March 26, 2003

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 25, 2003; Page A22


ATLANTA — A customer burst through the door of the Flowers by Mitchell shop on historic Auburn Avenue, and owner Dorothy Mitchell looked up from her television for the first time in hours. “You should have called first,” she chided. But the patron said he had called several times, then stormed out.


It was then that Mitchell, 79, realized she was so consumed with watching the invasion of Iraq that she didn’t hear the telephone. With her brown face looking ashen in the tube’s cathode glow, she searched in vain for answers to why her country was bombing Baghdad.


“I don’t know what we’re fighting for,” the florist said. “It looks to me that the president is just trying to kill one man. It makes no sense to me. I’ve been looking at it all day, trying to understand.” She said she could not support a war she did not understand.

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