ID? Are you joking?

Friends and 'non-friends' alike, I am, as you know, generally a relatively laid back person. However, I do feel a bit of a 'rant' coming on. It's been a while and I need them every now and again...I'll keep it brief.

Firstly, George Dubya was giving a White House press conference a few weeks ago. He stopped a journalist mid question and said, "now hold on there, buddy, no-one ever linked Iraq to 9/11..." I know that on occasion I'm a little hazy on detail, but directly after the 9/11 attacks didn't he and Rumsfeld do exactly that? In fact, didn't they expend a lot of resources being determined to do exactly that? And in the build up to the war, when they couldn't find any actual facts linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda (an unsurprising outcome to both us and them), didn't they proceed to bypass UN processes and resolutions to go to war against Iraq by continually stressing that they knew he had connections with al Qaeda and therefore the attack? Links, and of course those elusive WoMD.

Secondly, last night I was asked for ID to have wine with my dinner. As I am precisely double the legal age alllowing the purchase of alcoholic beverages in the US I don't tend to take it with me. Neither does Trudi. Who lives here... Therefore they wouldn't serve us. At first I thought they were joking. A few more seconds and I would have been prodding them, winking as I howled, "oh, you guys!" at the charm of the teen queen manager asking two people with a combined age approaching 90 for ID! Apparently in DC if they think you might be under 35 they can ask you for it. This isn't advertised anywhere. Locals don't appear to know this either. The teen queen could give me no explanation other than it's to protect minors. Obviously if you're 34 you might buy an illegal drink for a wanton drug and alcohol adolled teenager but at a mature 36 you would never dream of it. I know we could be flattered that the staff thought we might have been in our mid thirties, but frankly I'm not.

Two aspects to this really annoy me (just the two, I hear you breathe a sigh of relief...). The first is more superficial. I really want 'managers' to do better customer service than that. Smiling and being a bit 'sweet' and helpless doesn't cut it for me. But what really consumes me is that the foundation of this is nothing to do with the real health and welfare of young people, especially those young people in need or who are disadvantaged. It is litigation.