IHT: The unkept promise of 2003

IHT: The unkept promise of 2003: "In an effort to understand that relationship, we visited some of the poorest nations in the world in the last six months. We listened to 12-year-old Arnel Mamac's parents on Mindanao, the Philippine island besieged by an Islamist terrorist group, tearfully say they often don't let him walk to school because they fear he may not have the energy to make it on an empty stomach. In a cotton-growing village in Burkina Faso we saw a school with two rooms, but because of a lack of funds, only one classroom was finished. Most unsettling, to an American, is the realization that the agricultural policies of the United States - its protectionist trade barriers and the billions in subsidies doled out to its own farmers - contribute mightily to the hardships felt by poor farmers in the developing world."