Is the Bitcoin network Slow today? Please Help!

[Stephen Gornick]

Because I don't know what on earth went wrong, ok? If I request a withdrawal to me, and 3 hrs later I still see nothing on my screen, how can I be sure that if I do exactly the same thing to my buyer, he WILL get the bitcoins within a reasonable amount if time!

When you withdraw from Mt. Gox, the transaction will be announced to the network and after some time it will show up in a block.  To see if a transaction has been processed by a block look at BlockExplorer:
  - http://www.blockexplorer.com

The delay between when you send bitcoins (e.g,. withdraw from Mt. Gox) to when that transaction appears in BlockExplorer can range from just seconds to many minutes -- unless the transaction is deemd "low priority" and then it could take hours even.

Before the transaction is included in a block it will likely have been seen by Bitcoin Charts which publishes a list of Unconfirmed Transactions (unconfirmed, as in it has not yet been included in a block):
  - http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin

In most instances, when the payment appears in either of those site view the recipient should be able to feel comfortable that payment has been sent and is truly enroute.

[DonnyCMU]

Thank you very much for these valuable insights everyone.  

If you truly did not understand that you could send your MtGox/TH coins directly to your buyer then I genuinely apologize. There is no method that I know of to send MtGox USD to another user (which you indicated you wanted to do) which among other oddities triggered my scam radar. You can of course transfer USD out of MtGox to another exchange.

In attempt to make it up to you I will try to explain why it appeared to you that BTC transfers from MtGox/TH were being delayed for hours when in fact they were not.

Apology accepted.. and thank you for the explanation. As a matter of fact, when I finally see my transaction showed up and do my business, I went over what everyone said again and I finally gets why some people think I'm a scam. A big face-palm followed. I was so embarrassed that a thought of ditching this account and start a new one humiliation-free crossed my mind. Oh well....

Also, I thought you can send/receive Mt.gox dollar from here https://www.mtgox.com/users/sendMoney

Anyway, let's hope the following week will be a better day for bitcoin than the last one!