letters

Hailing our heroes

Thank you for running Deborah Simmons’ column concerning Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks’ family (“Honorably speaking,” Op-Ed, Friday). They are true illustrations of how successful Americans can be in the United States, regardless of race, religion or anything else.
I am a West Point classmate of Gen. Brooks. Needless to say, I take pride in his accomplishments, as well as the accomplishments of other classmates serving in that theater: brigade commanders Col. David Perkins (3rd Infantry Division), Col. Michael Linnington (101st Airborne Division) and Col. Benjamin Hodges (also of the 101st).
However, I would like to make some corrections and comments about the column.
First, Gen. Brooks’ father, Leo Brooks Sr., retired as a lieutenant general (three stars), not a brigadier general (one star). Both sons have a way to go to match that accomplishment, although I’m sure both will.
Second, Gen. Vincent Brooks was not the commander of the 3rd Army in Kuwait, for that is a lieutenant general’s position. I’m not sure which of his assignments Mrs. Simmons was trying to relate there.
Last, I’m not sure whether Gen. Brooks graduated first in our class in discipline, because that is not something we have ranked. What he did do was serve as the first captain of the Corps of Cadets the highest-ranking cadet at West Point. Although he was the first black American to have that position, he was not selected because of his race. We knew then that he was selected because he deserved it, just as he deserved to be the first general officer selected from our class.
As an aside, Gen. Brooks’ brother, Leo, was also a very high-ranking cadet. He was a regimental commander, one of the top six positions in the corps. He also was the first general officer selected from his class.

MAJ. PAUL GRIM
Army (retired)
U.S. Military Academy, West Point, Class of 1980
Arlington

Bill Clinton’s false legacy

After positing that there was some other, unstated way that the horrid regime of Saddam Hussein could have been toppled besides military intervention, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California goes on to credit former President Bill Clinton for the United States’ stunning military triumph in Iraq (“Pelosi stands by vote against Iraq war,” Nation, Friday). Mrs. Pelosi argues that America’s military success is due “in large measure” to Mr. Clinton. This statement is perhaps even more mysterious than her first claim.
During the Clinton era, defense spending fell sharply, declining by 12.5 percent in real terms. As a share of gross domestic product, defense spending fell by almost 50 percent. The huge defense cutbacks in the 1990s, along with the strong economy, enabled Mr. Clinton and Congress to deliver several years of budget surpluses and huge (unjustified) increases in domestic spending. But the budget numbers clearly call into question Mrs. Pelosi’s claim that Mr. Clinton is the reason for America’s military success in Iraq.

JOHN BERTHOUD
President
National Taxpayers Union
Arlington

License for life?

In his column, “No license for life” (Commentary, Wednesday), Chris Jolma, an editor for the Commentary pages of The Washington Times, not only derides those who support the First Amendment the bedrock of our democracy as “crybabies,” but also implicitly endorses the idea that a state should be able to sell “pro-life” license plates to raise funds for organizations that lie to women making health-care decisions.
By barring funding for organizations that counsel on all options including childbirth and abortion these laws are intended to legitimize “crisis pregnancy centers,” or CPCs, by providing them with government funding.
In telephone books and ads, CPCs promote themselves as women’s health clinics that offer the full range of reproductive health services, from pregnancy testing to information on abortion. In reality, these organizations subject women to anti-choice propaganda, including information that has been discounted by medical groups and government agencies.
Some, for example, tell women that abortion increases their risk of breast cancer, which is a claim rejected by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society. Others have been charged with misrepresenting the results of pregnancy tests in an effort to prevent women from obtaining abortions.
States should not be fundraising vehicles for organizations that mislead and scare women about their pregnancy options. Women deserve unbiased and accurate information when deciding whether to continue a pregnancy.

NANCY NORTHUP
President
Center for Reproductive Rights
New York

March for educational standards

Your editorial criticizinga peace march by Bannockburn Elementary School students (“Marching Munchkins,” Friday) decries the politicizing ofeducational standards. Perhaps you should be more worried about the politicization of your own journalistic standards. In short, your editorial writer got a lot of things wrong, and it’s not a stretch to say your mistakes were driven by your own ideological bias.
On a global level, you say “all the world, it seems” supports the president’s war; that’s dubious,unproven and likely inaccurate. You also say Iraqis are “dancing in the streets, hugging every GI they can get their arms around in thanks for their liberation” again a distortion, one that overlooks the Yugoslavian-style ethnic tensions already emerging in Iraq. Assuming most press reports are accurate, it’s not dancing, but looting, that has many Iraqis in the streets.
Your take on the children is equally inaccurate. It’s a nice journalistic trick to suggest that “nostalgic former hippies” choreographed thepeace march,but if you bothered to do any serious reporting,you would find that the children indeed initiated and organized the march. You also describea “betweeded daddy”as paranoid for telling his children not to give their names to the press, suggesting a conspiratorial frame of mind yet a little reporting would have revealed that it was fear of stalkers, not paranoid politics, that led this parent to keep hischildren’s names offthe television screen.
This “spectacle,” you say, “was symbolic of the failure of many of our schools,” and you cite declining math and reading scores as evidence. Yet Bannockburn Elementary School has some of the highest standards, performance and test scores in the region. The hallmark of successful education is not just good reading and math, but critical thinking, the type that engages young people in our democracy and leadsthem to ask questions of our policies and leaders.Could it be thatyou’re afraid of precisely that?

LEONARDSTEINHORN
Associate professor
School of Communication
American University
Washington

Bowling for Baghdad

Now that actor Sean Penn has had his car stolen, along with two of his handguns (“Actor’s car, guns stolen from street,” American Scene, Friday), perhaps it is time for him to work with Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore. They seem to be cut from the same cloth.
Mr. Moore is the boorish director of the anti-gun diatribe “Bowling for Columbine.” Mr. Moore also deemed himself “Oscar-night spokesman for the American people,” lecturing President Bush on our behalf. Suggestions for a title? How about “Bowling for Baghdad”?
Why Mr. Penn, a self-anointed “peace activist,” believes it is all right for him to be ready to use deadly force to defend himself and not acceptable for the United States to do the same remains to be explained.

JAMESTERPENING
Washington