The R Rated Blogger

Bill Clinton was in Montreal yesterday for the Montreal Millennium Promise Conference on child poverty.



If Bill Clinton knew then what he knows now, he would have sent books, not weapons. The result might have been more scientists and fewer terrorists, the former U.S. president told the Montreal Millennium Promise Conference on child poverty yesterday. In most developing countries, Clinton explained, parents must pay to send their children to public schools - "because of the strain on government budgets and the weak tax base." But some Muslim countries such as Pakistan have networks of free madrassa schools, which "indoctrinate kids with a very militant ideology," he said. And terrorist groups such as Al-Qa'ida use them as recruiting venues. "During the '80s and the '90s - I take responsibility for this, too - because Pakistan was a good Cold War ally of the United States, we were only too happy to give them generous military aid," said Clinton, who was president from 1993 to 2001. "If we had given them just one less plane and taken that money and put it into education, God only knows how many fewer terrorists and how many more engineers and scientists we might have educated." (more here)

Spotted at the conference were Belinda Stronach and Rick Mercer.





Send books, not weapons, Clinton says
Stronach joins Clinton at anti-poverty session
Video of Bill Clinton speech