Editing Haile Selassie (section)

==Speech Relevance ==
In outlining foreign aid expenditures in '[[A Time For Choosing]]' Reagan briefly talks about how:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''With that money, we bought a $2 million yacht for Haile Selassie.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
According to an unsourced article, the yacht was a once mothballed World War II [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaplane_tender seaplane tender] and refit as a gift, with air conditioning, gold wallpaper and a Norwegian crew.
Thanks to the scanning prowess of Google, two newspaper articles have turned up regarding this Yacht.  One from the Eugene (Oregon) Register-Guard and one from the Deseret News and Telegram from Salt Lake City, Utah.  These articles discuss the massive amounts of funding the United States allocated for this boat.

According to the Eugene Register-Guard, in 6 years, the yacht had cost the United States $6 million.  $2.5 million for the de-mothballing and remodeling of the ship, $500,000 for the training of a Norwegian crew (later replaced by Ethiopians and one frenchman), a major overhaul for $900,000 and a yearly $60,000 (maybe, text is distorted).  At that time, the ship was back in the United States for more repairs.  The cost of those repairs was censored.  These articles refer to the ship as the HMS Ethiopia and state that the ship was loaned to Ethiopia.