Sea Days Update

Sea days continue to follow our normal pattern with Arleen joining Duane for bridge some afternoons. Yesterday we got to play with the "big boys". That is what we call the more experienced players who play duplicate bridge. we got the impression that they were ogres who ate anyone who made the smallest mistake. We were paired with one them to play as a team that moved around to five different tables to play two hands against a different team, also composed of a beginner and an expert. After all twenty hands were played, they scored the hands as to who made the best contracts and who held their opponents to the lowest score. North/south and east/ west teams were scored separately. Arleen was on the north/south team that won and Duane was on the east/west team that won. We really believe that it had more to do with our partners than our skills but it was a fun learning experience. More important was that fact that Arleen enjoyed the class for the first time. She doesn't want to continue classes now(she would rather be on vacation again and bridge is a lot of work) but she is going to continue to pick Duane's brain and do some reading to learn more once we are back home. Duane, the weirdo that he is just loves the classes.
the other thing that has happened recently is that we got a new Lecturer on board. His name is Scott Ritter, an ex marine, who became the UN's Chief weapons Inspector in Iraq and was one of the last to leave. He is the author of Iraq Confidential.
His first talk was on how he as a Jr. Captain in Military Intelligence became involved with the nuclear disarmament program and help assure that the Russians upheld the nuclear disarmament program and then was sent into Iraq to find the WMD's. His next talk was about his experience in Iraq. The next talk was on the peace movement. And his last talk was on the Iraqi Endgame Where are we and where are we going. I am hoping I can get a transcript or something to share with others. He was very impressive and if one of our presidential candidates had enough sense to hire him a a military advisor, I would vote for that candidate regardless of which party they belonged to. You might want to Google him which is what I planned to do when we get home and internet doesn't cost us $0.50/min. If you have any political pull anywhere you might suggest that someone get him on your candidates campaign. He could really make a difference by giving them a sound understanding and policy on Iraq. Its not that he has the answers, it is that he knows the right questions to ask and has a lot of background information to share. For example, Stay the Course and Withdraw Now are both politically slogans aimed at appeasing we the constituency. What is really needed is to ask tough questions to help us understand Iraq, it people, its problems, its history,and our responsibility and our options, none of which are good.
Someone on our cruise, who has a lot of "free minutes " due to having taken a lot of cruises on Princess googled him and said there are a lot of sites pro and con on the net so you might want to look at what he has said first so you can understand why people on both sides of the aisle are for and against him. He is definitely not political, but is strongly Constitutional and believes it is every American's responsibility to uphold the Constitution because it is what makes us Americans. WE all need to get involved in the process of running this country and make the government answerable to us the People.