The latest on Afghanistan and President Karzai

Did you see this? The latest news out of Afghanistan is that President Karzai now wants to "impose rules restricting international involvement in anti-corruption investigations." One of his underlings also said the following: "The management will be Afghan, and the decision-makers will be Afghan, and the investigators will be Afghan," Mohammad Umer Daudzai, Karzai's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Foreign advisers, most of whom work for the U.S. Justice Department, will be limited to "training and coaching, but not decision-making," he said. And then Karzai will put in his own, hand-picked staff for the agencies, too, I'll wager and they'll share the take. If it were any place but Afghanistan, you can understand why a leader would want to maintain internal control and not let outsiders in. But this is Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai is overseeing millions and billions of American tax dollars flooding into his country, because of this stupid war there. Last month he fired the corruption investigator. The guy was getting too close to the truth. I have said here before and I will say again, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is fleecing his own country by stealing from us, from the US right now. No one's talking about it in our government because they don't want to undermine the average person's support for the war. But years from now, we'll find out this thief took millions of dollars, at least, for himself, his family and friends and supporters, before he left office and that country. He's likely making like a bandit right now, as long as the American dollars flow in. We deserve to know what's going on over there--we can handle the truth--and we need to push this guy to do the right thing for his own people and for us, too. Link to original stories: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/08/AR2010090805935.html?hpid=topnews; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/world/asia/29afghan.html