November 05, 2009
City Mouse, Country Mouse
I am at a point on the timeline of my life in which I have experienced nearly equal parts of being a city dweller and a resident of less populated areas. I was born in Chicago to parents native of it, and by way of “white flight” and ostensibly better schools, raised just a few miles up the shore.
I know from history that in previous generations it was simpler to see the difference between many of Chicago's classic ethnic neighborhoods. Gentrification has made those boundaries much less obtrusive today. Still, in most of the major metropolitan areas of America, short distances of a mile or two can represent worlds of difference. An observant visitor or any realtor worth their salt can still see this, albeit increasingly along socio-economic lines as the cultural ones are being homogenized.
While my upbringing was not technically urban, my specific neighborhood and its proximity to the city provided an experience much more so than the typical concept of suburban life (e.g. Leave It To Beaver, The Brady Bunch, etc.). Urban-like diversity was apparent in my high school's student body as well as in real estate, with homes separated by a short physical distance often having disparity of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in value.
We didn't have near as much in the way of direct supervision growing up, much less formal play dates or groups. The bicycle was the ultimate instrument of independence, shrinking my microcosm to any limit that could accommodate being back before the streetlights came on. After outgrowing that rule the bike continued to provide essential transportation since I was not one of the fortunate teens who was either provided or could afford an automobile. I miss those days and have concern that my son may not be afforded the local geography and relatively safe traffic needed for youthful neighborhood bike adventures.
I am often amused by the thought of how distances seemed so much greater in my days as a city mouse. When my eldest brother left the nest I was about eight or nine years old, and the anticipation of the 20-mile drive to go visit him in his new digs was quite titillating - one might have thought I was going on my first plane trip. To not spend the night at his place required a round trip that was practically a pioneer wagon voyage by my excitable pre-adolescent perceptions.
In contrast, the sparser population centers of my past two decades of residency have alternated between the in-town life of a couple of southern micropoli and more rural digs not far from such. By and large I have enjoyed the change, at least enough to give my old northern stomping grounds the status of “nice place to visit - wouldn't want to live there.” But now in the wide open spaces of Georgia I have friends that live 20 or more miles away. Of course the lightly traveled two-lane highways here probably require a third less travel time from the “surface street” routes of the cities and suburbs (a standing joke in Chicagoland is that it takes 45 minutes to get anywhere – in good traffic).
As to the aforementioned timeline, like anyone I hope that it includes many more decades of healthy and happy existence. And while the cultural draws of a city will always be worth the occasional long drive, I lean toward increasing my distance from the magnetic convenience of the modern business district. Years ago I moved from the Bay Area of California to the bucolic (if culturally stunted) environs of northwestern Georgia. After a few years of settling in I began a subscription to Organic Gardening magazine, which guided me in maintaining a small plot of veggies and flowers for two years running before letting expense and laziness become excuses not to.
I want to get back to things like that in the worst way. I confess to the possibility that this is just a pipe dream (my consolation being that currently I am minutes from a symphony and great Thai food). My desire to eschew city life is coupled with a perception that American society has changed too much from the quasi-urban neighborhood of my youth. Sidewalks are rare, old growth trees even more so, and these are superficial things to the real concern that modern parents have of leaving their child unwatched.
I suppose there is irony in having the most desirable areas of rural America gentrified into hobby farms and estates of various rustic-looking excess. I confess that I dream of having a few hundred topographically diverse acres on which to develop a mountain bike park. It would be naturally sustainable of course – no need to remove thousands of trees and install expensive turf that requires bajillions of gallons of water and tons of chemical fertilizers that inundate the aquifer. I guess I could settle for being a thousand feet from my nearest neighbors (none of whom require any sort of gas-powered lawn maintenance equipment), an effective composting system and enough summer sunlight for a salsa garden.
Labels: Chicago, irony, me, the past, The South, US Geography for $1200 Alex
August 17, 2009
Okay, I cracked - My .02 on Healthcare
.
.
This quote, now being bandied about virally through the right-wing haunts of Blogovia, represents what I see as typically disingenuous conservative talking points. Full disclosure – I am, as some 12-steppers might characterize, a “recovering” conservative. I have shifted (or more accurately come full circle) to a belief that government is a tool that, when wielded properly, is very effective for tasks that cannot and should not be done for profit. Am I naive in thinking that healthcare should not be done for profit? It turns out a huge chunk, if not a majority, of healthcare professionals agree with this.
Taxpayers already pay for the healthcare of people who are uninsured. If someone without insurance goes to the ER and cannot afford to pay for treatment, then the hospital gets tax money to offset the costs. We partially pay for most hospitals in this country through public funds. If we didn’t do so these hospitals would go bankrupt, and then the next time you or a loved one needs emergency treatment, it had better not require experts, extensive facilities or after-hours care.
We also pay for a number of things for the common good already. Our property taxes help pay for schools, but do we all have kids? I’m sure you get that an illiterate, poorly-socialized mob of kids who can’t get jobs is bad for you specifically, as well as the country at large, not to mention horrible for the kids. We help pay for police and fire service, but few of us ever need to be rescued by a firefighter. Your actual chances of having life or property saved by these services are pretty dang slim, yet conservatives don’t object to this form of socialism (we can all bitch about the taxes). Military, too - we haven’t had a bona fide military attack on our soil since the War of 1812, so the common good is well served through the provision of the common defense (exponentially - we spend more on our military than the rest of the planet combined. I wonder where we could reallocate some of those billions?). Oh, and the above mentioned things have been done successfully for quite some time in a nonprofit capacity.
With our current healthcare system we also pay in ways that are harder to calculate - lost productivity, inefficiency, etc. It is no good for the common good to have a large pool of unhealthy people who only seek medical care when it’s an emergency, work when they are sick with god-knows-what, get no follow-up care, etc. This creates a standing reservoir of disease. How would you like to see TB come back (it’s making a valiant effort)? It also creates an easy vector for some god-awful strain of the flu, or any other pandemic bug, to rip through this country. A healthy society will always benefit society at large. The minority groups who may not derive benefit from this are small and often have ulterior motives that are counter to the common good (*cough* folks sponsoring anti-healthcare reform rallies).
And characterizing the people who can’t afford health care as ‘lazy’ is the worst kind of derogatory nonsense. Millions of people in this country work jobs that provide no benefits, and unfortunately these jobs rarely pay enough for the employee to afford the exorbitant health insurance premiums of an individual policy. Millions of middle class families with both parents working cannot afford $1,600 per month in premiums, not to mention costs for visits, referrals, tests, prescriptions and procedures not covered. Laziness has nothing to do with it for the overwhelming majority of un- or underinsured people in this country. I believe conservatives either know this and have contempt for people who do necessary jobs that simply don’t pay enough, or they are truly ignorant of this state of affairs. In either case I urge them to read widely, challenge their assumptions, go outside their comfort zone, meet people outside their socio-economic niche, travel, etc. Good news - most of these things can be done easily (and cheaply) on the Internet.
It is easier for me to trust people than entities whose sole aim is to gain as much short-term profit for themselves as possible, and which view all else as obstacles, sometimes including the law. If I had to sum up the progressive ideal, I would say this: Progressives seek to do the greatest good for the greatest number while doing the least harm to the least number of people, using any tools that do not contradict the first part and do not abridge individual rights. Yes, the common good is always tricky, always a dynamically-maintained balance that will change over time. There will always be disagreements, abuses and people who are harmed by measures taken to implement it. The trick is to, again, do the most good for the most people. These town hall decriers of healthcare reform being a “systematic dismantling of the American way of life” are just blowing bogus talking points based on fear.
By the way, the late Dr. Adrian Rogers was a Baptist minister from Memphis, TN and is also attributed with this quote:
.
“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”
Dr. Adrian Rogers
This quote, now being bandied about virally through the right-wing haunts of Blogovia, represents what I see as typically disingenuous conservative talking points. Full disclosure – I am, as some 12-steppers might characterize, a “recovering” conservative. I have shifted (or more accurately come full circle) to a belief that government is a tool that, when wielded properly, is very effective for tasks that cannot and should not be done for profit. Am I naive in thinking that healthcare should not be done for profit? It turns out a huge chunk, if not a majority, of healthcare professionals agree with this.
Taxpayers already pay for the healthcare of people who are uninsured. If someone without insurance goes to the ER and cannot afford to pay for treatment, then the hospital gets tax money to offset the costs. We partially pay for most hospitals in this country through public funds. If we didn’t do so these hospitals would go bankrupt, and then the next time you or a loved one needs emergency treatment, it had better not require experts, extensive facilities or after-hours care.
We also pay for a number of things for the common good already. Our property taxes help pay for schools, but do we all have kids? I’m sure you get that an illiterate, poorly-socialized mob of kids who can’t get jobs is bad for you specifically, as well as the country at large, not to mention horrible for the kids. We help pay for police and fire service, but few of us ever need to be rescued by a firefighter. Your actual chances of having life or property saved by these services are pretty dang slim, yet conservatives don’t object to this form of socialism (we can all bitch about the taxes). Military, too - we haven’t had a bona fide military attack on our soil since the War of 1812, so the common good is well served through the provision of the common defense (exponentially - we spend more on our military than the rest of the planet combined. I wonder where we could reallocate some of those billions?). Oh, and the above mentioned things have been done successfully for quite some time in a nonprofit capacity.
With our current healthcare system we also pay in ways that are harder to calculate - lost productivity, inefficiency, etc. It is no good for the common good to have a large pool of unhealthy people who only seek medical care when it’s an emergency, work when they are sick with god-knows-what, get no follow-up care, etc. This creates a standing reservoir of disease. How would you like to see TB come back (it’s making a valiant effort)? It also creates an easy vector for some god-awful strain of the flu, or any other pandemic bug, to rip through this country. A healthy society will always benefit society at large. The minority groups who may not derive benefit from this are small and often have ulterior motives that are counter to the common good (*cough* folks sponsoring anti-healthcare reform rallies).
And characterizing the people who can’t afford health care as ‘lazy’ is the worst kind of derogatory nonsense. Millions of people in this country work jobs that provide no benefits, and unfortunately these jobs rarely pay enough for the employee to afford the exorbitant health insurance premiums of an individual policy. Millions of middle class families with both parents working cannot afford $1,600 per month in premiums, not to mention costs for visits, referrals, tests, prescriptions and procedures not covered. Laziness has nothing to do with it for the overwhelming majority of un- or underinsured people in this country. I believe conservatives either know this and have contempt for people who do necessary jobs that simply don’t pay enough, or they are truly ignorant of this state of affairs. In either case I urge them to read widely, challenge their assumptions, go outside their comfort zone, meet people outside their socio-economic niche, travel, etc. Good news - most of these things can be done easily (and cheaply) on the Internet.
It is easier for me to trust people than entities whose sole aim is to gain as much short-term profit for themselves as possible, and which view all else as obstacles, sometimes including the law. If I had to sum up the progressive ideal, I would say this: Progressives seek to do the greatest good for the greatest number while doing the least harm to the least number of people, using any tools that do not contradict the first part and do not abridge individual rights. Yes, the common good is always tricky, always a dynamically-maintained balance that will change over time. There will always be disagreements, abuses and people who are harmed by measures taken to implement it. The trick is to, again, do the most good for the most people. These town hall decriers of healthcare reform being a “systematic dismantling of the American way of life” are just blowing bogus talking points based on fear.
By the way, the late Dr. Adrian Rogers was a Baptist minister from Memphis, TN and is also attributed with this quote:
I can't say that his statement isn't 100 percent true."I feel slavery is a much maligned institution. If we had slavery today we would not have such a welfare problem."
.
Labels: analysis, facts, healthcare, irony, Lies and Lying Liars, politix, rants
September 18, 2007
There is hope for journalism yet
.
Back in July investigative reporter Katherine Eban had her article Rorshach and Awe, about C.I.A. torture tactics established in the early days of the Wawr on Turrr, posted on Vanity Fair.com. The crux of Eban’s report was the conflict created when the Bush administration shifted gears and authorized coercive techniques for the interrogation of detainees, aka "enemy combatants" for a convenient sidestepping of the Geneva Convention guidelines.
The FBI had obtained much credible information from one al-Qaeda lieutenant named Abu Zubaydah. Using time-tested methods of rapport building which assume that an interview will yield better information from a comfortable and secure-feeling subject, Zubaydah spilled the beans on a host of info regarding the planning of 9-11. All this went out the window when then-director of the C.I.A. (and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) George Tenet blustered his interrogation teams in to institute practices established in a military training program known as SERE (for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) which trains U.S. soldiers to endure captivity at the hands of an enemy who does not follow the Geneva Conventions. Let's pause here to let the irony of that sink in.
As Eban reports, Steve Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve colonel and expert in human-intelligence operations, was astonished that the C.I.A. ended up choosing "two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever and who had never conducted an interrogation to do something that had never been proven in the real world."
The psychologists work, which was essentially reverse-engineering the SERE program for use by the C.I.A., was looked at askance by many of their colleagues as well as terrorism experts. Michael Rolince, former section chief of the F.B.I.'s International Terrorism Operations, told Eban the tactics were a "voodoo science."
So in this month’s print issue of VF a letter to the editor responding to the article is published. It comes from C.I.A. deputy director of public affairs Paul Gimigliano, who claims that Eban's article is "gravely flawed." He continued by maintaining that "A great deal of myth has grown up around the C.I.A.'s terrorist-detention program. That is the cost of denying al-Qaeda knowledge of the interrogation methods used so effectively against its operatives."
But with 10 months of investigation and interviews with more than 70 sources, Eban maintains the consensus is that the myth is of the effectiveness of the SERE tactics. SERE was developed during the Korean War based on Communist interrogation techniques which were never designed to get good information. Their goal, Kleinman told Eban, "was to generate propaganda by getting beaten-down American hostages to make statements against U.S. interests."
In a rebuttal to Gimigliano, Eban states, "Many experts and insiders I interviewed say that American interrogators could have stayed within the Geneva Convention guidelines and achieved equal intelligence gains, with far less stain on our reputation abroad."
In light of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's cavalier, arrogant and hypocritical attitude toward those guidelines, I found this to be one of the most interesting parts of the article:
Once again, Pogo's famous statement holds true.
.
.
Back in July investigative reporter Katherine Eban had her article Rorshach and Awe, about C.I.A. torture tactics established in the early days of the Wawr on Turrr, posted on Vanity Fair.com. The crux of Eban’s report was the conflict created when the Bush administration shifted gears and authorized coercive techniques for the interrogation of detainees, aka "enemy combatants" for a convenient sidestepping of the Geneva Convention guidelines.
The FBI had obtained much credible information from one al-Qaeda lieutenant named Abu Zubaydah. Using time-tested methods of rapport building which assume that an interview will yield better information from a comfortable and secure-feeling subject, Zubaydah spilled the beans on a host of info regarding the planning of 9-11. All this went out the window when then-director of the C.I.A. (and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) George Tenet blustered his interrogation teams in to institute practices established in a military training program known as SERE (for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) which trains U.S. soldiers to endure captivity at the hands of an enemy who does not follow the Geneva Conventions. Let's pause here to let the irony of that sink in.
As Eban reports, Steve Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve colonel and expert in human-intelligence operations, was astonished that the C.I.A. ended up choosing "two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever and who had never conducted an interrogation to do something that had never been proven in the real world."
The psychologists work, which was essentially reverse-engineering the SERE program for use by the C.I.A., was looked at askance by many of their colleagues as well as terrorism experts. Michael Rolince, former section chief of the F.B.I.'s International Terrorism Operations, told Eban the tactics were a "voodoo science."
So in this month’s print issue of VF a letter to the editor responding to the article is published. It comes from C.I.A. deputy director of public affairs Paul Gimigliano, who claims that Eban's article is "gravely flawed." He continued by maintaining that "A great deal of myth has grown up around the C.I.A.'s terrorist-detention program. That is the cost of denying al-Qaeda knowledge of the interrogation methods used so effectively against its operatives."
But with 10 months of investigation and interviews with more than 70 sources, Eban maintains the consensus is that the myth is of the effectiveness of the SERE tactics. SERE was developed during the Korean War based on Communist interrogation techniques which were never designed to get good information. Their goal, Kleinman told Eban, "was to generate propaganda by getting beaten-down American hostages to make statements against U.S. interests."
In a rebuttal to Gimigliano, Eban states, "Many experts and insiders I interviewed say that American interrogators could have stayed within the Geneva Convention guidelines and achieved equal intelligence gains, with far less stain on our reputation abroad."
In light of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's cavalier, arrogant and hypocritical attitude toward those guidelines, I found this to be one of the most interesting parts of the article:
On December 2, 2002, [Rumsfeld] granted [a] request to apply coercive tactics in interrogations. The only techniques he rejected were waterboarding and death threats. Within a week, the task force had drafted a five-page, typo-ridden document entitled “JTF GTMO 'SERE' Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure.”
The document, which has never before been made public, states, “The premise behind this is that the interrogation tactics used at US military SERE schools are appropriate for use in real-world interrogations” and “can be used to break real detainees.”
The document is divided into four categories: “Degradation,” “Physical Debilitation,” “Isolation and Monopoliztion [sic] of Perception,” and “Demonstrated Omnipotence.” The tactics include “slaps,” “forceful removal of detainees' clothing,” “stress positions,” “hooding,” “manhandling,” and “walling,” which entails grabbing the detainee by his shirt and hoisting him against a specially constructed wall.
“Note that all tactics are strictly non-lethal,” the memo states, adding, “it is critical that interrogators do 'cross the line' when utilizing the tactics.” The word “not” was presumably omitted by accident.
It is not clear whether the guidelines were ever formally adopted. But the instructions suggest that the military command wanted psychologists to be involved so they could lead interrogators up to the line, then stop them from crossing it.
In a bizarre mixture of solicitude and sadism, the memo details how to calibrate the infliction of harm. It dictates that the “[insult] slap will be initiated no more than 12–14 inches (or one shoulder width) from the detainee's face to preclude any tendency to wind up or uppercut.” And interrogators are advised that, when stripping off a prisoner's clothes, “tearing motions shall be downward to prevent pulling the detainee off balance.” In short, the SERE-inspired interrogations would be violent. And therefore, psychologists were needed to help make these more dangerous interrogations safer.
Once again, Pogo's famous statement holds true.
.
.
Labels: irony, journalism, law, turrists, violence inherent in the system, war
January 04, 2007
UPDATE: Clean outta sight
.
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP)...488 communities wiped from this year's version of the state highway map will be restored, the Georgia Department of Transportation said Wednesday. Read the rest of the story.
Georgia Georgia
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP)...488 communities wiped from this year's version of the state highway map will be restored, the Georgia Department of Transportation said Wednesday. Read the rest of the story.
______________________________________________________
A calamity has befallen 488 towns in Walker County in the northwest part of the state lost several of its little communities including Villanow, where the old general store dating back to 1840 is on the National Register of Historic Places (it’s for sale if anyone is interested in a bucolic life as a rural gas hole proprietor). I mean, little placeholders, especially registered ones, deserve respect, right?
On the other hand,
Here is a list of all the ones I think should be reinstated, based on nothing more than it being a cool-sounding name or otherwise rife with southern culture/irony (which to me is at least as valid an argument as wanting to save ink):
Airline
Bemiss
Bill Arp (and the world according to him)
Centerpost
Cloudland
Dewy Rose
Dixie Union (there’s that irony)
Doctortown
Due West
Experiment (why, without chemicals...)
Fairplay
Flintstone (a page right out of history)
Fowlstown
Free Home (with coupon)
Friendship
Hopeulikit (and who wouldn’t?)
Killarney (I hope to spend Christmas there some day)
Magnet (a tourist trap)
Mayday
Mountain Hill (which is it?)
Mulberry Grove (evr’body wants to live in a town called Mulberry Grove)
Nacoochee (a popular place in the
Needmore (near Nacoochee, I’m sure)
New Era
Okefenokee (gotta have a town named after yer most famous swamp)
Ola (que pasa, ecce?)
Phinizy (way out in the countrazizzle)
Poetry Tulip
Snipesville
Retreat (home of the second dessert!)
Rocky Face
Roosterville
Sunsweet
Veazey (Summerti-i-i-ime...)
View (realtors love it)
Wax
Youth
There are several more that I propose for reinstatement on topical grounds:
Any place that has a distinct geographical connection to elsewhere:
Any place that was obviously the name of a beloved wife or dog: Jake, Rowena, Rupert, Roscoe, Rover, Matt.
Places that make pot smokers giggle: Hemp, Leaf, Redbud.
And there are six places where I think at least three should be given a chance to stay if victorious in a last man standing town versus town cage match:
Mount
Nicholasville vs. Nicholsville
Labels: irony, maps, The South, US Geography for $1200 Alex
November 03, 2006
You put the lime in the coconut
.
Or is it the knee bone that you connect to the shinbone? Or is it the blue wire? Red?!
U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer
(a capsule from www.nytimes.com)
Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.
Sing with me!
I have to admit I'm feeling safer
I'm feeling safer all the time
Or is it the knee bone that you connect to the shinbone? Or is it the blue wire? Red?!
U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer
(a capsule from www.nytimes.com)
Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.
Sing with me!
I have to admit I'm feeling safer
I'm feeling safer all the time
Labels: irony, politix, turrists
