Bush is lying again and using the cover of far more generous nations to hide the fact that he is playing semantics while people die needlessly in Africa and climate change becomes a more and more dangerous threat.
So what happened at the G8 summit? Bush was pulled kicking and screaming into sort of, kind of half-admitting the simple fact that burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change. (Not that he's willing to do anything about it. Bush is certain ExxonMobil et al are going to say to hell with profits and fight global warming on their own.)
But in a truly callous, unChristian and despicable act, Bush signed off on the pledge by the eight industrialized nations to double aid to Africa in the next five years...and then immediately distanced himself from it.
But [Bush's] point man for the summit meeting, Faryar Shirzad, a deputy national security adviser, said later that the aid commitment involved no new money from the United States, only adding up increases previously agreed to. Mr. Bush's opposition also helped doom calls for the rich nations to commit themselves to providing a defined proportion of their national incomes to aid to Africa, a step that would have required much larger contributions from the United States.
So when Bush pretends he is doubling aid to Africa in the next five years he is actually refusing to increase aid by a single penny. This is the same tactic he used when Blair came to the White House: Bush released about $600 million that had already been allotted to Africa by Congress and pretended it was new funding. It wasn't, but the MSM got it wrong again and again. So if you see any news stories in the next few days claiming Bush agreed to double aid to Africa in the next five years, point out how his own advisers "clarified" that and admitted they weren't increasing aid by a single penny above what Bush has already committed to a few years ago. The American people are generous and open-hearted -- look at the private donations after the tsunamai -- but they are tricked into thinking our gov't is generous too with foreign aid. We are the cheapest major nation in the world, the one that gives the LEAST amount of money (as a percentage of our GDP) to help our neighbors.
And if that isn't bad enough, Bush lies and tries to pretend he's doing more when in fact he's doing less, dragging his heels to deliver the funds already committed and blocking medical aid to the sick and dying with his politicized attacks on international aid organizations. If Bush had stayed out of the African fight against AIDS, more people would be alive today. That's some "assistance."
