Yet as in the postmodern world in which we live, sometimes when you are everywhere, you are really nowhere.

In other words, perhaps it is time to admit that the War on Terror is not just a stupid war. It is a war designed to make us stupid. How.

They found out that the other immigration detainees had been incarcerated for days, weeks, and sometimes months. This discovery was not comforting.

At least if she had committed a crime, she would have stood in front of a judge and answered the charge against her. If convicted, she would have been properly sentenced, and then she would know exactly how long she was to be here. But as a detainee she had no idea when she would be let out.

Never in her life had she thought that she would end up in jail unless she had committed a crime. So why was she here? ... She hadn’t been convicted. She had been abducted.This wasn’t justice. It was revenge.

If you drop her, she’ll break, but she’ll cut you, too. She’s tough and tender, enraged and exhausted, withdrawn and outgoing, a pessimist brimming with humanist hope.