The last Bush administration, George W.Bush's
administration did try to set up standards for good government and
make aid to some countries anyway- >> [COUGH]
>> Conditional on that.
But a lot of government aid, particularly U.S.
government aid is not even really directed towards reducing global poverty.
One of the problems with government aid is that it's got political targets as well.
So we give aid to countries that are significant to us and
that we want to keep on our side.
During the Cold War we gave huge amounts of aid to the Congo even we
knew that it's President Joseph Mobutu was highly corrupt.
But he wasn't a communist.
So that was enough reason to give him aid.
More recently of course, we've given aid to those countries that we've wanted to
enlist or to help avoid being problems in the global fight against terrorism.
So the largest amounts of U.S. aid have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan.
And we've given various substantial aid to Egypt,
to keep it on side in terms of the Middle East peace.
So a lot of our aid is not even directed to global poverty,
but it might also be true that where it is directed to global poverty,
it sometimes is not as effective as aid from NGO's.
But it's that we should be looking at because I think
if we're considering what we aught to be doing as a matter of