September, 14 2009, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
US Spending in Afghanistan: Upside Down?
WASHINGTON
NORMAN SOLOMON
Executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon -- recently back from Kabul -- appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" on Sunday.
Video is posted here.
Questioned about administration policy in Afghanistan, Solomon stated: "We have to compare the rhetoric, where [President Obama] spoke a few weeks ago about development, about governance, about his commitment to humanitarian assistance, saying that this war will not be won by military means primarily; and yet, the budgeting, as I saw on the ground, is massively for military spending -- very little help for humanitarian assistance. ...
"The spending ratios should be absolutely flipped upside down. The president pushed through a supplemental on Capitol Hill a few months ago: 90 percent military, 10 percent non-military. Those ratios should be totally reversed."
Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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