I completely agree with you. I've been on many projects where outsourcing ended up being a terrible idea, but anyone with a brain would be able to see that the process was screwed up from the beginning (on our side). I imagine myself in the shoes of the outsourced developer, and its easy to conclude I would have produced the same crap results given the constraints most managers put on the teams.

Code ownership and the freedom to make your own actual decision is vital for any really good developer. We can't just take that away, and then complain when the project hits the rocks.

Still, I'm going to stay away from using offshore teams in the future as its just too damn hard to get right if you have a limited budget.