Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Chris Weigant: Another Veterans' Health Care Crisis: The Politicization Of PTSD. With all the recent scrutiny from the press and (belatedly) Congress into the state of affairs of veterans' health care, there is an important issue which may not be getting the attention it deserves. Mark Boal has an extensive report in this month's Playboy magazine about the under-diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in soldiers returning from combat. While the article does not conclusively prove that the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Veterans Administration (VA) are intentionally doing so in order to save money, it does raise many disturbing questions. Questions that should be addressed by congressional committees, and by the new blue-ribbon commission (headed by Bob Dole and Donna Shalala) charged with investigating the state of veterans' health care. Boal's article is rather long, but definitely worth reading. Interestingly, the article was published before the recent revelations about the Walter Reed situation. The article first introduces a horrific case of a PTSD diagnosis being ignored by the military, with tragic results (the soldier, days after returning to civilian life, killed his friend for no apparent reason); but then it goes on to examine the wider picture of how many soldiers statistically should be diagnosed with PTSD versus the actual numbers reported by the military (which are a fraction of what would be expected). Several reasons are explored for this discrepancy in numbers:   ...DOD and VA doctors are being pressured to limit diagnoses of PTSD in order to save the military money and manpower. The DOD's official medical policy toward PTSD was recently amended to include new criteria making it a virtual certainty that many soldiers who exhibit symptoms of the disease will not be diagnosed. And the VA itself has been quietly working to arrive at new, stricter formulations of PTSD -- contradicting those of the American Psychiatric Association -- that would allow the agency to diagnose far fewer cases. . . . [T]his past May, a General Accounting Office inquiry found that only one out of every five soldiers identified as being at risk for PTSD by military questionnaires given when troops come home are referred to doctors for follow-up and monitoring. The DOD, the report states, "cannot provide reasonable assurance that all service members who need referrals for further mental health or combat-stress evaluations receive them." The wide gap between what medical experts say is the prevalence of PTSD and the actual diagnosis of the condition has outside observers of the Pentagon deeply worried. Dr. Robert Roswell, a former undersecretary at the VA, tells me bluntly, "PTSD is being underdiagnosed on a fairly wholesale level." . . . The Department of Veterans Affairs also continues to issue rosy estimates of its PTSD resources, even though every significant oversight agency has denounced the VA, claiming it's as unprepared as FEMA was to handle the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Here's the VA's own national advisory board on PTSD in a report released in February 2006: "The VA cannot meet the ongoing needs of veterans of past deployments while also reaching out to new combat veterans of [Iraq and Afghanistan] and their families within current resources and current models of treatment." Pentagon and VA officials vigorously deny there is a policy to underdiagnose PTSD. "That would be immoral and unethical," says Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, the assistant secretary of defense for troop readiness. They attribute the low rates of diagnosis to a reluctance on the part of military doctors to "stigmatize the person or bring harm to their careers" by labeling them with PTSD, according to Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Charles Engel, the director of the deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Medical Center. "It's out of respect for the patient that they don't make the diagnosis."   The article goes on to examine the history and origins of PTSD, concentrating on when the term "PTSD" first appeared post-Vietnam. Shockingly, this leads to the current politicization of the subject by conservatives. One would think medical diagnoses would be beyond the realm of interference by conservative ideologues bent on making political statements, but sadly, this is not the case:   Medical opinions began to change in the 1960s with what was then called post-Vietnam syndrome, a condition marked by rage at being "duped and manipulated by society." The doctors who worked on defining the diagnosis were often outspoken critics of Vietnam, and they encouraged their patients to take up antiwar activism as part of working through their trauma and transforming it into productive feelings. Rather than blame the character of the soldier, doctors blamed the war itself. For all but a small group of conservative thinkers, PTSD has outgrown its early links to the antiwar movement to become an objective psychiatric category, as above the fray of politics as anxiety or depression. Still, an influential group of culture warriors and military commanders believes PTSD was an invention of liberals seeking to justify their politics with science. "For some in the military and for some of these conservatives, PTSD is still basically an anti-war concept," explains Dr. Ray Scurfield, a psychiatrist and pioneer in PTSD study. With the election of George W. Bush, these fairly radical views were suddenly given a much more receptive hearing. B.G. Burkett, a retired Texas stockbroker, has spent the past 20 years waging a one-man crusade against deceitful American soldiers. He calls them "phony veterans" and believes PTSD has become a tool of antiwar liberals. Ask him about Lifton, the psychiatrist who helped define PTSD, and Burkett's voice rises with anger. "Lifton was an antiwar activist, for Christ's sake! If it were up to him, we'd have no war at all!" Then, more calmly, "Look, death encounters are a part of life. I watched my mother die. Do I have PTSD? It wasn't easy, but I'm still here. Whatever happened to resilience as a virtue?" Burkett is one of the administration's talking heads on mental health as it deals with the fallout of the Iraq war. Burkett cheerfully and forcibly presents the notion that PTSD has become a scam used by antiwar liberals and that thousands of Vietnam veterans are faking illnesses in order to cash in on federal disability payments. Burkett co-authored the book Stolen Valor (for which he received a thank-you note from Bush), which documents several cases of brazen fraud perpetrated by Vietnam veterans. . . . The American Psychiatric Association insists that PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as emotional symptoms. "PTSD is an illness that is related to structural and chemical changes in the brain," according to the APA, the most respected association of its kind. Scurfield is slightly less diplomatic about this administration's offhand approach to soldiers' mental illness. "It's just bullshit," he says. "If spontaneous remission were a reality, why have 30 percent of Vietnam vets had a lifetime of PTSD?" . . . The government's attitude seems to be having the desired effect of keeping PTSD patients out of the DOD health care system and transferring the caseload burden to Veterans Affairs when the soldiers return home. Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started, 631,000 people have been discharged from the military, including National Guard and Reserve soldiers who are now deactivated. Of those, 73,000 have sought mental health treatment at the VA. Critics say the VA, like the DOD, is falling short. A rumor going around the veterans community claims that, even in cases of existing injuries, military doctors are underdiagnosing PTSD at military hospitals, preferring instead to use labels that do not entitle the soldier to combat-related compensation. "We've been hearing it all the time from our guys in the field who are working with these Iraq vets," says Joe Violante of Disabled American Veterans. Military doctors "are being told not to diagnose PTSD." In 2004 leadership changed at the VA. The head of the agency, Anthony Principi, a longtime favorite of veterans groups, resigned. The timing of his resignation was suspect, as it came shortly after he told Congress the agency lacked funds to take care of veterans, and the move was widely interpreted as a firing. Bush replaced Principi with a high-level party operative named James Nicholson. A Republican power broker and a party heavyweight, he chaired the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign, when he called Dick Cheney "one of the most qualified, beloved people in America." Soon after Nicholson moved into his new offices, the VA, like the DOD, began to aggressively roll back its support for PTSD. First, in a move that echoed Burkett's charges, Nicholson ordered an investigation into the files of 72,000 veterans who had received PTSD compensation. Senate Democrats managed to undercut the review. In response, Nicholson commissioned a study at the Institute of Medicine to craft a new definition of PTSD, one more restrictive than that used by the American Psychiatric Association. That too fizzled. Finally, a second study was commissioned to "assess how PTSD compensation might influence beneficiaries' attitudes and behaviors in ways that might serve as barriers to recovery." . . . But veterans advocates fear the attack has already succeeded. They describe the unfolding situation as a train wreck, a catastrophe and a scandal. "You have large numbers of needy people coming back from the war, looking for help, and you have a government attempting to reduce expenditures, as well as conservatives who want to raise the bar and make it harder for vets to get the diagnoses," says Dr. Charles Figley, editor of Traumatology, who has written numerous books on PTSD and has been studying combat-related PTSD in veteran populations for 20 years. He is not an antimilitary person, and he recently spent a year on a Fulbright scholarship at Kuwait University. Figley adds, "What's going to happen? It's a perfect storm."   So while congressional committees on both sides of the Hill are grilling the medical brass this week, they should be aware that cutting corners on veterans' medical treatment may not be limited to ignoring moldy walls. And they should use some of their questions to ask why the military seems so hostile to accurately diagnosing and treating PTSD. Otherwise thousands of returning veterans are going to be just as haunted as the Vietnam vets were. And that would be a tragedy. An avoidable tragedy, and one that must be addressed now.   [Sorry I missed posting last week, I was still on the sick list. Thanks to all who sent "get well soon" emails!]   Bookmark Chris' HuffPost page so you don't miss any posts: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/   [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 12:59:56 PM    comment []

Congress Says Prepared to Act in Plame Affair. Aides to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said they were engaged in discussions Tuesday about the possibility of holding immediate hearings and subpoenaing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to provide details of his nearly four-year-old investigation, and the evidence he obtained regarding the role Vice President Dick Cheney and other White House officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. [t r u t h o u t] 11:59:23 AM    comment []

Robert Scheer: Coulter's Slur Puts Spotlight on Edwards. Originally posted at TruthDig.com Thank you, Ann Coulter, for boosting the principled but media-neglected presidential candidacy of John Edwards. Like many others, upon hearing that she had used an address at a major conservative convention to call Edwards a "faggot," I quickly clicked to his home page to see his campaign's reaction--and was happily diverted to more substantive stuff, such as his firm support of universal healthcare and an end to the war in Iraq. No wonder Coulter hates him: Edwards is a Democrat who believes in the progressive heritage of his party and is not afraid to tell the world. "I want to say something about my party," Edwards said in a speech at UC Berkeley on Sunday. "I'm so tired of incremental, careful caution. Where is our soul?" He was referring to, among other issues, the party's failure to deal boldly with "the bleeding sore that is Iraq." Unlike rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, he has forthrightly apologized for his Senate vote to authorize the war and called for ending it, starting with "immediately" cutting troop levels by half and then withdrawing all troops within the next 12 to 18 months. In a pointed rebuke to the Democratic leadership of Congress, Edwards states on his website, "We don't need non-binding resolutions; we need to end this war, and Congress has the power to do it. They should use it now." On domestic issues, Edwards has hewed to the progressive line he maintained in the 2004 campaign, warning about the growing income inequality in the "two Americas." As opposed to the Clintons, who still insist that they solved the poverty problem with Bill's putting an end to the federal welfare program, Edwards points out correctly, "Every day, 37 million Americans wake in poverty." Stating that "our response to that reality says everything about the character of America," Edwards has called for a national program to eliminate poverty instead of leaving the poor to the tender mercy of the states as called for in the Clinton welfare reform. It is also refreshing for a politician to invoke the image of Jesus, as Edwards did Monday, not as a divisive symbol of intolerance but rather as the inspiration for social justice and peace. "I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," he said. "I think he would be appalled, actually." As he did in the 2004 campaign as the Democrats' vice presidential candidate, Edwards has once again made relief for the struggling middle class a signature issue, strongly attacked tax breaks for the rich and the mindless globalization that is widening the class divide. He is equally strong on environmental issues, following 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore's leadership on global warming, and he has had the courage to bluntly oppose the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" hypocrisy on gays in the military. "Gay men and women have continually served our country with honor and bravery, and we should honor their commitment and never turn away anyone who is willing to serve their country because of sexual orientation," he said. These words were of particular resonance, coming on the heels of the announcement by the first U.S. Marine seriously wounded in Iraq that he is gay. Or, in Coulter's parlance, "a faggot." "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word faggot," said the professional provocateur. Her defenders on the right have argued, absurdly, that this was not a calculated slime ball thrown at Edwards but a brave stand against "political correctness." Hey, if you can believe the war in Iraq was a reasonable response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, you can swallow anything. One might be tempted to write this stuff off as the ravings of an attention addict with a morality deficit disorder if she hadn't delivered them to an approving audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a central event in the Republican calendar, immediately after presidential candidate Mitt Romney addressed the group. Last year, at the same event, Coulter dismissed Iranian Muslims as "rag heads" but was invited back, which can only be read as an endorsement of her consistently vicious rhetoric. This year, Vice President Dick Cheney addressed the conference as "this gathering of so many friends from across America." Presumably his "friends" are giving his pregnant, lesbian, Republican daughter a pass on her sexual orientation and might, at last, be moved to stand against blatant homophobic bleating from the likes of Coulter. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 9:52:45 AM    comment []

Hilary Rosen: The Neighborhood Wilsons. I ran into Joe Wilson at Starbucks this morning. We hugged and thought neighborhood coffee was as good a way as any to celebrate Scooter Libby's guilty verdict yesterday. Seeing Joe looking happy and fresh made me realize that so many people outside of Washington see this verdict and the events of the past few years as just about politics, not about people. Joe and Valerie are neighborhood parents. We both have boy-girl twins and our kids played together sometimes. Just like lots of my friends in the neighborhood, they are fun, friendly, smart, passionate and accomplished. Their kids are adorable and play well with others. They are certainly better behaved than my kids. Joe was always a grand personality. If there is a room at the party that is louder than others, where the talk is frenzied and the opinions are flying, then Joe is sure to be in the middle of it. Valerie is more reserved but no less engaging when she is talking. So here they were, a neighborhood family and then the most powerful men in the country decide that the Wilsons were getting in the way of their personal agenda of economic domination through warmongering. There lives were overturned. And after they were targeted and Valerie's CIA career was ruined, they were attacked and victimized all over again by the right wing defenders of the White House for having the temerity to stick up for themselves. I never thought they were defending themselves. The Wilsons knew and still know that when the powers that be can do that to them, they can do it to anyone. And they needed to be stopped. It seems by the reaction to the Libby verdict that no one at the White House or their defenders has learned any remorse or taken any responsibility for what they've done to the Wilson's other victims of their bullying or self-interested governing for that matter. The Wilsons are moving on. This week in fact. They are taking a family ski trip this weekend and then moving out west permanently. The kids will start in a new school in two weeks. I am sad they are leaving the neighborhood. But who can blame them. They need a fresh start. The country needs a fresh start too. I am just glad that this guilty verdict happened this week. I see it as a going away present to the Wilsons. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 8:07:54 AM    comment []

Daily Show On Walter Reed. Stewart Weighs In On Walter Reed We have received word that many hundreds of American troops are being held in deplorable, squalid conditions. What kind of people would treat our soldiers in this horrible manner? Funny story…turns out it's us.... By . [TomPaine.com] 8:06:44 AM    comment []

David Sirota: Congress's Imminent "Free" Trade Brawl: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. As I've said for a long, long time now, in the new Congress the battle is going to be fierce and nasty over "free" trade (read: trade deals that are filled with protectionist measures for corporate profits but free only of protections for human beings). Like forces preparing for war, we have seen in the last week the trenches being dug by both sides, and incredibly - when the congressional Democratic leadership isn't helping the K Street crowd dig its trench, it's preening around on the battlefield like a sitting duck. Here, in the extended entry, is the good, the bad and the ugly of the upcoming fight over "free" trade. THE GOOD - FAIR TRADE CAMPAIGN RAMPS UP Last week, Democrats and Republicans joined forces in the Montana State Senate to demand that Montana Sen. Max Baucus (D), chair of the Finance Committee, reject President Bush's request for "fast track" trade authority - the authority that lets the president strip labor, human rights and environmental provisions out of trade deals. The move was amplified through major coverage by CNN, Bloomberg News and the Hill Newspaper, and followed the release of a letter by seven courageous senators saying they will "aggressively" work to defeat fast track, and following a major op-ed by myself and Wall Street luminary Leo Hindery demanding Democrats reject "fast track." In the face of this pressure, Baucus - the ardent "free" trader who last year went to India to trumpet job outsourcing - has been changing changed his language for the better on trade, offering up harsher and harsher criticism for the Bush administration. Though he has not said he opposes fast track, his new posture is encouraging. Following on this success, major labor and farm groups have announced national campaigns to defeat "fast track" and force Congress to reform America's trade policy to address labor, human rights and environmental concerns. This happened at the same time The Hill reports that freshman Democrats - many of whom won by campaigning against "free" trade - demanded a meeting to discuss trade with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY). THE BAD - DEMOCRATS FLIRTING WITH K STREET The likely reason these freshman have demanded the meeting with Rangel is because, as National Journal has reported, fair trade advocates are "growing increasingly uncomfortable with the tone taken by Rangel in his dealings with the White House on trade." The New York Democrat hasn't said he supports "fast track," but he has dangled the possibility that he will consider supporting it in front of K Street lobbyists - all while holding major corporate fundraisers. Meanwhile, as the Buffalo News's Doug Turner reports, at the very end of last week the Senate Democratic leadership convened a Capitol Hill forum on trade exclusively with the coalition of lobbyists and huge multinational corporations pushing fast track. This is the same coalition President Clinton and his chief NAFTA strategist Rahm Emanuel (now a U.S. House member) worked with to ram NAFTA through Congress. Representatives from labor, human rights, agriculture and environmental groups were not invited to the Democratic forum. Finally, I am hearing rumblings from a number of sources on Capitol Hill that people like New York Rep. Joe Crowley - one of K Street's best friends, despite his working class district - is directing not-so-subtle threats of retribution at junior congressional Democrats who are demanding Democratic leaders get serious about reforming our trade policy. THE UGLY - IGNORING THE MANDATE FROM ELECTION 2006? That gets us to today's story in the New York Times which leads off reporting that "When the Democrats swept to victory last fall, after a campaign fueled partly by attacks on President Bush's trade policies, trade deals promoted by the administration seemed doomed in the new Congress. But that was then." Translation: Election 2006's mandate may, in fact, be out the window. While the article highlights important rhetorical changes among Republicans in the form of a new willingness to at least consider basic labor standards in trade deals, it nonetheless suggests a mushiness on the part of Democrats in really demanding a major change in trade policy. As this battle turns ugly, the questions will be very simple: Will the labor, environmental and human rights community play real hardball with the Democratic Party by demanding the Party reject "fast track," by rewarding its congressional Democratic champions and by punishing those Democrats who sell them out? And will the coalition of fair trade Democrats use all their power to stop "fast track" and reform our trade policy, or will they back down to pressure from K Street and Wall Street's free market fundamentalists like Bob Rubin, who want Democrats to merely perform a "kabuki dance" on trade while continuing the status quo? The "fast track" debate requires Democrats only to stop reauthorization - rather than pass something through the Congress, meaning all they have to do is use their power in the Senate to block the initiative. Thus, the answer to these questions is the answer to the question of whether we really are at a turning point in trade and globalization, or whether we are going to continue careening down the path of higher trade deficits, lower wages, eroded environmental protections, and all of the other negative consequences of an economic race to the bottom. If Democrats stand up, we may truly be entering a new day of global economic policy. But in Washington's pay-to-play culture where Democrats' House majority leader brags about his K Street project and where Democratic staffers are regularly cashing in to become high-paid corporate lobbyists, that's a big if indeed. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 8:05:09 AM    comment []

SURPISINGLY, I FIND MYSELF MORE IN AGREEMENT WITH PAT BUCHANAN THAN WITH STEVE IN THIS PIECE. BUT YOU KNOW THE BROKEN CLOCK THEORY - EVEN A BROKEN CLOCK IS RIGHT TWICE A DAY. Steve Anderson: Pat Buchanan on Libby's conviction: "Poor, poor, pitiful Scooter". (Graphic created by darkblack. Thanks!) I hereby announce the first post-Scooter Libby conviction Golden Douchebag Award to Pat Buchanan, who writes at Clownhall: Martyr of the War Party By Patrick J. Buchanan The conviction of Scooter Libby on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice is first of all a human tragedy. A man who served his country at the highest level, who sat in every morning at the senior staff meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, has been dishonored and disgraced, and will be disbarred. Unless his conviction is overturned, or he is pardoned, Libby will go to prison. His life will end with an obituary that declares in its headline and lead paragraph that he was a convicted Dick Cheney aide. Yet, this was a narrow case. Libby's convictions call to mind Martha Stewart's, who went to prison for lying to investigators about a crime she did not commit. Libby has been convicted of lying about the outing of a CIA classified officer, a crime for which no one has been indicted. Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was outed as a CIA "operative," was no longer covert and had not been so for half a decade when her name was pushed out of the White House to the press. Joe Wilson, her husband, target of the White House vendetta, yet contends that not only was her career destroyed, a crime was committed--and that is why the CIA demanded an investigation. She was still listed on CIA roles as covert NOC. That means secret agent, in case Buchanan can't read. Yet it was an arrogant and stupid thing Libby did. He lied to the FBI, to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, to the grand jury. He fabricated a story about where he learned about Wilson's wife, when, as sworn testimony proved, he learned it from Vice President Cheney and was himself moving it to the press. Rah rah rah, smoke and mirrors, clutching pearls...oh yeah, he lied. It's a crime. However, this was about a larger issue than the narrow question of whether Libby lied about leaking the role of Valerie Plame in having her husband sent to Niger to investigate a report that Iraq had been seeking "yellowcake," a critical component in a uranium enrichment program. That larger issue is this: Were we misled, were we deceived by our government, as the White House made the case for invading and occupying Iraq? Did neoconservatives at the Pentagon cherry-pick the intelligence, stovepipe it to the vice president's office and Libby, and then feed it to sympathizers and collaborators in the media, to stampede our country into a war against a nation that, no matter how odious its regime, did not threaten us, did not attack us and did not want war with us? In short, were we lied into a war in Mesopotamia that is breaking our Army, has crippled an administration, and has bled and divided our country as it has not been since the days of Vietnam? And why has the Democratic Congress, on taking power in January, not begun a broad investigation into how we got into this war? Really. Asshole. Because they don't have a 60 seat majority in the Senate. And if they did try to investigate, Pat would whine about it. This is the dog that didn't bark. And the reason the dog is silent suggests itself. The Congress, in voting President Bush the authority to take us to war against Iraq at a time and place of his own choosing, failed to do its duty by the Constitution. In October 2002, to get the issue off the table for the election and give themselves political cover against the Rovian charge they were tying the hands of the commander in chief in the War on Terror, a Democratic Senate--Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Daschle, Biden, Reid all assenting--voted Bush the blank check for war that he cashed in five months later. While I largely agree with this, the AUMF stated that Bush had to go back before Congress one more time, for final "yes". He didn't do that. The dilemma a Democratic Congress faces in any investigation into whether we were lied into war is that Congress would be investigating why a Democratic Senate failed its constitutional duty to determine the necessity for war. Remember Sensenbrenner grabbing the gavel and storming out of the room? Remember Conyers having to find a room in the basement to hold hearings? What exactly were the Dems supposed to do with a Republican stranglehold on power? And, lest we forget, the media, too, played a supporting role in pushing this nation into an unnecessary war. Columnists and commentators assured us there was a nexus between Saddam, al-Qaida and 9-11, a "Prague connection" between Muhammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence. Debunked time and time again. The only 2 people who still spout this are Buchanan and Cheney. Oh yeah, Bill Safire too, but you can tell by his smirk that he doesn't even believe it anymore. We were told Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and was working on nuclear weapons, that enrichment of uranium was being done secretly around the country, that if we did not act now, we faced a nuclear-armed Iraq that would surely transfer atomic weapons to al-Qaida terrorists. Said Condi Rice, our proof of WMD might well come in the form of a mushroom cloud above an American city. Scooter Libby will not lack for legal defense funds as he pursues his appeal, and there will be demands for his pardon before Bush goes home. For Scooter is a martyr of the War Party. Scooter did what he had to do to get us into this war. Then he did what he felt he had to do to discredit Joe Wilson, because Wilson was out to discredit the White House case for war. Pretty big brass pair on Joe. And in the end, we are unlikely to know the truth of why it was we went to war. For that record is sealed in minds and souls. No, they have no souls. Bastards. SteveAudio.blogspot.com [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 7:30:26 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2007 Patricia Thurston.