NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports on how the Bush administration pays the Pakistani government $1 billion a year to hunt down Osama bin Laden, and demands zero accountability as to how that money is spent.

Download Download

So if I understand this correctly, we are paying Musharraf $1 billion a year to strike immunity deals with the warlords thought to be harboring this man we're paying him to catch? This is appalling on so many levels. Given the huge sum of money we're paying this man to implement policies that are counterproductive to our national security and yield few results, how can we possibly consider him our "strong friend and ally"?

Let's review the Bush administration's record for a second and how insane it is for them to suggest (and for his water carriers to defend) that they are "strong on terror": First, they ignored countless warnings pre-9/11. (more below the fold)

Then they allowed bin Laden to slip across the Pakistani border. Then they propagated a non-existant link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein to drag us into a war that has not only destroyed our military, treasury, and moral credibility, but has also made us infinitely less safe by creating an entirely new generation of Islamic extremists hellbent on destroying America. Then, as if all that wasn't enough, they shut down the CIA unit dedicated to huting down the man President Bush once pledged to bring to justice "dead or alive." Can anybody tell me with a straight face what this administration has done right in the war on terror? Anybody?

To put this into perspective, that yearly $1 billion could have insured 600,000 children; paid for more than 17,000 teachers; or sent 48,000 kids to college for four years. But no, it's smarter to give it to someone who could seemingly care less about apprehending America's #1 fugitive.