"Fred the Red Shirt" wrote in message
om...
"George Z. Bush" wrote in message
...

Note the caveat above 'for a time'.

Really, I meant that. It took a while for the warlords to gain
control. Even after they did, I am sure that the Somalis who
had the means to procure the food from the warlords distributed it
further in exchange for various forms of renumeration to themselves,
such as labor. That's called 'trickle down'. Perhaps you can
find some Ronald Reagan fans who can explain to you how that works.

If you can explain how sending food to a starving country fails to
help to relieve that famine regardless of who distributes
the food, please do so.

You keep arguing the same point, i.e.-that regardless of who got the food, those
Somalis didn't starve. I haven't disagreed with you....I merely took a partial
exception and, at risk of being repetitious, this is what I said:

"So, when all was said and done, we sent food over there and only affluent
or
relatively affluent Somalis got to eat any of it. The starving poor
continued
to starve in spite of our best efforts. I don't think I would call that a
successful effort."

The point I've been trying to make is that we never intended our relief supplies
to go to only those who could afford to buy it. We expected that it would be
distributed on some sort of equitable basis, the only prerequisite being that
they didn't have enough food to sustain themselves and their families.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. That's what made our effort somewhat short
of successful.

If that doesn't explain my position to you, then it'd probably be just as well
to drop the semantic ****ing match and move on to something else. I'll just
conclude that my explanatory skills are not hitting on all cylinders.

George Z.