Better than a kick in the teeth
It seems hard to be grudging about $5 billion. A billion here, a billion there, soon you're talking real money. Given their recent rhetoric, the $5 billion extra foreign aid over three years pledged by president Bush yesterday is certainly welcome. But it will still leave the US at the bottom of the pile in terms of aid, and still leave the bulk of US aid going to countries that are in effect rewarded for their strategic importance (Egypt, Colombia and Indonesia, for example) rather than those that need it most.
As George Soros said yesterday, "Where's the beef?" The $5 billion over three years compares with the single year increase of $48 billion in defence spending. In comparison, European Union aid spending is now set to rise by $7 billion a year (more than four times the Bush pledge over a similar time scale) from a much higher base.
11:23:48 AM 
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