A 2006 archived USAID website proudly claims the agency "supported" revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, and Kyrgyzstan.
USAID funded and trained thousands of journalists, lawyers, judges, and election workers, conducted polls questioning election legitimacy, published reports alleging fraud, and helped oversee new elections, among other initiatives.
"Many people watched in wonder as the multicolored revolutions took place—the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose in Georgia, the Cedar in Lebanon, the Tulip in Kyrgyzstan... Few realized that for years, the United States and other countries and organizations had been supporting this homegrown desire for democracy."
"When the Orange Revolution began, 29-year-old television anchorman Andriy Shevchenko was news director of Channel 5, the only regional independent TV network. He had received media training through Internews, a USAID-funded NGO, and visited U.S. TV stations where he learned about investigative reporting, balancing many points of viIs this a good use of American taxpayer dollars?ew, and other aspects of the free press."
"At 2:30 a.m. Monday, after the second round of elections, strange results came from the election commission,” said Shevchenko. “Yushchenko left the commission building and said, ‘We don’t trust the results.’ He asked people to come to the Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square] in the morning. At the station, we realized we would not go to sleep that night, and we kept coverage of the square for 15 days nonstop."
"The first days, we were the only channel covering it. Then other channels followed.” Soon, hundreds of thousands would leave their homes and villages to join mass demonstrations."
"People were fed up with corruption, election fraud, and the slide back to authoritarian rule, which the independent press was reporting,” said Shevchenko, one of 2,000 Ukrainian journalists trained over the past decade. Support from the United States, Internews, and the European Union created a feeling that others stood with them “in the trenches,” said Shevchenko. Election observers from Ukraine, the United States, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also issued widely publicized reports of fraud."
"U.S. aid helped us to conduct the poll that showed Yushchenko won while the authorities intended to falsify the elections,” said Anatoliy Rachok, director of the Razumkov Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Studies which received U.S. and Eurasia Foundaion aid."
"For five years, we polled people and reported that the attitude of people towards the government was very negative. The population believed in those figures,” said Razumkov."
"Then, when the Center reported that Yushchenko had really won the election, “our poll was believable and it was used by the Supreme Court” in overturning the official tally."
"U.S. aid help for the poll was absolutely important—the poll results after the second round made people go to the street,” he added."
"Another NGO—Development Associates —did its own democracy preparation work with the Central Election Commission, training 100,000 commissioners for the 2004 elections."
"U.S. democracy grants also paid for experts from the American Bar Association (ABA), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), the University of Maryland, and other groups to train lawyers, judges, journalists, members of parliament, NGOs, political party leaders, and others."
Is this a good use of American taxpayer funds?
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