Dear Mahmoud

Good gosh. If there was a contest on how to best execute a tangent it would have to go Iran's President Ahmadejinad.
After writing an 18-page letter in May to his friend G.W.B. , he writes yet another letter stating again not only the obvious in the Middle East but this time he additionally mentions that many victims of Hurricane Katrina are still suffering and that there are countless more living in homelessness and poverty. Duh?
Big Duh. Coming from the same guy who says the Holocaust never happened and that Israelis should be wiped off the face of this earth, it's hardly reasonable to accept such a comment of concern for people coming from a man of harsh words. And the tangent, WOW. The gist of his letter was to point out that supposedly the U.S. governs from coercion.
Two things. First of all, compared to Iran, the U.S. is far from governing from coercion given that people can vote without fear of persecution, and that there are hardly issues where education is stifled because of radical views of religion. And if Ahmadejinad were griping about how the U.S. wants to stifle its nuclear program, it's because there are reasons to suspect its activities. Second, how does pointing out poverty and homelessness drive to the point that the U.S. runs its government with an iron fist? These are issues of neglect at best and even if it's glaringly obvious that more could have been done in the aftermath of Katrina, his comment is so far fetched that it just reflects how he's been taking cheap shots at criticizing the U.S. on anything he can find. Bush is no phenomenal speaker either so any response on our end could very well come out looking like a petty squabble between an old married couple.