Get Your Money's Worth

The thing I like most about the "Cash For Clunkers" program is the tangible results. A boatload of cars have been sold and rebates paid to consumers who have been nudged back into the game by this chance to raise their personal miles per gallon. "Buy a car, get a check." It all makes such good sense.
Then there's those deals that don't quite compute. In 2004, the Central Intelligence Agency hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda. Several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects. This made CIA chief Leon Panetta nervous. These were "hired guns," sent out to clean up the Wild Middle East. Or not.
It's a little like giving Clint Eastwood the run of your town, then it turns out that he expects you to take care of the bad guys on your own. That would be "High Plains Drifter." But in the end of that one, "The Man With No Name" comes back in time to save the miserable citizens of Lago from the desperados threatening them. What did Blackwater do? They were hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq and were subsequently accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which seventeen civilians were killed. Okay, so maybe some of those seventeen were Al Qaeda, but apparently none of the "big names" that we might have hoped for. Other than that, Blackwater (now known as XE Services) has been busy counting their money.
To sum up: Several million dollars later and no bad guys killed. “Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.” This Monday, the Cash part of the Cash for Clunkers runs out. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the program has been "a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work." As the Bard suggested, "All's well that ends well," and some things, well they just end.