In six pages this paper assesses whether or not US naval operations should be removed from the island of Vieques by looking at each side's various arguments. Six sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: CC6_KSvieques.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
the Southeast coast of Puerto Rico. The U.S. Virgin Islands lie directly east of Vieques, an island about twice the size of the island of Manhattan (Gallagher, 2002).
Though the area is tropical and Vieques lies in an area of the Caribbean popular with tourists, many tourists remain unaware of Vieques. Those who know of its tropical
beauty generally prefer to spend their vacation dollars in quieter surroundings. The U.S. Navy has had a base on Vieques for sixty years,
most of which it has spent in training on the Vieques coastline. Vieques offers a unique environmental opportunity for the Navy. Naval sources say that Vieques is the
only training ground it has that offers the capability to practice bombing, amphibious assault and ground assault all at the same place (Vieques: Do the Marines need it?, 2002).
Residents of Vieques, however, maintain that the Navy and its ground-force equivalent, the Marines, have outlived their welcome on the Puerto Rican island.
They claim that naval operations have caused irreparable environmental and ecological damage, and that Vieques higher-than-average occurrence of cancer and other diseases is a direct result of naval activity.
The purpose here is to assess the arguments of each side. The Dispute Residents claim that the Navys use of Vieques as a
practice ground for bombing and landing training is ruining the local environment and is detrimental to the health of the islands residents. In April 2002, the arrival of the
USS George Washington carrier battle group and the beginning of the groups training exercises at the naval base "provoked protests and more than 20 arrests. Five members of the Partido