If the White House were even halfway sincere about counteracting terrorist guerrilla tactics and hostile spying, it would move swiftly in all ways possible to discourage offshoring.

Instead, this White House has engaged in a policy of the most extreme laissez-faire permissiveness for U.S. corporations. In the process, it has created a framework for oversight and accountability that is basically a null set. Corporations, no matter how big or how key to important sectors of the U.S. economy or even to U.S. defense, are indulged like a sick child at a hard-candy Christmas. They can buy or set up subsidiaries in other countries, not reached by U.S. laws. (Halliburton, the nation’s biggest contractor in Iraq and Vice President Cheney’s former and future company, has numerous foreign subsidiaries.) They can set up accounts in foreign banks not open to scrutiny by American regulatory agencies. (And the regulatory agencies themselves are under continuing attack by the White House and its allies in Congress and in the media.) Their subsidiaries can do business with foreign businesses and even with foreign governments, even with entities frowned upon in U.S. domestic politics or administration rhetoric.

U.S. military contractors and U.S. security contractors can also serve as contractors for foreign entities including foreign governments. Much business in these sectors is done, to this day, with Saudi Arabia, even though at least 15 of the 19 skyjackers on 9/11 were Saudis. (Once again: what was the real name of the hijacker called “Majed Moqed”? And why has this alias not been exposed publicly by now? What could be so secret about his identity that it needs to be kept from the public?)

Not once has the administration, even while burrowing through the wilds of the Afghan-Paki border ostensibly in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, voiced any concern about what would seem on the face of it to be potential if not actual security breaches.

Of course, this could be an uncomfortable topic for the present White House. All of the president’s brothers are engaged in international business ventures.

But the buck doesn’t stop there. This is not to disparage the work of honest people in business elsewhere, but security breaches are actually the name of the game in some sectors. One man’s poison is the ongoing juice of the “war on terror,” which has opened the floodgates, or the trough, of the biggest slush fund the world has ever seen.

Ever wonder why the White House hasn’t stopped the manufacture and sale of land mines, even knowing that those land mines provide explosives for IEDs used against U.S. troops?

Ever wonder why the White House hasn’t stopped the sale of garage door openers and remotes in Iraq and neighboring regions that tend to have a shortage of garage doors but a flourishing market for the components of IEDs?

But then, did you ever pause to wonder who sold that CLP (Cleaner Lubricant Protectant) procured by Army units including Jessica Lynch’s unit?