---

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 2, 1993                   TAG: 9303020339
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

---

POWELL EARNED NATION'S RESPECT

NORMALLY, I simply sit and stew after reading one of your editorial diatribes about social engineering. This time you have moved me to respond. I refer to your Feb. 12 attack on Gen. Colin Powell, whom you characterize as "undermining President Clinton's efforts to overturn the ban on gays in the military."

Here is our top Army general, who has spent his entire career in the military service and has earned the respect and admiration of the nation as one of the most effective chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in history. He is in charge of an organization that is arguably one of the few arms of our government that really works. Now, here you come out of left field and have the temerity to question him on a problem area with which he is intimately familiar. Next, you will be telling him how to organize a rifle company.

I think the real question here is, "Who is undermining whom?" CHARLES J. BRAY MONETA

---