Armed and dangerous: Taliban gear up thanks to poppies...

'Authentic weapons are, of course, expensive. Now the Taliban has solved this problem by tapping into Afghanistan's - and the world's - richest cash crop, poppies. Using contacts among the warlords who control the drug trade, the Taliban are able to divert some of the money, which is then earmarked for weapons purchases.' http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GL22Df01.html

i always wondered if maybe some other market mechanism should have been left behind other than heroin :shrug: DAMN THE POPPIES!!! full speed ahead into irag :thumbsdown:

they were taking that anti-drug shit too seriously.

snip>
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed the deployment orders Monday. He said senior commanders, including Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, had recommended scaling back.

Rumsfeld said the reduction in U.S. forces in Afghanistan will mean a slight drop in the amount of normal security operations, such as road patrols. But it will not reduce the U.S. capacity to hunt for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

The changes were described earlier this month by Pentagon officials who requested anonymity because the plans were not finalized.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002695382_afghanistan21.html

assed, so their crony/contractors can go back in for the war bucks is my guess...afganistan is just not 'sexy' any more

He just remembered to inform his mother tonight that those orders have been canceled.

I smacked him upside the head for waiting days to tell me..

then I did a little happy dance!

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/28/95240.shtml

The Bush administration has decided not to destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan. President Bush, who previously linked the Afghan drug trade directly to terrorism, has now decided not to destroy the Afghan opium crop.

O-U-C-bloody-H. The fool in office, as WE already knew, chose to do nothing and openly tell the world as much.

* has no credibility and deserves less. And I know plenty who still feel * is sincere in protecting the world. :eyes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/04/05_phony.html
And *co had a chance and openly said it would NOT destroy the fields... ...when they went into Afghanistan.

Dems can't be blamed for that blunder!

The sad truth is that the US does not want to stop the drug trade in Afghanistan, because that would mean taking on the Afghan warlords, and if the US did that, we might face a wider, more intense war than we faced against the Al Qaeda. More people are willing to fight for 50 million dollars in drug money than they are for Islam, that is for sure.

If the US was truly serious about the heroin problem that finds its origin in Afghanistan, we would have destroyed the poppy crops as they grew, and paid the poppy farmers to grow other crops. But that would mean an increase in foreign aid, and foreign aid is an anathema to most Republicans.

Plenty of news sources also commit to * openly

being clearly a distress/leverage oriented 'industry' as they are preferred to bank roll routinely

"President Bush, who previously linked the Afghan drug trade directly to terrorism..."

Funny, that the Taliban had virtually wiped out poppy growing in Afghanistan, and that the production resumed when we took over.

People complain about nixon's spying, and the drugs war was just a part of nixon's spying
regime, DEA and all... It is the war that makes afgani opium worth *anything*. If private
competition were allowed, anonymous greenhouses in western nations would grow the suppies
for pharmaceutical heroin... cheaper than afganistan and more pure.

Its amazing how effective we can be at destroying africa's cotton growers with cotton
subsidies, but we can't destroy afganistan's opium growers similarly? what gives?
Are these men not economically aware of the facts in prohibition?

our days off, love the scenery = very beautiful terrain :thumbsup: and pups

and now hes turning Iraq into a Religious Fanatical Problem that will kill civil rights and be a problem by joinong with Iran...

Tell me again where this was a good idea?

suffering are sustained in the forms of broken lives & families has to take a detached, sociopath's brain to rationalize imo

Before Bush came on the scene, Afghanistan was the largest producer of fine heroin in the world--and the Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Then the Taliban went on a poppy-eradication campaign, and Bush gave them $43 million in foreign aid.

After 9/11, Bush sent the US Special Operations Command into Afghanistan to run off the Taliban.

Today, Afghanistan is once again the largest producer of fine heroin in the world--and the Taliban are firmly in command.

Which makes you wonder what the point of the $43 million, or USSOC's war on the Taliban, was.

That would at least solve a problem in one country!

to the Taliban in exchange for a "carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs" in 2000? When was that anyway, repugs? :shrug: Why should you care? It's all Clinton's fault after all, right? :rofl: Fools!

In 2001 (we still had an elected president in 2000), the Taliban embarked on a campaign of poppy-field eradication. This because at the time there was a massive oversupply of high-quality smack on the world market, and it was destroying Afghanistan's economy. Bush was stupid enough to believe that the Taliban were trying to fight the drug problem--they were, it just wasn't the drug problem Bush wanted fought--and granted Afghanistan $43 million in American foreign aid.

The carpets are related to a natural-gas pipeline Unocal wanted to build to exploit the gas fields in Turkmenistan. Pakistan and India need a lot of gas to fuel their emerging industrial base, and Turkmenistan has it...but to get it from point of production to point of consumption you need to build a pipeline--and the most direct route for said pipeline goes through Afghanistan. The Taliban were willing to allow the pipeline (rent on the right of way for the pipeline will bring Afghanistan much-needed foreign capital), but the price the Western consortium wanted to pay and the price the Taliban wanted to accept were too far apart. Hence, someone from the Bush administration told the Taliban, "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm says the Bushies started assembling their coalition to take Afghanistan in the summer of 2001.

In case you're wondering what happened after that, the Bush administration installed Unocal consultant Hamid Karzai as president of Afghanistan, and the pipeline project (at a price acceptable to the Western oil companies) was approved.