Stop the presses! When the U.S. gave Pervez Musharraf a dumptruck full of cash after 9/11 -- $10.58 billion and counting, mostly in untraceable cash transfers -- it didn't exactly care how he spent it, as long as he was sufficiently bought off as a U.S. ally for the war on terror. Lo and behold: Musharraf spent his cash how he pleased, and not on U.S. "priorities" for Pakistan!

A case in point: now that al-Qaeda's senior leadership has reconstituted itself in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, U.S. officials fret that Musharraf didn't use his free money to build up a promised counterterrorist force for the FATA.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

“I personally believe there is exaggeration and inflation,” said a senior American military official who has reviewed the program, referring to Pakistani requests for reimbursement. “Then, I point back to the United States and say we didn’t have to give them money this way.”

Pakistani officials say they are incensed at what they see as American ingratitude for Pakistani counterterrorism efforts that have left about 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers dead. They deny that any overcharging has occurred.

There's a lot of back and forth between U.S. and Pakistani officials in the piece about whether the U.S. delivered all the military equipment it promised, which the Pakistanis cite as the reason for their FATA intransigence. But look: if the U.S. truly cared about Pakistan spending the money fastidiously, it wouldn't be paying Musharraf in untraceable cash transfers. Rather, the U.S. needs to buy off Musharraf so he'll let us dip our toes into the volatile FATA and occasionally kill some terrorists, and so his security services will share intelligence with us and snag us some al-Qaeda members hiding up in Rawalpindi or Karachi or Peshawar or wherever. And buying him off means buying him off. Corruption and diversion of money is part of the bargain -- a cost of doing business.

It's one thing for U.S. officials to ask what exactly it is they're purchasing for over $10 billion. But it's quite another the U.S. to turn around and complain that the cash we've given Musharraf doesn't come with strings.

(Via Yglesias, who, sources indicate, blogs on Christmas Eve day in a charcoal-gray Hugo Boss business suit.)