Offshoring: A modest proposal

Being a programmer by trade, the topic of offshoring is something that typically has my rapt attention. As I understand it, it saves corporations something in the range of 20 - 40%, although you and I as American consumers, realize by 3% in savings. Something that I highly doubt Adam Smith would smile upon.

Most Americans seem to be square with outsourcing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to the cronies of the Bush Regime. And not too much kerfuffle has resulted from the CIA's offshoring of torture. And, of course, the firestorm from last' month's revelation that even internal CIA operations are handled by contractors didn't seem to give Congress pause before they tipped yet another bottle of White-Out on the Bill of Rights.

So, when I ran into this headline about the illegal arms sale to Iraq being outed by the Italians, I couldn't help but think, "Why don't we just go The Full Monty and offshore the entire intelligence-gathering enchilada to these folks?" Let's face it: Our team's been dropping the proverbial ball at least since we were blindsided by Khomeni in 1979. Italy's spooks, by contrast, have to deal not only with foreign troublemakers using their country as the crossroads that it's been for a centuries, but the home-grown nuisance of the Cosa Nostra besides. (Naturally, this kind of offshoring won't happen--the TSA will be outsourced to El Al before you ever see that .)

After all, if we can offshore the manufacture of weaponry (and d---ned near everything else) to China, how much further down the slippery slope do we have left to slide, really?