It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?

Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.

-The Times

So, lemme get this, you'll pardon the expression, straight. Being on the official payroll of an agency of a foreign government doesn't count as corruption? I mean, we deported that sexy Russian chick for being in the employ of the FSB, and her job as a Russian spy apparently consisted of what your jobs and my job as American citizens consist of: updating our Facebook status and reading blogs, occasionally ALT+TABbing back to Outlook when the boss walks by. I mean, Mohammed Zia Salehi is bought by the CIA, and the Times writes a story speculating that he might be corrupt. How do you say oy in Pashtun?

I do enjoy that reporters Filkins and Mazzetti accept and amplify the idea that we are subsidizing people who may be corrupt. Because it could certainly never be the case that the US might be corrupting people via subsidy. And isn't subsidy just the most hilarious word in this context. Homework assignment: go back through the last two years of the Times and replace every description of the the Pakistani ISI "backing" or "supporting" or "funding" the Taliban/Afghan insurgency/al Qaeda with "subsidizing." Oh, LuLz, look, they are just like the USDA. OF TERROR!

Meanwhile, there's this:

“If we decide as a country that we’ll never deal with anyone in Afghanistan who might down the road — and certainly not at our behest — put his hand in the till, we can all come home right now,” the American official said.

Sounds like a plan to me.