Pickles lied: $$ went to a private Univ in Afgan--NOT the public schools

[rodeodance]

Aug 30, 2006
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HH30Df02.html

Why it's not working in Afghanistan
By Ann Jones

.....The Bush administration often deliberately misrepresents its aid program for domestic consumption. Last year, for example, when the president sent his wife to Kabul for a few hours of photo-ops, the New York Times reported that her mission was "to promise long-term commitment from the United States to education for women and children". Speaking in Kabul, Laura Bush pledged that the United States would give an additional $17.7 million to support education in Afghanistan. As it happened, that grant had previously been announced - and it was not for Afghan public education (or women and children) at all, but to establish a brand-new, private, for-profit American University of Afghanistan catering to the Afghan and international elite. (How a private university comes to be supported by public taxpayer dollars and the US Army Corps of Engineers is another peculiarity of Bush aid.)

Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister of Afghanistan and president of Kabul University, complained, "You cannot support private education and ignore public education." But typically, having set up a government in Afghanistan, the US stiffs it, preferring to channel aid money to private American contractors. Increasingly privatized, US aid becomes just one more mechanism for transferring taxpayer dollars to the coffers of select US companies and the pockets of the already rich.

In 2001, Andrew Natsios, then head of USAID, cited foreign aid as "a key foreign-policy instrument" designed to help other countries "become better markets for US exports". To guarantee that mission, the State Department recently took over the formerly semi-autonomous aid agency. And since the aim of American aid is to make the world safe for American business, USAID now cuts in business from the start. It sends out requests for proposals to a short list of the usual suspects and awards contracts to those bidders currently in favor. (Election-time kickbacks influence the list of favorites.)

Sometimes it invites only one contractor to apply, the same efficient procedure that made Halliburton so notorious and profitable in Iraq. In many fields it "pre-selects vendors" by accepting bids every five years or so on an IQC - that's an "Indefinite Quantities Contract". Contractors submit indefinite information about what they might be prepared to do in unspecified areas, should some more definite contract materialize; the winners become designated contractors who are invited to apply when the real thing comes along. USAID generates the real thing in the form of an RFP, a Request for Proposals, issued to the "pre-selected vendors" who then compete (or collaborate) to do - in yet another country - work dreamed up in Washington by theoreticians unencumbered by first-hand knowledge of the hapless "target". .......

[patrice]

1. That university is probably going to be kind of the same calibre

as the hurrican preparedness plan BushCo supported in New Orleans before Katrina, according to Greg Palast on AAR today. Several hundred thousand dollars to a consulting firm that produced a plan that amounted to "Get in your cars and drive out of New Orleans".

Yep, The University of Fundamentalist Christian Brainwashing in Afghanistan, that ought to bring Peace to the region.

[loves_dulcinea]

4. wasn't there also a controversy re: barbara (mom)

donating money to katrina victims, but, with the proviso that the money had to be spent on books that were being offered by neil bush? anyone remember that?

[patrice]

6. I haven't heard about that one. But that IS one of the basic problems

with everything they do, including all of the "churches" they own. They downsize government and turn it into a private cartel run by those who don't disturb them.

You should see all of the advertising here in Cupcake land with "Christian" symbols in it.

In real Catholicism, that was trading on the name of the Lord and I can't believe my church has anything to do with people who do that!

[Sydnie]

7. It wasn't for books, it was for computer software

of which she is also an investor in the company. Nothing like donating a tax deduction to yourself, is there?

edit - typo

[Cha]

2. The Itch lies? Imagine that..someone

in the bush family "lying"? It must be fucking contagious for those lowlife white trash.

[FSogol]

3. K&R. Maybe it would be easier to just tell us when this administration

doesn't lie. It would save a lot of time.

[spanone]

5. Republicans don't lie, they mis-speak. Repeat after me...

:sarcasm: