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More important, at least when it comes to the bailed-out businesses, the notion that there's a correlation between excessive pay and excessive risk-taking isn't quite accurate. It may be true in the case of hedge funds or leveraged-buyout - which call themselves private-equity (PE) - firms or some parts of stricken outfits like AIG, Citi and the former Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America. But hedgies and PEs aren't covered by pay czar Ken Feinberg's ukases...
...York Times on Tuesday, won't come as a surprise to most Afghans, who have long considered his brother, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to be an American puppet. The revamped allegations that Karzai frère is deeply involved in Afghanistan's annual $4 billion drug industry isn't much of a shocker either - on the streets of Kabul and Kandahar, the name Wali has long been synonymous with someone who can get away with a crime because he has friends in the right places. Diplomats, counternarcotics officials and commanders from the International Security Assistance Force, NATO's military wing...
That the CIA might turn a blind eye to the unsavory extracurricular activities of a local asset isn't exactly new. It's emblematic of the often shady compromises that are conducted on a daily basis around the globe in the name of increased American security. (If you think the U.S. is only talking to "good" guys to get information about al-Qaeda, think again - men with clean hands rarely truck with those without.) But if the Times' charges are true, the revelations that Wali Karzai is a major drug trafficker who has been protected not just by his brother...
...before anyone calls for a congressional investigation, let's remind ourselves that Afghanistan isn't Sweden. We had no problem dealing with Afghan Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists, drug dealers and thugs when the Carter and Reagan White Houses waged a proxy war against the Soviet Union in the '80s. The CIA and the White House turned a blind eye to our proxies' faults because the fundamentalists were the best fighters and happy to take down our Cold War enemy...
...forget that the CIA isn't the only organization with questionable people on its payroll. Since the beginning of the war, NATO has been bribing drug smugglers to let fuel pass through the Khyber Pass from Pakistan into Afghanistan. NATO payments, thousands of dollars for each truck, have to dwarf anything the CIA is giving to Ahmed Wali Karzai. (See pictures of the U.S. Marines' offensive in Afghanistan...