[pagan-magik] US military knew of Tsunami

[Ian Gregory]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 08:23:09AM +0000, sean wrote:
 
> One of the more annoying things about the US is that the population 
> believes their government when they spend $1BILLION/week avenging the 
> deaths of 3000 but spend a fairly inconsequential $30Million on aiding 
> the needy millions in Asia right now.

I agree with the sentiment of course, but even though it is off
topic for the list I feel the need to clarify some things.

By December 31st the United States had increased it's tsunami
aid pledge from $35 million to $350 million, partly in response
to an intervention by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) in which he
now famously said "We spend $35 million before breakfast in Iraq".

Also, current polls show that most people in the US do not
support the occupation and my guess is that of those that do,
few justify it in terms of revenge. They probably think that
it is to free the Iraqi people from tyranny and bring peace
and democracy to the Middle East:-)

The *real* reasons are of course far more complicated, but
as far as I am concerned they fall into 4 broad categories:

* Persuing geo-political goals espoused by [PNAC][1]
* Control over the Earth's dwindling oil supplies
* Transfering dosh from poor taxpayers to rich friends of Bush
* Distracting the US electorate from domestic issues

Only the last of these four is remotely related to the revenge
thing, but that was much more of a factor in the invasion of
Afghanistan.

[1]: http://www.newamericancentury.org/

-- 
Ian Gregory
http://www.zenatode.org.uk/ian/