{"id":187255,"date":"2013-04-29T20:43:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T01:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/04\/29\/why-am-i-not-surprised-3\/"},"modified":"2013-04-29T20:43:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T01:43:00","slug":"why-am-i-not-surprised-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/04\/29\/why-am-i-not-surprised-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Why am I not Surprised?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <i>New York Times<\/i> has revealed that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/04\/30\/world\/asia\/karzai-acknowledges-cash-deliveries-by-cia.html\">they delivered big sacks of cash to Afghan President Hamid Karzai<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">President Hamid Karzai acknowledged Monday that the Central Intelligence Agency has been dropping off bags of cash at his office for a decade, saying the money was used for \u201cvarious purposes\u201d and expressing gratitude to the United States for making the payments.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr. Karzai described the sums delivered by the C.I.A. as a \u201csmall  amount,\u201d though he offered few other details. But former and current  advisers of the Afghan leader have said the C.I.A. cash deliveries <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/04\/29\/world\/asia\/cia-delivers-cash-to-afghan-leaders-office.html\" title=\"Times article\">have totaled tens of millions of dollars<\/a>  over the past decade and have been used to pay off warlords, lawmakers  and others whose support the Afghan leader depends upon.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The payments are not universally supported in the United States  government. American diplomats and soldiers expressed dismay on Monday  about the C.I.A.\u2019s cash deliveries, which some said fueled corruption.  They spoke privately because the C.I.A. effort is classified. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Others were not so restrained. \u201cWe\u2019ve all suspected it,\u201d said  Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and a critic of the  war effort in Afghanistan. \u201cBut for President Karzai to admit it out  loud brings us into a bizarro world.\u201d      <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr. Karzai\u2019s comments, made at a news conference in Helsinki, Finland,  where he is traveling, were not without precedent. When it emerged in  2010 that one of his top aides <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/10\/24\/world\/asia\/24afghan.html?pagewanted=all\" title=\"Times article\">was taking bags of cash from Iran<\/a>,  Mr. Karzai readily confirmed those reports and expressed gratitude for  the money. Iran cut off its payments last year after Afghanistan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/02\/world\/asia\/obama-lands-in-kabul-on-unannounced-visit.html\" title=\"Times article\">signed a strategic partnership deal<\/a> with the United States over Iran\u2019s objections. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img73.imageshack.us\/img73\/2451\/ricklouiegambling248356no6.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"200\" \/>I&#8217;m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m so not surprised that this was the guy that George W. Bush and his evil minions<sup>\u2122<\/sup> chose to run the country.<\/p>\n<p>They wanted someone whom they could buy.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, they also found someone who doesn&#8217;t stay bought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times has revealed that they delivered big sacks of cash to Afghan President Hamid Karzai: President Hamid Karzai acknowledged Monday that the Central Intelligence Agency has been dropping off bags of cash at his office for a decade, saying the money was used for \u201cvarious purposes\u201d and expressing gratitude to the United &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}