1 Rusty, why are you surprised. If democrats make up 33% of the populations and 51% of them are liberal conspiracists, then that means 16% of the population is certifiable. Which I think we knew already. That is the hard core left which thinks GITMO is a Nazi camp.

2 While we're at it, why not blame ourselves for Pearl Harbor, Leon Klinghoffer, and the '72 Munich Olympics. Throw in Mt. Vesuvius and the tsunami for good measure.

3 blame...motivation.... same word right? typical. if i walk into a store and steal some candy and the owner sees me and guns me down, it would be fair to say that stealing the candy "motivated" the owner to kill me, however i don't think i would be to blame for getting killed. it's really elementary logic, which why it doesn't surprise me that you guys can't figure that out. and to prove your point about how the 'left' doesn't refer to Sudan you link to a progressive blog showing the tragedy of Sudan. and whatever happens in sudan or iraq or wherever else, of course, by no means excuses the torture at Gitmo. again elementary logic.

4 There are times when I have to remind myself of that old saying, "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." And then I think "never" is an awfully long time.

5 Would these policies that set the attackers off be the 8 years of DNC/Clinton policies? And should Bush return to those policies even though they piss the al Queda types off? And why should those policies matter if Bush & Co supposedly did 9/11?

6 Common sense, who ironically lacks same, said: "blame...motivation.... same word right?" No. See dear, words mean things, and different words usually, but not always, mean different things. Motivation is part of the chain, or to put it more properly in 3 dimensional terms since we don't live in a one dimensional world, (well, most of us don't), the web of cause and effect. Event A has effect X, effect X causes person Z to behave in Y manner, for example. Blame, on the other hand, is a word used to describe culpability, or guilt, which comes after event A, etc.. In other words, moron A gave aid and comfort to terrorist B who was motivated to murder people by twisted idology C. Moron A was motivated to aid terrorist B by his own twisted ideology. In this scenario, both moron A and terrorist B are to blame. "typical." Ironic you should use that word. "if i walk into a store and steal some candy and the owner sees me and guns me down, it would be fair to say that stealing the candy "motivated" the owner to kill me, however i don't think i would be to blame for getting killed." So your demise, which stemmed from the consequences of your actions, i.e. stealing candy, cannot be blamed on you? Who then, the petty, bourgeois capitalist running-dog shopkeeper? "it's really elementary logic," Yes, elementary as in childish, and logic as in circular. "which why it doesn't surprise me that you guys can't figure that out." Yeah, living in the real world tends to impair one's reasoning like that. "and to prove your point about how the 'left' doesn't refer to Sudan you link to a progressive blog showing the tragedy of Sudan." Progressive blog? Not. "and whatever happens in sudan or iraq or wherever else, of course, by no means excuses the torture at Gitmo." Ah yes, the "torture" at Gitmo. Can't forget to mention that, since its invocation automatically justifies every act from the Crucifixion to Stalin's purges and beyond. Just like the Bush National Guard documents, and now the Downing Street Memo; another urban legend. You have no silver bullet, but it's funny to watch you pretend. "again elementary logic." Again, smashingly funny, especially coming from someone who can't even remember to capitalize words that begin sentences. You guys can't argue for shyte. Please grow up, learn the arts of logic and rhetoric, and don't come back until you've mastered capitalization and punctuation. Say, oh, about ten years? I don't mind pointing out how someone is wrong, I just hate to have to edit and proofread their posts.

7 America had nothing to do with provoking the living hell out of the Mideasterners? The towers fell down in NYC in free fall without any of the super strong columns left standing? Come on, fools! Do you need Greg to beat you over the head with a goddamn sledgehammer?

8 CAUTION !!!!! HARD LEFT AHEAD !!!!! Let me see if I have this RIGHT: .......Saudis fund Al Qaeda. Left say Saudis bad Left say nice to Saudis bad. Left say Bush nice to Saudis. Left say Bush bad. .......Bush fighting Al Qaeda. Left say fighting make Al Qaeda angry. Left say angry Al Qaeda hate US. Left say fight Al Qaeda wrong. Left say nice to Al Qaeda (=Saudi surrogates) make Al Qaeda happy Left say happy Al Qaeda love US. Left say Bush bad to Al Qaeda. Left say Bush mean, not understand. Left "understand" nice only solution. Therefore the problem, by extension, must be that Bush isn't being nice ENOUGH to the Saudis? So, I guess that means Bush is wrong because he's right, because he's mean because he's nice? There you have it, folks: the Left has spoken: "Vote for a Democrat, because good is bad, and bad is better, and were the worst which makes us the best." (Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves.)

9 Yes, young Say What, Take it from your Founding Mother - the left has no clue and the right is even worse. BUSH sucks and payback is the rattlesnake in your toilet.

10 AJStrata has it right. About 15% of the population is effectively insane when it comes to evaluating foreign policy. And by insane I don't mean wrong, I mean wildly self-destructive. I've derived that number as an approximation of many previous polls; this one just adds some more support. (There's a smaller number of right-wing loonies who are just as bad, but they account for less than 1% of the population as far as I can tell.)

11 This percentage will continue to grow and will define Bush's legacy.

12 The evidence of insider (US) activity in connection with 09/01/2001 is overwhelming.

13 The minute you all realize that Rove is trying to make you hate fellow Americans, a majority of which don't support this war or Bush anymore, you will realize who the real terrorist mastermind is. Oh, and "Say What"...don't be fucking loon. Liberals are not your enemy, and are not a bunch of conspiracy freak George Orwell loving Fascists communist whatevers...both left and right have shit-head fanatics. You real enemy is Saudi Arabia and our dependence on their oil plus all their money invested in our economy. If you want to disprove your theory of double speak up is down bullshit, just call me a liberal because I hate the Saudis and think we should have bombed the fuck out of the royal family instead of Iraqi civilians.

14 I guess the one redeeming datum here is that even 27% of Republicans smelled something funny back in late September 2001. Just a shame they didn't stick with their gut.

15 Nothing like letting the fucktards out for a walk, eh? But it's time for meds now, nitey-nite kiddies, the adults need to talk.

16 Echoes in the Tower Of Babel... Maximus, your command of the written english language is adequate, as is your grasp of the meanings of the words 'motivation' & 'blame'. The latter I must assume, because your fledgling attempt at logic falls short of acceptable and fails to clarify the basic differences in these words. In addition, you comment only on CS's shortcomings, making no connection between these words and their relevant use in the context of the above poll and subsequent comments. This may make your point a tad confusing to others. You are without a doubt, intelligent and and have a good sense of humor, but should leave logic to those (myself not included) who spend their lives pursuing it's finer points. That said, I think that Common Sense's post is a failed experiment in logic, causation and justification (would I be wrong to throw sarchasm on that pile?). Though certainty escapes me. As stated: "if i walk into a store and steal some candy and the owner sees me and guns me down, it would be fair to say that stealing the candy "motivated" the owner to kill me, however i don't think i would be to blame for getting killed." Let me see if I can make some sense of this mess. In this cock 'n bull fantasy 'I' plays the part of the good ol' USA. The middle east is played by 'a store'. The role of the US' mid-east foreign policy & subsequent actions in that theater is played by 'steal some candy'. 'The owner' is played by terrorists(including but not limited to Al Qaeda). And finally 'me, .... getting killed' is played by the morning of 9/11. If I understand your example correctly, you (speaking for yourself as well as the democrats that answered the above poll) mean to say: Terrorists observed US policy in action in the middle east and were 'motivated' to kill Americans. However, Americans are not to blame. Or another way, Al Qaeda was 'motivated' by our government to fly hi-jacked planes into the WTC, but our government is not to blame. Whether I am correct in interpreting your meaning or not I fail to see the relevance of this statement to the poll and it's poster's comments in any way. "blame...motivation.... same word right?" CS, here I see that you take issue with Dr. Rusty's great leap from 'might ...have motivated' to 'partially to blame for'. Perhaps you'll find comfort in knowing that his words are a watered down version of Reliapundit's Friday post. Sarchasm doesn't translate well to written word unless very obvious or in sufficient context. In your case, it would seem that Maximus took your statement literally and thought you quite foolish: "No. See dear, words mean things, and different words usually, but not always, mean different things." I find it strange that Maxi picked on you and made no mention of Reliapundit or Dr. Rusty. Especially since they were the ones who closed the gap (with their respective statements) in an attempt to make 'motivated' and 'blame' synonomus in the first place. Better said, they are stretching the meaning intended to be conveyed by the usage of 'motivated' in this context beyond it's accepted borders, then paraphrasing this stretched meaning into new statements of their choosing. Unfortunately, this happens every day, everywhere. Let's have a look into it, shall we? If all usage of all words is (analagous to) the world, then 'motivation' and 'blame' are at the same baseball game, but as fans of different teams. One can be 'motivated' to 'act' by other actions or circumstances. In any case the 'blame' for the results or consequnces of an 'action' should always be (but often are not) put on the one who 'acted'. Only sentient beings can 'act', so 'blame' for consequences thereof can never be shifted to 'motivating' entities, persons or circumstances. Think of a murder trial. The murderer ('actor') is to 'blame'. On occasion there are 'mitigating circumstances' in which case the the murderer is still to 'blame', but some leniency is often granted in punishment. If the murderer is not of sound mind 'blame' is accepted in stead by counsel and alternatives to conventional punsihment are carried out. The idea being that there is no point in punishing someone who does not understand why they are being punished, or what punishment is, or what crime they committed, or what a crime even is. Even so, the 'blame' still falls on that insane person. In none of the above cases is the blame shifted to the 'motivating' factor(s) or person(s). Please keep in mind that when placing 'blame' one can NOT consider WHY an 'action' was undertaken, only whether an 'action' and it's result can be attributed the person or persons in question. The 'why' part is the 'motive'. 'Motives' cause 'agents' to 'act'. 'Actions' of 'agents' have results or consequences. Only the 'agent(s)' of a given 'action' can be 'blamed' for said 'action' and it's result(s). I hope this clearly shows how debate over the interpretation of this year old Kew poll is moot. An understanding of the proper usage of these two words obviates the meaninglessness of this line of dicussion, as the arguments are extrapolated from misrepresentations of the words and their intended usage in the context of this case. What I'm sayin is you can't get 'blaming' from 'motivated by', no matter how you stretch it or bend it, no matter what kind of verbal Yoga you think you know. And if you don't have 'blaming', what the @#%**$ are the polarized armies arguing about here anyway? By all means continue to spout off needlessly as I have just done. It IS fun. But it accomplishes even less than the divisive partisan-politic-'you got cooties'-name-games that plague ALL media with ever increasing frequency. At least the games get folks' blood boiling which makes for some entertaining reading. So, what did we learn today kiddies? That words mean what they mean, not what we want them to mean, not what we try and force them to mean and not what we pretend that they mean while hoping that no one will notice and call 'bullshit'. Hopefully this sheds some light on the uses and abuses of our language in these linguistically dark times. There is much here that begs for further clarification, but this one needs to be pinched off. I await a second movement, til then fare thee well. All comments welcome.

17 rrosterf is bbalerr

18 BABBLER

19 Holy shit, MOTIVATION is not the same thing as CAUSE you fucking know-nothing twits!!!! claiming the US 'motivated' psychopaths isn't blaming the US at all, can't you rubes understand that?

20 So your demise, which stemmed from the consequences of your actions, i.e. stealing candy, cannot be blamed on you? Who then, the petty, bourgeois capitalist running-dog shopkeeper? obviously yes! nice attempt at a red herring.

21 "The irony of ironies, though, is the complaint by UBL and co. that Clinton had been busy bombing poor Iraqi and starving them to death with sanctions." Looks like you agree with the 51% about what motivated UBL. Wow, you must really hate America.

22 what I find interesting is that 17% of REPUBLICANS "blame america" for 9/11. who'd have thought that were possible!???

23 By far the most surprising part of this poll is that 44% of independents believe the U.S. was partially responsible for 9-11.