Potential, I agree the $600 don't mean crap. And I have no sympathy for the mortgage companies who should have known better.
But we know the world ain't fair, and when we assume someone else is looking out for us we are asking for trouble. I have firsthand knowledge of hundreds of these situations, and can tell you that in the majority of cases, the borrowers have primarily themselves to blame. Home prices were going up, and they start taking out seconds and home equity lines up to and over 100%, treating their homes like personal credit cards. Dumb. Greedy.
In other cases they'd just buy with 100%+ financing, with a neg-am or interest only loan. Except in the minority of cases where the borrowers just didn't know what that meant (which would be loan fraud), they simply chose not to think of the near future... one to three years ahead when their payments would adjust and they'd lose the home.
Anyone privileged enough to be a real property owner ought to treat their property with respect... educate themselves on basic real estate and mortgage topics. The same kind of people buy the latest hot stocks in complete ignorance, and then are devastated and shocked when they lose thousands of dollars.
And thus completes the hijacking of the thread... but I agree we never should have been in Iraq in the first place. Now that we're there it's a much stickier situation. After we've destabilized the country (to put it mildly) now are we going to cut and run, leaving behind nothing but a bloody civil war in our wake? On the other hand, what are the chances of establishing an acceptable Iraqi government... and exactly how many more years and trillions of dollars would that take?