Growing up in Orange County California during the Reagan administration and serving in the Air Force while simultaneously attending an evangelical Christian Church didn't exactly set me up for a connection to left-wing politics. My first glimpse behind the "curtain" of American Exceptionalism occurred during one of my unit's deployments to Saudi Arabia during the mid 1990s. During that time period the United States Air Force was enforcing a no fly zone in both southern and northern Iraq. At the time, between ice fights with other airmen and midnight viewings of a worn out VHS copy of the Patrick Swayze hit, Roadhouse, I was a avionics specialist in charge of repairing faulty navigation and fuel system indicators on KC135 tankers. Two events that occurred during my time in the desert started me on the long path towards the Left. For one thing, our planes were refueling F16 fighters that were bombing targets in southern Iraq. The F16s would take off fully loaded with bombs and would come back a few hours later empty. This is probably not a shock to most people but it was to me. The term no fly zone sounds so benign, "hey sir could you please fly someplace else? Thank you." We were participating in around the clock bombing sorties at a time when the American public didn't know there was a war occurring. Years later I found out that our missions were ensuring that medicines and foods were not entering Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people, children in particular, died of curable diseases and malnutrition partly due to the no fly zone that I was a small but important cog in. On one of our days off a group of airman and I happened to be in Riyadh when news came in that a barracks full of American airmen had been bombed in the northern Iraqi city of Dhahran. As we walked through the gold market, Saudi men drove their Mercedes Benzes close to us and yelled and waved their fists in our direction. They didn't appear to want to be friends. "Weren't these people our allies? Hadn't we protected Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi invasion?" Over time the questions led me out of the military and into seriously questioning the U.S. government's intentions. I began reading books about U.S. foreign policy. Since there isn't a great market for working class people who know a lot about shady U.S. government dealings abroad and because I enjoyed working with struggling young people, I went into teaching. Currently I teach students with special needs at a high school in Washington state. I also have an MA in History from Eastern Washington University. My final project focused on Evangelical Christians from the United States and their complicity in the genocide of Mayan Indians committed by the army of convicted war criminal Efrain Rios Montt. I had the opportunity to present my paper to a panel in San Jose, Costa Rica last year. My wife and I used the trip to Costa Rica as an excuse for a honeymoon. I am also a member of the Chapter 35 Spokane chapter of Veterans for Peace. I will be taking the train down to Berkeley next month to attend the veterans for Peace conference. Oliver Stone the director of Platoon is supposed to be there. Maybe I can pick his brain and get some ideas for my new blog. There might be some lesser conspiracy theories that don't warrant his time that I might be able to take a look at.