UN: End World Hunger?
Daily Times - Site Edition: "World leaders back new anti-hunger campaign
* Bush fails to turn up for World Leaders Summit on hunger
UNITED NATIONS: More than 100 countries on Monday endorsed a campaign to raise an additional $50 billion a year in development aid to combat global hunger, but the United States poured cold water on the project. [--snip--]
However, the leader of the US delegation, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, coolly dismissed it.
“Economic growth is the long-term solution to hunger and poverty,” she told the meeting. “The report should give more attention to practical steps to sustained growth. There is too much emphasis on schemes such as global taxes to raise external resources. Global taxes are inherently undemocratic. Implementation is impossible.”
Ministry of Excuses:*: Single handedly End World Hunger? Nah, Pour It Down The Quagmire
Salon War Room
Iraq spending: More than $1 billion a week
The Pentagon is now tapping into a $25 billion "contingency fund" to pay for troop rotations in Iraq and to prepare for even more intense fighting in Iraq this fall. Just months ago, the administration claimed it wouldn't need more funding for the war until early 2005 -- another glaring example of the administration's complete bungling of post-invasion plans. And you have to wonder how sustainable this rate of expenditure is.
From Reuters: "With the rate of spending in Iraq already at more than $1 billion a week, the Pentagon may not have enough money to 'get past Christmas,' let alone wait until February, said John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. He said the White House could need closer to $75 billion next year."
*Ministry of Excuses: What the Republicans Have Made of the White House
