US moves to cut all military aid to Uzbekistan

It's not very often you see a post on Loaded Mouth praising the Bush administration for something. As some readers know, our support for Uzbekistan despite their gross human rights violations has become a semi-pet issue of mine, so I was more than happy to read this article yesterday about the Bush administration attempting to cut off all of our military aid to the countr.:

The United States plans to take the unprecedented step of cutting all military aid and some economic assistance, worth $18m a year, to punish the central Asian state for its harsh policies aimed at stamping out political dissent.

The decision was signed by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, on Monday night, according to Washington sources. But the move must be approved by Congress, the State Department said last night.

If Congress doesn't approve of this, hang them.

However, there is another matter that concerns me. The article says that Powell signed a document to cut off all military aid to Uzbekistan. I wonder if "military aid" is the same thing as "foreign aid", or merely a subcategory thereof. In the past, we have given Uzbekistan $160 million in foreign aid. I'm not sure how many years it took for Uzbekistan to collect this aid, nor do I have time to research it right now, though I plan to. If the per Uzbekistan collected per year averages out to be over $18 million, which we now know they were getting per year in "military" aid, then I'll be very unhappy and make another post telling Bush to fuck off. :)