Bush criticizes 'stingy' U.S. remarks (from U.N.)

Link here: Bush Criticizes U.N. 'Stingy' Comment

Some selected materials from that article:

President Bush defended American generosity Wednesday, even as his administration figures out how to pay for more help beyond the $35 million it has already promised to tsunami victims in Asia.
In his first remarks since the weekend disaster that so far has killed more than 76,000, Bush - like some in his administration previously - took umbrage at a U.N. official's suggestion that the world's richest nations were "stingy," and indicated much more is expected to be spent to help the victims.
"Well, I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed," Bush said from his Texas ranch. "We're a very generous, kindhearted nation, and, you know, what you're beginning to see is a typical response from America."
Bush noted that the United States provided $2.4 billion "in food, in cash, in humanitarian relief to cover the disasters for last year. ... That's 40 percent of all the relief aid given in the world last year."

... and:

As of Wednesday, dozens of countries and relief groups had pledged at least $261 million in help for South and East Asia, said the Geneva-based U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
"There's no doubt there'll be more than that," said Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. officer in charge of coordinating the international response from Switzerland. "The size of this thing is a challenge."
But measuring the generosity of the United States depends on the yardstick.
The U.S. government is always near the top in total humanitarian aid dollars - even before private donations are counted - but it finishes near the bottom of the list of rich countries when that money is compared to gross national product.
Such figures were what prompted Jan Egeland - the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator and former head of the Norwegian Red Cross - to challenge the giving of rich nations.
"We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries," Egeland said. "And it is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really. ... Even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become."
Egeland told reporters Tuesday his complaint wasn't directed at any nation in particular.

(in regards to that last part, it was obviously directed at the nations that don't give such a high percentage of their GDP...)

more:

Natsios was quick to point out Tuesday that foreign assistance for development and emergency relief rose from $10 billion in President Clinton's last year to $24 billion under President Bush in 2003. Powell said U.S. assistance for this week's earthquake and tsunamis alone will eventually exceed $1 billion.
"The notion that the United States is not generous is simply not true, factually," Natsios said.
The United States uses the most common measure of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 30 rich nations that counts development aid.
By that measure, the United States spent almost $15.8 billion for "official development assistance" to developing countries in 2003. Next closest was Japan, at $8.9 billion.
That doesn't include billions more the United States spends in other areas, such as AIDS and HIV programs and other U.N. assistance.
Measured another way, as a percentage of gross national product, the OECD's figures on development aid show that as of April, none of the world's richest countries donated even 1 percent of its gross national product. Norway was highest, at 0.92 percent; the United States was last, at 0.14 percent.

But here we come to the real problem. People look at the U.S. and use these misleading and easily corruptable statistics to say that the U.S. is stingy when part of the problem is that countries such as Norway have such a small GDP in relative comparison that they come no where near the totals we (the U.S.) do in terms of money given in aid to the rest of the world.

Statistics to prove that point are here: List of countries by GDP (nominal)

Compare the U.S. to Norway for example. The U.S. is at the top of the list with a GDP of (in millions of USD, 2003 year listed) 10,881,609. Compare that to Norway, at number 22 on the list with a GDP of 221,579. If I do the math correctly, Norway's GDP is literally 2% that of the U.S. Even Japan's GDP, number two on the list, is less than half (just under 40%) of the size of the U.S.'s.

If you take those corruptable numbers from the percent of GDP given in aid and multiply them out, you still see that Norway and other nations are contributing far less in REAL DOLLARS than the U.S. and Japan for example.

As always, it seems that U.N., and it's Euro dominated membership, looks at the U.S. and screams for us to be the saviors of the world while also insulting us for not generating enough money for them (the U.N.) to waste in kick backs and bribery schemes that keep horrific regimes in power.

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