Nice comment was interesting information because is very different and easy to understand

Stopping bin laden from burning the poppy fields in Afghanistan was reason number two for the 9/11 hoax, number one being to take away your and my libertys, number three was to get into Iraq - or as miss teen America would say “Thee Irak”. I suggest you watch the September Clues series and 911 Octopus. Ask yourself this - what puts up more resistance - air?(for those of you confused, thats the stuff that you breath, that is all around us) or a steel structured skyscraper ? A little side note : not too long ago, i would not even entertain the idea of Tv/video fakery surrounding 9/11 , boy was i wrong.
I wish everyone here luck with their quest for truth.

Oh Yeah!

GWB is the anti-christ, has the CIA ambush innocents, controls all the illegal drug trade world-wide, the NSA gives parties for Fidel. What a bunch of lemmings! Don’t you have any critical thinking? Are you ultra-liberal-conspiracy-theorists all unthinking parrots? I see this article repeated, almost verbatim, in all the liberal media. They don’t even bother to change it. Doh! Can’t you think for yourselves? Do you have to use the nanny-media’s pablum for your sustenance? Get a life…

Colleen, paying opium farmers to not grow opium will only drive up the prices, the profits and the incentive to circumvent the law and produce opium, and distribute heroin…

But never mind that for the moment what about the question of how to get the money into the hands of the farmers? It’s very difficult to imagine that a scheme involving American taxpayer’s money being paid to farmers is going to be any more honestly administered in Afghanistan than it would be in America. As Turner in Taipei points out “the subsidies program in America is corrupt and the money never reaches those who need it most—the family farmer” - because its intercepted by agricultural corporations. In the case of Afghanistan these corporations will be a grab bag of various mafia’s, warlords, terrorists, intelligence and security organizations etc.

This brings to mind Spinoza’s comments about the various elements that drive the capitalist systems workings - big manipulative domineering capitalist business’s that drive out local competition. “This is the way the capitalist system works and it would be good if the liberals stopped lying.”

Beyond farming this is how the root causes of so much of the world’s current problems became so richly fertilized and I’m not disagreeing one bit with Spinoza about how the system works. I would however be lying if I said this is how it SHOULD work. I’d also be lying if I didn’t include the fact that government and corporate manipulation and corruption are also integral to today’s capitalist systems… like they are to the root causes of many of today’s problems.

Added to these of course is Prohibition - the attempted repeal of the law of supply and demand which is like gravity in the economic universe. FUBAR is the only way to characterize this state of affairs and it won’t surprise me in the least if the US administration does try to make water run uphill by investing in a scheme to pay opium farmers to not grow opium.

BUSH enables drugs & terrorism production

http://mosnews.com/news/2006/09/08/postattackscriticism.shtml
———————————————————————

U.S. Made Grave Mistakes After 9/11 Attacks — Russia
Created: 08.09.2006 16:26 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:26 MSK

MosNews

The United States has made serious foreign policy errors in the wake of the September 11 attacks, underestimating the drug problem in Afghanistan and allowing Iraq to become a terrorist “conveyor belt”, a top Kremlin official said this week, at a news conference ahead of the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the AFP news agency reports.

In a news conference ahead of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, President Vladimir Putin’s representative for international co-operation in combating terrorism, Anatoly Safonov, gave a downbeat assessment. Washington would have done better to concentrate on Afghanistan’s problems before intervening in Iraq, he suggested. “There was a debate in the United States itself about whether it would be better to solve the problem of Afghanistan before proceeding to a bigger arena, but a different decision was taken.”

Failure to address the drug issue in Afghanistan meant that this year, 95 percent of world heroin production was expected to come from the country, he said. “There was an artificial division of these two threats ... Our specialists understood that there can’t be a free, democratic, safe Afghanistan, even if we imagine the al-Qaeda threat was suppressed, without solving these problems.”

As for Iraq, lessons had not been learnt, Safonov said. “We’ve seen from the terrorism in Iraq that it’s an incubator. It’s a conveyer belt for cloning, growing a new generation ... a kind of co-operative for turning out terrorism. What’s worse ... the veterans of this incubator fan out to their own countries and bring the virus with them, infecting new places,” Safonov said.

His comments come amid strains in relations between Moscow and Washington over a range of issues, from Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization to links between Russian defence firms and Iran.

The US should use it’s “outstandingly efficient” growing techniques, produce vast amounts of opium and flood the market. We can sell it at a lower price, and undercut the Taliban, robbing it of it’s main source of income. Then we can get the farmers in Afghanistan to start growing corn for ethynol production so we can keep driving our SUVs.

And, for the record, the subsidies program in America is corrupt and the money never reaches those who need it most—the family farmer. Please see:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Agriculture/BG1542.cfm

And:

http://www.ewg.org/farm/

Instead most of the money goes to large agribusinesses who can afford to pay lobbyists to bend ears in Washington. This is no ‘liberal myth’ and it certainly isn’t based on an ‘ignorance of economics’. It’s based on facts.

Another point, capitalism works through competition on a level playing field that offers each competitor a fair chance, not by big capitalists driving out the small business man. If that was the case, there would be no anit-trust laws (the first which was enacted in 1890 and written by Republican Senator John Sherman) and we’d all be living in neo-fascist technocracies where the vast majority of the world’s wealth was in the hands a few…oh, wait a sec…

And, ash, in response to your comment #22276:

a) the opium trade is mainly CIA-run and they use the funds for off-the-books shenanigans that Congress has no way of monitoring. That is why it is no coincidence that when the Taliban took over, along with other no doubt overly repressive policies by our standards, the almost wiped it out. We came in; opium is back.

On what are you basing that, because it sounds awfully conspiracy theorist to me.

>>>>The way to do this is to stop giving American farmers the subsidies that keep the market price of food artificially low, so low that Afghanis, like many other farmers in the developing world, can’t compete. <<<<<

This is another liberal myth based on ignorance of economics.  The reason American prices are low has absolutely nothing to do with subsidies.  The prices are low because American production methods are outstandingly efficient and to a lesser extent the practice of DUMPING.  All capitalist businesses manipulate the price of goods to gain market dominance.  Initially the grain marketeers sell there product at or near cost, sometimes below cost, to drive out the competition from the market and then raise prices after the competition is driven out.  If you look at corn prices in Mexico you will see this behavior, the same is true of rice prices in Haiti.  The big capitalists purposely drive out local farmers.  This is the way the capitalist system works and it would be good if the liberals stopped lying.

>>>The author has it ALL wrong.  Up until we invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had HALTED opium growing and trafficing.  In fact, two months BEFORE we invaded Colin Powell presented something in the neighborhood of $30 million TO the Taliban BECAUSE of and to help their efforts in halting opium.  WE, the US, PUT THE VERY SAME DRUG LORDS BACK IN CHARGE that the Taliban had taken out.  Stop being like Bush and co and get the FACTS straight. <<<<

My memory says the amount was $43 million and the money went to aid agencies directly but was negotiated with the Taliban and was understood to be partly used to eradicate the drug trade which the Taliban did.  The Taliban was not as wooley and evil as depicted either, they had many moderates in their fold and basically did represent the people of the area.  They had very little to do with al Queda also in terms of policy.  Most of the story about the Taliban was made up by Richard Clarke

I am somewhat confused as to why you didn’t post my post.

I was not angry nor did I curse, nor did I lie, nor was it untruthful. I like your articles Robert, but when you dont post my post I wonder as to your motive for doing so. Was the Khazar history too much for those to comprehend?

Scott suggests changing our own agricultural subsidies so that farmers in Afghanistan and elsewhere could sell their non-opium crops at a high enough price to support themselves.

This is true but is a very long path to reducing the cultivation of opium poppy and other drug-producing plants.

But without trying to rationalize world agricultural trade policies we could just use funds to pay farmers who grow drug crops to survive instead of spending other vast sums ineffectively to interrupt the trade in drugs.

Thanks again Robert for such an enlightening piece. I stopped reading the LA Times after your departure.

When Coling Powell handed the Taliban a check for stopping the opium plantations, do you “really” believe that all opium farms ceased? Our inept leaders (especially “W”) were trying to get in bed (as always) with the enemy.

The increase in the opium trade is a perfect example of the ineffective U.S. policy in Afaghanistan. I ask the simple question, what have we accomplished in Afaghanistan? How much longer should our military be sitting ducks for a nation that wishes we would get the “f” out?

I guess I am just a bleeding hearted liberal. Then again, “W” did compare Bin Laden and Hussein to Hitler and that other guy. Wow! “W’s” brilliant comparison has now convinced me that I will follow this inenpt administration like the blind leading the blind to the promise land of Democracy.

Lest we forget

a) the opium trade is mainly CIA-run and they use the funds for off-the-books shenanigans that Congress has no way of monitoring. That is why it is no coincidence that when the Taliban took over, along with other no doubt overly repressive policies by our standards, the almost wiped it out. We came in; opium is back.

b) The Taliban agreed to either deliver Osama bin Laden or allow the US to strike him out, having provided the location. The US, whilst making affirmative noises, did not take them up on the offer, propogandised how unreasonable they were being, and opted for war. Good for business.

So the author here needs to do more research to prevent his otherwise intelligent work being regarded as just more media fluff, ‘full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing’.

Mike Butcher and Colleen Clark call for paying Afghani farmers money to grow food crops instead of opium.

The way to do this is to stop giving American farmers the subsidies that keep the market price of food artificially low, so low that Afghanis, like many other farmers in the developing world, can’t compete.

That would mean America would have to embrace free trade, something that’s as likely as the end of the prohibition of drugs.

On the other hand, ending prohibition would allow American farmers to grow poppies.

Food for thought?

Lest we forget so quickly, the large majority of the perpetrators of the “attack” on the World Trade Center were from SAUDI ARABIA, not Afghanistan ot Iraq or Iran or Pakistan or any other middle eastern country.

So much for the war on drugs.
==
Since US has used, and continues to use deplelted
uranium in Afghanistan, irradiating the ground water and the opium crop; so that junkies will
he shooting up radioactive heroin?
==
I know some guys that served in Vietnam, one of them my Uncle. I see many people with this attitude that drug users should suffer.The sad truth is that wars have taken many a patriotic American and turned them into drug abusers, that act of becoming an addict is the complete reverse of the common perception of addiction.

During an inspection of one of the US bases they found enough drugs hidden around the base for every soldier to get high ten times over.

I don’t know if depleted uranium gets into the poppies or not. It doesn’t really matter if the air and water are contaminated does it?
We saw plenty of Soldiers come back from Gulf 1 suffering effects from the depleted uranium.

Bremer lost some 8 billion in Iraq that surely got into terrorists hands and that kills soldiers today.
Bush wants to start a world war, all things point in that direction, he does not much care about Afghanistan, nor Iraq.

Santorum thinks we should focus on Iran while Pakistan has become the New Afghanistan and Iraq and Bush’s democratic lebanon disintegrates before our eyes. The free republicans are ecstatic and think Jesus the messiah will return and save them. They see Bush, wrongly, as some type of messiah that will save the Christians thru the death of hundreds of thousands of muslims.

The jewish also think that the messiah will appear from the ashes of war and smite their enemies. Perhaps they don’t realize that the fundies also require 2/3 of the jewish Isrealis to perish so the Christians, and only the reborn Christians, no others, go wafting off into the clouds to meet their maker.

The bush base has a superior attitude and effectively hate and pray for the destruction of the world and every one else but them. Racism runs rampant in Bush bizarro world.

Clearly our elected officials have no grip on reality and have become mired in age old prophecy and have fallen prey to prophetic brain washing at the hands of falwell rushdoony and robertson.

The fundies, in order to take over the government, took directy from the Hitler playbook and are now also talking of a thousand years of peace, just as Bush talks about a thousand lights in the sky.

A revolution, and world war looms large a decade or so down the road…for nothing,

I totally disagree with sympathizing for our troops that use dope because they are in a war zone.  Its like doing drugs on the job.  Its wrong.  But I dont sympathise much for our troops either way.  These days, one has to be a total idiot to join the US military given the huge evidence against our illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq and the forgotten and unfocused mission in Afganistan.  I think thats why the military keeps lowering enlistment standards.  As for what a solidier finds once he or she gets there, its messed up but thats the job one signed up for.  If I were in a war zone I wouldnt be getting high.  Id either be fighting for something I believe in or getting the hell out/going AWOL.  I dont think there is any shame these days in going AWOL considering the total lack of humanitarian leadership in these conflicts.  Do I sympathise with our troops for getting high on the job?  Hell no! Not while on the job.

Since US has used, and continues to use deplelted
uranium in Afghanistan, irradiating the ground water and the opium crop; so that junkies will
he shooting up radioactive heroin?

It must be hard to type when you knee keeps jerking. The CIA has been dealing drugs for years, its a great way to finance black ops and keep a chunk for all parties involved. I’ve neve seen a poor CIA operative, I wonder why that is? People in the intel community get first crack at all the stocks, the dummy companies, the guns and drugs and the money they bring. I can’t figure out why the world hates us. I can’t figure out why these things are never mentioned in the domestic press. I can’t figure out why “cia heroin” yields 1,710,00 hits on google

http://www.google.com/search?q=cia+heroin&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

If you get tired of reading about heroin, how about some cocaine for a quick pick me up?

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/blacks-targeted.html

It has been demonstrated, ad nauseum, this bunch of corrupt nazi-lovers uses fear to reign in any dissidence from within, so why not keep the dope trade going hot and heavy and oh so accessible to our troops.  The more we are dumbed down, the more subserviant we become.  We listen to the ridiculous, insulting, outageous and powerfully mendacious claptrap they now are peddling (after their ‘stay the course’ crapola got too long in the tooth to sell), comparing all opposers of their failed ‘course’, to Nazis, Commies and their appeasers who were confused and cowardly.  The M-F’n ‘Dividing Decider’ is doing his Popeil-infomercial in any venue available (& friendly), and our ball-less press quotes his putrid words without critical cross examination or historical correction.  The drugs will again hit our streets, like in the good old Iran-Contra days when we were led by our belovedly confused Saint Regan,  aided and abetted by many of today’s neo-con players.  Our befuddled buffoon now in power will be a uniter, all right! Our red and blue states will join in the opiated party for they’ll have their respective search for oblivion in common, finally giving us our ‘unity’ at last.

The author has it ALL wrong.  Up until we invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had HALTED opium growing and trafficing.  In fact, two months BEFORE we invaded Colin Powell presented something in the neighborhood of $30 million TO the Taliban BECAUSE of and to help their efforts in halting opium.  WE, the US, PUT THE VERY SAME DRUG LORDS BACK IN CHARGE that the Taliban had taken out.  Stop being like Bush and co and get the FACTS straight.

Mr. Scheer’s article was full of drug war propaganda.  For example, all the people who do not want to murder peasant farmers in Afghanistan or otherwise abuse them are not “drug fiends”, whatever that means.

Opiates such as morphine and its derivative heroin are not evil substances which destroy all those who come in contact with them.  On the contrary, they are valuable medicines which have served mankind for thousands of years. Opiates are some of the safest drugs known to mankind.  Preparations opium have been safely produced and consumed for centuries.  They belong in every medicine cabinet.

Afghan opium is NOT fueling insurgency in Western Asia.  On the contrary, it is drug Prohibition or the war on drugs that fuels violence. Just like alcohol Prohibition, the violent and criminal intervention by government into the free market has produced an equally violent underground market.

Accidental overdoses are a consequence of adulterated and improperly labeled drugs which are a result of drug illegalization just like bathtub gin was a result of alcohol illegalization. It is impossible to accidently overdose on drugs that are packaged in safe doses. A person cannot accidently eat twenty or thirty pills when he only wanted one or two anymore than he can accidently jump off a bridge.

The war on drugs is a Big Lie.  In fact, it is a war against human beings and their freedoms.  It is people, not drugs, who are being murdered, assaulted, robbed, and arrested.

Adults who refuse to be told what they may eat, drink, smoke, or otherwise ingest are not criminals anymore than those who refuse to be told what they may read, write, think, or believe.

Drug fighters and illegalizers are criminals because they kill, assault, rob, and arrest peaceful human beings.  They are also terrorists because they target civilians.

Sheer’s, Afghanistan: high on opium, not democracy, tells the story of the blind leading the blind.  While Bush boasts about his victory in democratizing Afghanistan and scurriously goes about his horrors in Iraq, one wonders if he really believes his own lies; if it could be possible that he does not understand that his actions in attacking Iraq and leaving Afghanistan to become the drug capital of the world is the most destructive thing he could have possibly done.
I am advised that ABC will be running a documentary on 9/11, written and produced by republican extremists that praises to high heaven the actions of the Bush administration during the most horrible tragedy that ever hit our beloved country and subsequently, his attack on Iraq.  I would ask that everyone who knows about this showing boycott ABC.  My morning has been spent in telephoning and e-mailing approximately 2,000 Americans, all who’ve promised to boycott ABC, for their running of a false and misleading documentary and for everything they do thereafter if they’re unwilling to pull this lie off their network.

So, Bush’s war goes on and on and on, as Sceer states, with no end in sight and with only a promise of only more death and destruction for our troops and innocent Iraqis.

I communicate with two soldies who’re stationed in Iraq.  There was a third but he was killed last year by a roadside bomb.  Permit me to tell you that the hopelessness that comes through these letters breaks my heart unbearably.  Sometimes, my bed with a pillow to sob into is the only comfort I can find.  I am told of little children burned on 80-90% of their bodies, rotting with infections for the lack of medical attention yet, still alive.  I see none of these children sent to America for the treatment that would save their lives!  I am told of gang rapes that take place daily of women and little girls by the “Islamo Fascists” as they take over any and all of Iraq they want.  Out troops are useless and hopeless in the face of this staring back at them.

Ths war is hell created on Earth by GW Bush, Inc.  No punishment would be great enough to avenge the pain snd suffering of human beings this administration is guilty of.

It is clear to me that GW went after Saddam for threats made against his father so many years ago.  I am aghast at the stupidity of our leader.  He thought he’d go right in, get his prey and maybe some oil along the way and be out and free in less than a year and a day.  In his wildest dreams he never imagined the resistance he would meet.  A Yale graduate?  What was his major, pray?  Stupidity and Ignorance?

What is the difference between Watergate and Nigergate ? The Watergate brought Nixon down while the Nigergate transferred King George dynasty to “immoral & criminal administration”.
Take off our hat !

I agree with Mike Butcher. Why don’t we spend big bucks on paying farmers - more than the Taliban or Northern Alliance or whoever?

The farmers are poor. Probably a lot of them would rather grow food crops if they could make money doing so.

Spending our money this way would probably be a lot cheaper and a lot more effective in the long run than trying to kill the endless supply of “bad guys.”

Somehow, conservatives have convinced millions of Americans that their ass-backwards approach to everything is the best solution to all our problems.

The best way to fight terrorism is to invade and crush Islamic countries.

The best way to fight poverty is to give the rich tax cuts.

The best way to improve the economy is to outsource American jobs.

The best way to improve education is to cut funding for education.

The best way to support Christian values is to preach intolerance and hate.

The best way to prevent abortion is by restricting the use of birth control pills and condoms by teens.

The best way to preserve democracy is to give the president unlimited power.

For a minute or two I thought the book Imperial Hubris was false prophecy…

Anyway, there’s a telling article about Afganistan in this TomDispatch:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=116512

From the TomDispatch article by Ann Jones:

During the last five years, the U.S. and many other donor nations pledged billions of dollars to Afghanistan, yet Afghans keep asking: “Where did the money go?” American taxpayers should be asking the same question.

70% of American aid is contingent upon the recipient spending it on American stuff, especially American-made armaments. Considering all these practices, Action Aid calculates that 86 cents of every dollar of American aid is phantom aid.

Paychecks for American “experts” under contract to USAID, for example, go directly from the Agency to their American banks without ever passing through the to-be-reconstructed country. Much aid money, the report concludes, is thrown away on “overpriced and ineffective Technical Assistance,” such as those very hot-shot American experts. And a big chunk of it is carefully “tied” to the donor nation, which means that the recipient is obliged to use the donated money to buy products from the donor country, even when—especially when—the same goods are available cheaper at home.

The Bush administration often deliberately misrepresents its aid program for domestic consumption. Last year, for example, when the President sent his wife to Kabul for a few hours of photo ops, the New York Times reported that her mission was “to promise long-term commitment from the United States to education for women and children.” Speaking in Kabul, Mrs. Bush pledged that the United States would give an additional $17.7 million to support education in Afghanistan. As it happened, that grant had previously been announced—and it was not for Afghan public education (or women and children) at all, but to establish a brand-new, private, for-profit American University of Afghanistan catering to the Afghan and international elite. (How a private university comes to be supported by public taxpayer dollars and the Army Corps of Engineers is another peculiarity of Bush aid.)

Afghans complain about the fancy restaurants where those experts, technicians, and other foreigners gather, men and women together, to drink alcohol, carry on, and plunge half-naked into swimming pools. They object to the brothels—eighty of them by 2005—that house women trafficked in to serve the “needs” of foreign men. They complain that half the capital city still lies in ruins, that many people still live in tents, that thousands can’t find jobs, that children go hungry, that schools and hospitals are overcrowded, that women in tattered burqas still beg in the streets and turn to prostitution, that children are kidnapped and sold into slavery or murdered for their kidneys or eyes. They wonder where the promised aid money went and what the puppet government can possibly do to make things better.

The opium problem can be fixed a little bit but we (Americans) do not have the guts. We simply do not have what it takes to tackle very much. We started a war in Afganistan then we abandoned it as 5 years olds hearing the ice cream truck leave their toys all over. We let go of Osama Bin Laden as if we had told his daddy how naughty he is & therefore he will get punished by someone else, certainly not us.
Americans do not focus. We don’t contemplate. We get in the SUV to drive to countless uglier than ugly malls to forgot there are things to be done. We do not roll up our sleeves to finish a project before we start another. We stuff our faces with junk food, the fatter & nastier the crap is, the better. We substitute eating & driving for thinking.
Meanwhile from the opium field there is death all the way to a teenagers arm. Well, it used to be the arm, maybe the back of the hand or behind the leg, even a foot, in my day. I guess now “they” snort, sniff, or smoke their drug. I say “they” because I am American also. This drug problem does not belong to me. It’s someone else’s horror & shame. In the war of morality there is only them not us nor I.
I think decriminalization similar to what is practiced in The Netherlands is the answer. Is it the answer? Not enough of one certainly. I read where folks in England where complaining about heroin deaths despite their system of decriminalization.
By not decriminalizing we are putting cash right into the opium trade’s coffers. Prices are higher for illegal things. The product sells so well it sells itself. We could use some the profits it generates to cure some of the problem it creates if we thought.

>  billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban.

This is probably only slightly true. See the speech I posted below.

The major drug dealers are the creeps in the Northern Alliance we put in power. Not the Taliban.

This is a must watch speech. It presents a much more nuanced view of Afghanistan and Pakistan

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14841.htm

Also William Blum’s chapter from Killing Hope on Afghanistan helps further explain Afghanistan politics.

Same old “cut and run” style, new and improved heroin flavor!

The U.S. Government should pay these farmers not to grow poppies, we must have bigger pockets then the Taliban…

Interesting article.
In a related note on this situation, I got from a former Marine, is that the soldiers stationed in Afghanistan are partaking pretty hard of the opium that is so readily available there. He claims that there are a lot of hard-core addicts serving over there, and that a lot of them are so far gone that they don’t want to come home.
We know for a fact that the soldiers in Vietnam were heavily exposed to all kinds of drugs during that war, using them to kill the boredom and other emotions they had difficulty facing. It seems that in our forgotten war in Afghanistan,  the same sort of thing may be occurring, especially since the harvest is so plentiful. Similarly, some of the bored soldiers in Iraq are apparently getting as much moonshine as they could ever want,  using it to fuel their courage to rape 14 year old girls and kill their families. I wonder why we are hearing so little about the drug and alcohol abuse going on over there in both war zones? Could it be that on some level we sympathize with them and would ourselves be seeking out some kind of powerful relief should we be stuck in the same hell hole?  Why don’t you check that one out Bob?

Afhanistan Bananastan. Maybe if we buy their smack they’ll buy our tote bags.