Flat Soccer Balls: NOT a good gift idea.
Sort of like "the vision thing" redux, this from Salon (hey, the ad-view is actually working today!) speaks volumes:
On a hot summer morning in 2004, Garett Reppenhagen dragged himself out of his cot at a rudimentary Army base, 40 miles north of Baghdad, for a briefing on the day's combat mission...
What the lieutenant told them, however, had nothing to do with the enemy. They were going to hand out soccer balls to Iraqi kids in the surrounding villages. Reppenhagen was surprised. "You do so much crappy shit over there that when you get a mission to actually help people, it's encouraging," he said...
At Forward Operating Base Warhorse, Reppenhagen and his fellow soldiers encountered a five-ton truck stacked with large cardboard boxes. They began to unload the truck and open the boxes. There were maybe 50 soccer balls in each box. But the balls had not been inflated. They were all flat. Reppenhagen scoured the boxes. No pumps. What was worse, nobody had bothered to pack the needles to inflate the balls...
The line of the article, though, goes to spokesperson Christian T. Kubik. When asked about this rather dubious mission, he replied:
"To focus on the air in the balls, or lack thereof, undermines the American spirit of generosity and completely misses the point of giving."
OK.
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