

Allen said at first that she didn't think the United States should be involved in Haiti. She said she had been to Haiti and the situation for the people there was very sad.

"I have mixed feelings about us being there," she said.

Jeff Slinkard, a private investigator from Advance, was walking with his fiancee through the fair.

"I think Clinton's feeling pressure from the Black Caucus," Slinkard said. "He ran for election making promises. Now he's had two years to put in his ideology and he hasn't been successful.

"He's grabbing at any straw to regain his popularity."

Clinton saw Bush's popularity shoot up to 85 percent during the Iraqi war, but the cost in the lives of a lot of "our soldiers for his own popularity is not worth it," Slinkard said.

"He showed in 1969 that he had a distaste for the military. He didn't support America's effort in Iraq."

Slinkard called Clinton "a lame-duck president," saying: "I don't think he's re-electable.

His fiancee is Amy Wilson of Cape Girardeau, a sales associate with J.C. Penney and a junior at Southeast Missouri State University.

"I think any place where we can do some good in a country, we should intervene on behalf of the citizens of that country," she said.

"Especially if they are being oppressed and ruled by tyrants. I think it's OK to intervene when people are being killed and their rights are being taken away."

Randy Bartlett, president of the Cape Girardeau Evening Lions Club, said he personally didn't see the United States' reason to invade Haiti to depose one dictator to return another one to power.

"The conditions of the Haitian people won't change with a change in power," Bartlett said. "They were bad, they are bad and they will be bad.

"I don't see risking our lives for that."

Bartlett said, "We're not talking about a country falling under the influence of Communism here. We're talking about their government there."

Robert Felker, an optometrist and president of the Jackson's Lions Club, said he was in Haiti in 1982 on a vision service project.

"I think the invasion is the right thing to do," he said. "I saw back then that the population was meek and easily oppressed."

The Haitian people were big fans of the United States at that time and Baby Doc Duvalier was in power, Felker said.

"I asked an interpreter whether he thought it would be a good idea for the U.S. to invade and overthrow Baby Doc," Felker said. "He said it would be doing his country a favor."

Felker thinks an invasion is a tough choice.

"I think for democracy, invading is the only thing to do," he said. "When we look back on this, I think we'll feel that we reached the right decision."