Quote Originally Posted by Universal Mind View Post
The truth is that you are looking for an excuse to act self-righteous and you don't really give a damn about the other side or their intended targets. Your outlet for acting like a jerk toward those who actually do want to make this a better world is what matters to you the most. I see straight through you.
I really don't think mark is against making the world a better place; he is disagreeing on the methods used, as so many of us are.

Quote Originally Posted by Universal Mind View Post
I was a Katrina victim, and I blame nothing on Bush. My local government handled things very well and called for federal assistance ahead of time. The fact that the Louisiana government was pathetic in preparing for Katrina and did not request federal assistance until after the hurricane happened and that every one of the few routes into New Orleans had been demolished by the hurricane does not mean that foreign cultures of poverty and despair that breed terrorism should not be improved. Try to stay off the bizarre tangents.
Being from England, mark probably doesn't know the systems of state and federal government. What I see betwen the lines of his post is that from his viewpoint, our government spends a lot of money "saving" the Iraqis from themselves, while our own people are neglected. I'd have to agree with him about that. I guess you can blame the poor and indigent people of New Orleans, LA for not having the excellent choice in leadership that the state of Mississippi had, but it does appear that they got screwed. Even if you are OK with how it was handled, I imagine some of them have a little ill-will towards the incompetent Bush-appointed leaders who are supposed to take care of disasters. What if that had been a terrorist attack instead of a natural disaster? They are so far from prepared, it's a joke. But we have plenty of billions of dollars to send over to Iraq, right? Borrowed from China, by the way, because we don't want to have to piss anybody off by raising taxes and actually paying for some of this stuff as we go--better to let our kids take care of that.

Mark makes another good point that we are somewhat to blame for the current state of affairs. We supported the Taliban for many years when they were fighting the Russians; we didn't care a bit about their terrorism, lack of tolerance, and violent ways back then. I believe the spring of 2001 was the last of the Taliban's big payments from our federal government (I forget how much, but it was in the hundreds of thousands, maybe a million, I think). Not to mention the connections between the Bush and bin Laden families. Same with Saddam and his previous alliance with our government. Funny how our leaders' friends so quickly become "our" enemies, and it is our soldiers and their civilians which pay the price.