So that in 1974, when I graduated as a lawyer, I figured I'm not going to be a lawyer under a military regime.

You know, it was uncomfortable doing the same thing. I don't like a rut.

I think in New York we had respect and we would pretty much fill up the places where we went, but I never got the sense that we really were Number 1 here in New York among the Latin crowds.

And music was a very important part of our lives. The radio was on all day.

But, when I was about thirteen, I began to sort of sing in my neighborhood.

There was no television, so the radio provided you with everything.

It was very interesting, and we went to Germany and we toured Germany like we were a German band in 1985.

We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.

I was born in Panama, the Republic of Panama, on July 16, 1948 in Panama City, in an area called San Felipe.

Anywhere you had a commerce center, you had a lot of music.

What I do not accept is the fact that so many people's talents were ripped off.

So I went to Miami in '74 with my family and while I was there it became obvious that we needed money and we needed to do something, because my family, we left without anything really, and we didn't have any money to begin with.

It doesn't make sense for me to be a lawyer in a place where there is no law.

So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama.

So that in 1974, when I graduated as a lawyer, I figured I'm not going to be a lawyer under a military regime.

So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.

What is interesting in this is the exchange of music that occurred between New Orleans and Cuba, I mean, they had ferries that would go from one port to another.

It's almost as if people think that in Latin America we're not hip to what's happening here.

They're making a ton of money, and no one is getting a nickel.

So that when I came from Panama... my family was exiled in 1973 and they went to Miami.

I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.

I decided we should book ourselves, so I started booking the band.

So that when I came to New York again, it was, I'm not too sure right now, but it was '74 or '75. I went to Miami in '74 and then I came to New York, I think, at the end of '74.

I didn't do drugs, I never did do drugs. Never. I don't have any story of drugs, you know, to speak of. Never did drugs, never was interested in drugs and then I wasn't interested in the people around the drugs.

People are a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city.

I was the first person to come into New York with a Latin American point of view which was also very much influenced by political happenings in Latin America.

And, he'd seen me in Panama, and he talked about maybe doing something in New York so I hooked it up when I came here and I recorded in 1969 my first album with Pete Rodriguez.

Rock is young music, it is youth oriented. It just speaks for a generation.

Yes, I was going to law school and it was closed in '69.

I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.

A lot of times you're just conditioned by what's around you.

Every band had their own distinctive sound, but it was pretty much dancing music and rhythmic music with a tremendous emphasis on copying the Cuban models.

In those days the big U.S. labels didn't have any particular interest in the Latin market.

I think being born in Panama was a blessing because Panama is a port city. It's a really - the mentality is that - I remember that of admitting things in. You know, ports, ideas come in and out all the time.

Tango was very popular in Panama at the time when I was growing up. In the Fifties in Panama, the radio stations played all types of music.

There's something about the tango that brings even more emotion out of the lyrics.

Our military commanders have said over and over again that a timetable for withdrawal sends the wrong message to our troops, but more importantly to our enemy.

The successful establishment of a buffer zone around Fort Carson will provide an example for other bases around the country as we seek to protect the training mission of the U.S. military while preserving critical habitats on our ranges.

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought.

We won't always have the strongest military.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

All of us who are convinced that our military needs all the support the government and public will provide are pleased that he will have his chance to do just that.

Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?

I visited the Chinese side last year. The Chinese are in a constant state of military readiness. They have all their nuclear weapons in the area, presumably trained on targets across the border.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.

Since far fewer people are recruited to serve in a voluntary military, the connection between America and its military is increasingly tenuous and less personal.

In the recent years there have been criticisms levelled against Japan suggesting that she should offer more military forces to the United Nations forces and thereby play a more active role in the keeping and restoration of peace in various parts of the world.