Today's unplanned community service

This afternoon I went to a nearby park to shoot around (hoops) and ended up playing with two young (like less than 10) african-american boys and "teaching" them how to play ball.

Oh and I got help from a total stranger: a GOP-leaning political science PhD candidate at Harvard from Upstate New York. I think all in all, I played "basketball" for about 3-3.5 hours. Mostly trying to keep the two boys from tackling each other when one had the ball or watching them chase after a fumbled catch.

Still I think I had fun playing with the kids, although I would have liked more competition although Mr. Harvard and I played 3 1-on-1 games to 11 (I think I won).

I am wipped out. Maybe now I can catch up with what happened yesterday and today with Rumsfeld and all that nastiness in Iraq. As expected, they knew more than they initially led on, there were some bad people put in charge..."the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours." (NYT)

My favorite are the opplogists for these sadists. The top reasons are: They're at war; these are bad people; just letting off some steam; etc. I am sorry but NO. America prides itself in standards of human rights (well since 1865/1968 anyway), we have stict laws on the treatment of prisioners even in war. We pushed for the Geneva Convention rules. The US is supposed to be above all this. Even if these people raped your sister, you are supposed to treat them better than they did to your family and than "they deserve" not just because it the right (and by the way Christian) thing to do, but the law!

The entire National Security team of the Bush White House (including the Commander-in-Chief himself) has proven over and over that they are not up to the job and they are forfitted their credibility and right to continue to represent America. The only way to fix this Pottery Barn warehouse of Iraq is to clean out and get rid of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Perle, Cheney, and of course el Presidente.

With new management, the world will finally take us seriously and we might still have a chance to fix Iraq if a President Kerry were to make fixing it (and Israel-Palestine) his number 1 foreign policy goal. I know the "War on Terror" is an on going mission, but really without peace in these two hot zones, we will never be able to stop the impending onslaught of angry Arabs who want to harm America and her insterests (and our Allies'). Just my $0.02 for the day,