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5A OPINIONS/ (Eie Qnlattt ^ Thursday February 5, 2004 Faulty Iraq evidence and an eager victim William Raspberry When President Bush is asked whether he regrets attacking Iraq on what now turns out to he bad informa tion, he always answers to the effect that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power. Which is no answer at all. I can think of many world leaders (and even a few members of the Bush admin istration) whose absence from power would leave the world better off. But that does not justify turning thought into violent action. The president wants us to forget this awkward truth: The justification he offered for attacking Iraq was not that Hussein was a bad guy but (1) that he was contemp tuously in violation of U.N. resolutions and (2) that he and his weapons of mass destruction were an urgent dan ger to the United 3|j3h States — so ominous, in fact, that if we waited for more inspections and negotiations, it might be too late. Former weapons inspector David Kay now says, to the obvious embarrassment of the administration, that he believes Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when American bombers struck Baghdad almost a year ago. Does that mean that we launched the war on false pretenses? No, in Kay’s view; yes, in mine. Some ways to help the homeless By Courtland Milloy THE WASHINGTON POST Leaving a coffee shop in downtown Washington the other day, I was met by a homeless man with his hand out. “Can you spare anything?” he asked. I shook my head and kept moving; my stride stiffened to silence the loose change in my pants pocket. I don’t know why I gave the man such a cold shoulder. Perhaps if he had been farther from the coffee shop, giving me a chance to take a few sips, I might have been in a better mood. Fortunately, not everyone’s sense of charity is determined by caffeine, though I don’t feel obliged to go into my wallet for every homeless person I meet. At Eastern Market, I met a homeless man named Allen Jones, who made my decision to help a lot easier. In his out stretched hand was a copy of a newspaper called Street Sense, which is written, in part, by homeless people, and published by the National Coahtion for the Homeless in Washington. The paper costs $1, and the vendor gets to keep 70 cents. Deal, I said. “The people in this area are open-minded and very respon sive to the issues of poverty and homelessness,” Allen told me. “The first day I came out, I made $50, and the next day, close to $70. I’m looking to make a hundred.” What impressed me was his hustle. As Michael A. Stoops, director of community organizing for the coalition, put it, “People like the idea of homeless people working for living.” Allen says the money gives him choices he never had before: to rent a room from time to time, instead of being holed up in a shelter; to buy himself a meal, instead of eating whatever is being dished out a soup kitchen; to be a salesman instead of a panhandler. By emphasizing employment, the coahtion and similar groups across the country make the phght of the homeless seem less hopeless. When Street Sense debuted Nov. 15, there were 10 vendors. Now there are 30. The word is getting around on the homeless grapevine: Being a salesman pays. “The homeless people that I work with teU me that if you’re out eight hours a day and ask everybody who walks by, youll make about $25 — if you’re lucky,” Stoops said. “And if they have a substance-abuse problem, after the first $5, the/re gone for the day.” At best, that’s less than half of what most street vendors earn. The current issue of Street Sense (Jan. 15-Feb. 14) fea tures reports on the rise of homelessness in the District, the opening of a shelter on New York Avenue NE and the way homeless organizations handle the drop in volrmteers after the hohdays. AUen, 46, is mentioned in a story about homelessness among ex-offenders. “I was incarcerated 41/2 years [for robbery] and formd it dif ficult coming out of prison and trying to get back into the job sector,” he told me. “People seem apprehensive. But I’m being optimistic that the doors wiU eventually open.” Part of his optimism comes from lessons learned as a vendor. “Basically, we tell people to come in with the attitude that they can make a sale, that they can make money,” sard Fred Anderson, coordinator of vendors for the coalition. “I teU them to go out and enjoy themselves, greet people and smile even when they get rejected.” COURTLAND MILLOY is a Washington Post columnist. Kay explains that he thought at the time that the WMDs existed and were a menace. The problem, he has been at pains to say, is not Bush administration mendacity but failure of the intelligence apparatus. Bush, by that explanation, is not villain but victim. Well, he was a most eager victim, practically begging for justification - any justifi cation - for the war he was determined to have. He was only temporarily stalled when Secretary of State Colin PoweU persuaded him to take the case to the U.N. Security Council. But the administration’s chapter- and-verse accounting of how Hussein had violated U.N. agreements and directives did not produce a caU for war. The Bush administration was left with a single ratio nale: Iraq’s urgent threat to America. Thus came Powell’s Feb. 5 multimedia extravaganza before the Security Coimcil. You may remember it. “Let’s look at one [satellite image]. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facifity that holds ammuni tion at a place called Taji. This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical mrmitions.., , “Here, you see 15 muni tions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. 'The four that are in the red squares repre sent active chemical muni tions bunkers.” Again: “At this biological- weapons-related facility, on November 25, just two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we almost never see at this facUity, and we monitor it carefully and reg ularly ...five large cargo trucks appeared along with the truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of housecleaning at close to 30 sites.” Oh, and enough anthrax (one spoonful of which was enough to shut down the U.S. Senate in the fall of 2001) to “fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons.” And this: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, sohd sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on sohd inteUigence.” Well, not so solid after all, it turns out. The question — to give Powell the benefit of the doubt Kay gives the presi dent — is: Did the intelhgence agencies serve the secretary of state a batch of cooked evi dence? Circumstances of 1970s movie hero still apply in 21st century By Mansfield B. Frazier CITY NEWS OHIO CLEVELAND — The death of Cleveland- born actor Ron O’Neal, who is best remem bered for his role as ‘Youngblood Priest” in the 1972 box-office hit “Super Fly,” has caused a revisiting of that era — and indeed the whole culture that spavmed that genre of “blaxplotiation” films — by some local and national social commentators. Sam Fullwood opined in a recent Cleveland Plain Dealer column that the film “hurt the image of black masculinity” and “marked the end of the civil rights move ment.” I, however, respectfully beg to differ with the esteemed Mr. FuUwood on both counts. The “masculinity” issue he raises must have to do with the hairstyle and clothes of the main character. Priest, who wore his hair in a manner that was an outgrowth of a style called we called a “process,” or “do,” back-in-the-day. Many blacks from Nat “King” Cole’s era (and even before) wore them with elan and pride. By the ‘70s the style had evolved into the longer version that Priest wore, called a “Jesus Christ” (for obvious reasons). Strange, but no one has ever called Jesus’ masculinity into question due to His long hair, have they? As for the thi'eads, street hustlers simply took the flamboyant styles being worn by entertainers such as James Brown, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tbps and the like and moved them from the stage into the audience. If anyone thinks that those styles were outra geous, just recall what white youths were wearing during the counterculture decade. Fullwood states that the film “marked the end of the civil rights movement,” as if “Super Fly” caused the end of the move ment, which, of course, is utter nonsense. The movement, in fact, has never ended. While it will never again be as active as it was during its nascent stage in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, the movement slowed for two obvious reasons: One, we achieved the goals of school and public accommodations inte gration that were at the heart of the move ment, and two, we lost our charismatic leader. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If he had not been taken from us we would have more swiftly shifted our focus from demanding to have a seat in the front of the bus, to having jobs driving the buses, super vising others who drive buses, and having seats on the board of directors of the bus company. However, once we successfully integrated lunch counters in the South we discovered that the food was absolutely hor rible. I submit that the issue of economic empow erment that black churches are now just beginning to embrace would have been cen ter-stage years ago if Dr. King had survived. While I do agree with FuUwood’s underly ing premise that the most positive image for young blacks (and browns, reds and whites for that matter) to emulate is that of a Dr. King and other high-achieving men and women of color, all children are not going to be raised in circumstances that will promote the pursuing of the dream of equality in the same manner that Dr. King was privileged to utihze. The protagonist in “Super Fly,” like him or not, was a black entrepreneur, who, it could be argued, took the only route to success open to poor and undereducated blacks at the time. Even today we stiU see young black men standing on street comers looking for customers with one eye while looking out for “Five-Oh” with the other. FuUwood sounds suspiciously like a player hater; but, as they say in the street.. .“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” MANSFIELD B. FRAZIER is a columnist at City News in Cleveland. Or was Golin, my personal hero, in the kitchen? Does it matter? Perhaps the administration oversold the evidence. Perhaps the war was, in retrospect, too hasty, even unnecessary. But, hey, it happened, so let’s just get on with it. What’s the point of raking through the ashes of year-old deci sions? Maybe there is no point - if you believe, as Kay claims to believe, that it’s all about failed intelligence. But there is a vital point if you believe, as I’m increas ingly inclined to believe, that the administration lied to us in calculated and quite delib erate ways. If that hap pened, if it still is happening, I want to know as much about it as can be discovered. After all, there’s an election coming up. WILLIAM RASPBERRY is a Washington Post columnist. Val Atkinson Gilmore in the Ag race now If you’re in your■ 20s, or if you’ve been in North Carolina less than 10 years, you’re probably not famUiar with the name Tbm Gilmore. Allow me to take a moment and talk about a friend of mine, Tbm Gilmore. Tbm is a Guilford County farmer; he worked with Ben Hooks and Coretta Scott King on affir mative action issues; he worked with Jesse Jackson to integrate the North Carolina Young Democrats; he introduced a bill to change the second primary law (which prevented many African Americans from tak ing office after they had gar nered the majority of the votes); Gilmore has been unwa vering in his opposition to the death penalty; Tom and his family have been threat ened by the KTan for his sup port of civil rights initiatives; and when Mr. Gilmore decid ed to run for agriculture commissioner he setup his campaign account at Mutual (a black bank in Greensboro). But this is not all that Tbm is. Gilmore wants to restore integrity to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and he wants the Department to look like North Carolina. Tom thinks that there’s plenty of room to hire more African Americans in the Department of Agriculture and he intends to do so. Gilmore is not a young man, but he ain’t old either. As the late great Satchel Paige used to say... “Age ain’t nothing but mind over mat ter; if you don’t mind, then it don’t matteri’. Thm Gilmore doesn’t mind that he’s a life long friend of Jim Hunt and that he has the support of community leaders such as Ben Ruffin (former and first black chair of the UNC Board of Governors) and Henry Frye (former and first black to serve as chief justice on North Carolina’s Supreme Court. Tom's expe riences are a plus. North Carolina would be fortunate to have Tom Gilmore serve as the first elected agriculture commis sioner after the reign of Jim Graham and the resignation of Meg Scott-Phipps. VAL ATKINSON is a syndicat ed columnist.
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Feb. 5, 2004, edition 1
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