Worldandnation: 10 stories that defined the year

2002: The Year in Review

10 stories that defined the year

The winds of war. Financial unease. Post 9/11 resolve gives way to uncertain times.

By TOM DRURY, Times Staff Writer

2002 may be remembered as the year between two wars, one that seemed over and another about to begin.

Ring out Afghanistan, ring in Iraq: Americans who had been absorbed in their own prosperity only a few years ago continued their crash course in the anxiety of global politics.

While masters of the corporate universe slunk off the national stage, some in handcuffs, Saddam Hussein was hauled back onto it, and everyone wanted to know whether war in Iraq was really going to happen, and when, and then what?

These were diverting questions, anyway, for a middle class in no hurry to study its 401(k) statements. Driven by falling stocks and mutual funds, household wealth dipped to its lowest level since 1995 as the markets slid for the third year in a row -- the first time that has happened since 1941. Another year of this will match the string set in 1929-1932.

Yet the continued losses seemed cause for depression rather than Depression. The investment party is definitely over, but there has been no corresponding industrial freefall. Economic forecasters expect the year to show growth of 2.3 percent in U.S. gross domestic product.

The terrorism this year struck elsewhere: in Bali, where a bomb killed 191 people at a Kuta Beach nightclub. In Moscow, where 128 died in a disastrous attempt to free more than 750 hostages that Chechen rebels had trapped inside a theater. In Kenya, where a car bomb killed 13 at an Israeli-owned beach resort near Mombasa as two shoulder-fired missiles narrowly missed a jetliner bound for Tel Aviv.

And in Kuwait, where gunmen killed Lance Cpl. Antonio Sledd, graduate of Gaither High in Tampa, and wounded another Marine as they trained on the island of Failaka.

Each attack became associated one way or another with the amorphous and still functioning al-Qaida network. Osama bin Laden was thought to have surfaced in a November tape praising the Moscow, Bali and Kuwait killings and warning the West to "expect more that will further distress you." A report from Swiss voice experts that the tape may have been faked got little play in the U.S. media but added to the mystery of bin Laden's fate.

Here, we had terror if not terrorism. The Beltway sniper laid siege to the Washington suburbs, killing 10 and wounding three. Unconnected to any known group, the random murders echoed 9/11 nonetheless. Death could come from anywhere, when people were doing the most normal things. The shootings came to an end with the arrest of a man and a teen sleeping in their car at a Maryland rest stop.

Amid these waves of uncertainty, the party that controlled the White House and House of Representatives faced midterm elections -- and scored a victory for the history books, adding to its House majority and narrowly retaking the Senate. You had to go back to FDR in 1934 to find another first-term president who added seats in both houses of Congress in the midterms.

November's Republican sweep was no landslide. If 77,441 votes out of 75 million cast had gone the other way, Democrats would control both houses of Congress. Yet it added to the aura of invincibility that President Bush has assumed since picking up the bullhorn at ground zero on Sept. 14, 2001.

(So charmed does his political life now appear that he gets credit for things, such as the Homeland Security Department and the independent 9/11 commission, that he did not want in the first place.)

The elections seemed to follow logically from Karl Rove's partisan remarks about the war on terrorism back in January. "We can go to the country on this issue," the president's political guru told the Republican National Committee over lunch at its winter meeting in Austin, "because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America."

Were administration officials cynically working the fear of conflict, cranking it up to keep tougher questions out of the midterm elections? Said the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in its analysis: "For Republicans, the challenge was to keep the emphasis on this new agenda (foreign policy, national security and fighting terrorism) and away from economic problems that they had little, if any, opportunity to affect."

And Bush did win on war issues. Except for the regime in Baghdad, every institution he pushed fell over. He urged Congress to authorize force against Iraq and it did. He told the United Nations to get on board or become irrelevant, and a reluctant Security Council signed on to a demand that Iraq disarm or face "serious consequences."

At year's end, more than 50,000 U.S. troops and 400 aircraft were in place around the region, from Turkey's Incirlik Air Base in the north to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

But the elections weren't entirely about national security. Pollsters said voters were considerably more worried about the economy than they were about terrorism. Here in Florida, the president's brother looked decidedly vulnerable for a while. National Democratic boss Terry McAuliffe vowed that the party would oust Gov. Jeb Bush, and it seemed it could happen. But then the voters scoped out the candidates and found Tampa lawyer Bill McBride unready for the questions of NBC's Tim Russert, let alone the trials of governing the raucous state that the New York Times Magazine calls the new California.

It was here, by the way -- in the new California -- that one of the strangest episodes of the year took place. Three medical students bound for nine weeks of training at a South Miami hospital were apprehended on Alligator Alley and held for 17 hours. They were said to have made ominous remarks at a Shoney's in Georgia and to have run a toll booth. Small robots removed the contents of their car as the nation watched the drama refuse to unfold. At the end of the day, the men were released. They had no bombs, no nothing. It would turn out they hadn't even skipped the toll.

It was another moment from our strange times, as was the rise of Kelly. Cut this out and save it so you will remember who Kelly is. Born in 1982, she attended high school in Texas, became a cocktail waitress, won the American Idol contest and had a hit single in A Moment Like This. She can really belt out a tune and is said to be refreshingly honest and not a backstabber like some of the other contestants. Her last name is Clarkson, but if you just say "Kelly," many people will know whom you mean.

Finally, 2002 was a palindrome year -- one that reads the same way forward and backward. The last one came in 1991, the year of the Gulf War. The next will arrive in 2112, when historians will be looking back at the second Gulf War, or studying the unexpected chain of events that kept it from happening.

-- Times staff writers Eric Deggans, Anne Glover, Larry Liebert and Helen Huntley contributed to this report along with Times researchers Caryn Baird and Kitty Bennett.