Ask an American voter for a list of enemies of the U.S. and the name Slobodan Milosevic will be right up there near the top, perhaps second only to archvillian Saddam Hussein.

Saddam is probably too cagey to be caught, especially since, thanks to the Clinton Administration's ineptitude, most of America's intelligence assets in Iraq are either dead or in jail. But Slobo is another story. What better October Surprise than to hand him over to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague? The Serbian despot in handcuffs, steely-eyed U.S. Marines on either side, would be a fine photograph to see splashed across the front pages a few weeks before the election.

This could happen, especially if Mr. Milosevic makes a trip to Kosovo, which is under NATO control, as an aide last week said he would. A go-in-and-get-Slobo mission--sending American troops into Belgrade--would be a lot riskier. But if Mr. Milosevic loses the coming elections--and a recent poll shows an opposition candidate is leading--who knows what deal might be struck? The elections are Sept. 24, convenient timing for an October Surprise.

Of course, the Administration could always settle for rounding up the other two top war criminals: Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. So far, the U.S. hasn't gone after them, even though, judging from the frequency with which their pictures appear on television, they can't be too hard to find. Sightings of Dr. Karadzic (he was trained as a psychiatrist) in Bosnia, where the U.S. still has 4,600 troops, aren't unusual. As the chief prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal has put it, with more than a bit of understatement: "It would seem to me to be easier to arrest people [in] a territory under military control." But for some unspecified reason, the U.S. hasn't gone after him.

The Times of London reported last week that Mr. Clinton has ordered Dr. Karadzic's capture before he leaves office. A story in Sunday's New York Post quotes a Clinton spokesman as saying of Karadzic's capture: "We'd prefer to see it done politically. But we're willing to do it militarily, if we have the tactical advantage." Could it be that the administration all along has been waiting for the right October moment to nab him?

In any event, what better time to round up some war criminals than in the weeks before the U.S. election? With the arrests of the ethnic cleansers, Clinton-Gore could declare their Balkan policy a complete success and announce that they are bringing the U.S. troops in Bosnia home by Christmas.

Congressional Confrontation
John Fund - Member, Editorial Board

Ever since the government shutdown of 1995, Republicans have feared President Clinton's ability to paint them as the "blue meanies" of American politics when it comes to the annual debate over the budget. So ever since then, Republicans have usually paid a steep price to settle on a budget with the white House in order to get out of town in an election year.

But this year the price may be higher. Mr. Clinton is anxious to pick a fight with Congress over the budget to help Al Gore. The best guess is that he will veto any budget Congress sends him if it doesn't include a new prescription-drug benefit for Medicare that is identical to the one Mr. Gore proposes. "Gore will say the Republican Congress is stingy with seniors and if George Bush were a leader he would get House Speaker Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Lott on the phone and tell them to get right with Granny," says a former career official with the Office of Management and Budget.

No one knows how Republicans will respond to this latest Clinton "triangulation," pitting the interests of the Bush campaign against those of the GOP Congress. Mr. Bush will unveil his own prescription-drug program today, but it will clearly not match the Gore giveaway. House Republicans, holding a narrow six-seat majority, will be tempted to go beyond the Bush plan to avoid a veto. Senate Republicans have a bigger majority and may hold firmer. Michigan's Sen. Spencer Abraham, a vulnerable Republican, has turned the drug issue to his advantage by pointing out the dangers of big-government medicine.

Which course of action will Republicans take in response to a Clinton attempt to saddle them with another government shutdown? That may be October's biggest surprise.

Jerusalem for Jonathan
Seth Lipsky - Contributing Editor

The October Surprise is being hatched this week in the meetings between President Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat. The tip-off is the repeated reports from various capitals that the parties in the Middle East peace process are far apart in their efforts to gain an agreement.

"The prime minister says that up until now, he has not seen any signs of flexibility or openness on the Palestinian side, which would indicate that the negotiations will be renewed," is the way his office was quoted in the Labor Day issue of the New York Post. The Post also quoted one of Mr. Arafat's advisers, Nabil Abu Rdainah, as saying that Israel's proposals since Camp David "did not serve as a basis for negotiations." Were it not for these kinds of reports, the element that would be lacking come October would be the surprise. So you can bet some kind of deal is afoot to divide the Jerusalem along lines the parties swore, heretofore, that they would never accept.

At this stage of the game, however, this might all be a yawner. Hence the intriguing dispatch from Rachel Donadio of the Jewish Forward. She reported last week that Hillary Clinton appears to be secretly brokering a deal under which she would gain the endorsement of an influential right-wing Democrat in Brooklyn, N.Y., Dov Hikind. In exchange, Mrs. Clinton is supposed to intervene to secure the release of Jonathan Pollard, who's serving a life sentence for spying for Israel against America. Don't hold your breath for Pollard to show up for a photo-op in the Rose Garden when the October Surprise is announced, but don't discount the possibilities of such a deal, either.

As for Jerusalem, nothing Mr. Barak agrees to in October has to be for anything more than publicity purposes in aid to his benefactor, Mr. Clinton. For the Israeli prime minister has promised to submit any deal to a referendum, and Israel's voters will get a chance to deliver their own surprise--after Americans have gone to the polls.