by Rep. Ron Paul
President Bush said last week that, "Any election
, if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence." I agree with the president wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, it seems that several U.S. government agencies saw things differently and sent U.S. taxpayer dollars into Ukraine in attempt to influence the outcome.
We do not know exactly how many millions – or tens of millions – of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – both American and Ukrainian – millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.
Let me add that I do not think we should be supporting either of the candidates. While I am certainly no supporter of Viktor Yushchenko, I am not a supporter of his opponent, Viktor Yanukovich, either. Simply, it is none of our business who the Ukrainian people select to be their president. And, if they feel the vote was not fair, it is up to them to work it out. How did this one-sided U.S. funding in Ukraine come about? While I am afraid we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg, one part that we do know thus far is that the U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the U.S.-based Freedom House.
It is clear that a significant amount of U.S. taxpayer dollars went to support one candidate in Ukraine. Recall how most of us felt when it became known that the Chinese government was trying to funnel campaign funding to a U.S. presidential campaign. This foreign funding of American elections is rightly illegal. Yet, it appears that that is exactly what we are doing abroad. What we do not know, however, is just how much U.S. government money was spent to influence the outcome of the Ukrainian election.
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=4135
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