While Kay hits the nail on the head squarely, and I applaud him/her for that -- Thomas Porter displays the usual lack of historical perspective that I see in many ill-informed and gullible Americans.
First, America cannot be what is today, and I repeat CANNOT be what it is today -- without extorting and intimidating the rest of the world, using all kinds of tools available to it -- IMF, WORLD BANK, CIA, ....and now FBI crawling around in almost every country in the world.
America needs cheap resources from the rest of the world and has used, and is at present using military might to ensure that your "HAMBURGER" costs only $1.00.
America takes away from other nations more than it "donates" to them. These excerpts from the book: "If You Love This Planet," by Helen Caldicott, gives a very clear picture about how "predatory" the United States and other developed countries are to the third world: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Helen_Caldicott/Third_World_Debt_IYLTP.html
When George Washington said: "We should avoid foreign entanglements," he had no clue what was ahead -- absolutely! This constant referral to the 1800's a.k.a "Our Founding Fathers," is not only archaic, but is also most of the times -- irrelevant.
Take for example the quotation "All men are created equal" -- first used by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. If all men were created equal -- the George W. Bush should be hanged as soon as he leaves office!
Yeah ...all men are created equal, while you have hundreds of blacks "tied" in your backyard and in your cotton fields!
Unfortunately bits and pieces of this mentality still exist today.
Lying and using false representations to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the upheaval of millions of children, women and families, while heaping hate on top of hate, is as treasonous as Hitler's propaganda machine, which he used as an excuse to exterminate German Jews.
And I haven't even counted the crimes he committed while blatantly stealing Florida in 2000, and then using "Fear-Mongering Propaganda" to steal it a second time in 2004 -- documented here in video: http://www.politicalarticles.net/blog/2008/10/20/republicans-already-stealing-early-votes-in-west-virginia/
Mugabe as despicable as he is, doesn't even come close!
What's the difference between murdering your own people or the people of another country --- Iraq?
As for Omar al-Bashir -- I wish I could hang him myself!-------------------------------------------------------
I wonder why you are treading lightly on Bush. He is a murderer, a war criminal and a domestic terrorist -- worse than Mugabe!
Bush has perverted, distorted and tarnished America’s image beyond repair. It may take forever to get America's good name back.
Mr. Omar Bashir takes the high honors. He is a killer and a slave trader. Both him and Bush belong in Guantanamo Bay.