roserum wrote:Jason wrote:FYI - There is no war on drugs....just a war on the government's competition!
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=12 ... =351020403NATO has rejected an appeal made by Russia for eradication of opium fields in Afghanistan, arguing that the sole source of income in the region cannot be removed.
Addressing a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council on Wednesday, head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency (FSKN) Victor Ivanov said "Afghan opiates led to the death of 1 million people by overdose in the last 10 years, and that is United Nations data. Is that not a threat to world peace and security?"
Meanwhile, NATO spokesman James Appathurai voiced understanding for Russian concerns, given the country's estimated 200,000 heroin and morphine addicts and the tens of thousands dying each year as a result of their addiction.
However, he went on to say that the Afghan drug problem had to be handled carefully in an effort to avoid alienating local residents.
"We cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income for people who live in the second poorest country in the world without being able to provide them an alternative. That is simply not possible," the NATO official explained.
According to statistics provided by Ivanov, Russia was the single largest consumer of heroin in 2008. Moscow blames NATO for the surge in heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to Russia.
The production of opium in Afghanistan has skyrocketing since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.
Afghanistan provides roughly 95% of the world's heroin and Columbia provides roughly 85% of the world's cocaine. Both are controlled directly by the US and specifically the CIA. Estimated at $500 billion a year industry. We have half a million troops and private contractors in Afghanistan and we are building 7 new military bases in Columbia.
CIA drug trafficking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking
The CIA's Drug-Trafficking Activities
http://www.serendipity.li/cia.html
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/11 ... istan.htmlARMITAGE A MAJOR PLAYER
But the real operator in Afghanistan was Richard Armitage, a man whose legend includes being the biggest heroin trafficker in Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War; director of the State Department’s Foreign Narcotics Control Office (a front for CIA drug dealing); head of the Far East Company (used to funnel drug money out of the Golden Triangle); a close liaison with Oliver North during the Iran-Contra cocaine-for-guns scandal; a primary Pentagon official in the terror and covert ops field under George Bush the Elder; one of the original signatories of the infamous PNAC document; and the man who helped CIA Director William Casey run weapons to the mujahideen during their war against the Soviet Union. Armitage was also stationed in Iran during the mid-1970s right before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the shah. Armitage may well be the greatest covert operator in U.S. history.
On Sept. 10, 2001, Armitage met with the UK’s national security advisor, Sir David Manning. Was Armitage “passing on specific intelligence information about the impending terrorist attacks”? The scenario is plausible because one day later—on 9-11—Dick Cheney directly called for Armitage’s presence down in his bunker. Immediately after WTC 2 was struck, Armitage told BBC Radio, “I was told to go to the operations center [where] I spent the rest of the day in the ops center with the vice president.”
These two share a long history together. Not only was Armitage employed by Cheney’s former company Halliburton (via Brown & Root), he was also a deputy when Cheney was secretary of defense under Bush the Elder. More importantly, Cheney and Armitage had joint business and consulting interests in the Central Asian pipeline which had been contracted by Unocal. The only problem standing between them and the Caspian Sea’s vast energy reserves was the Taliban.
Since the 1980s, Armitage amassed a huge roster of allies in Pakistan’s ISI. He was also one of the “Vulcans”—along with Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Rabbi Dov Zakheim—who coordinated Bush’s geo-strategic foreign policy initiatives. Then, after 9-11, he negotiated with the Pakistanis prior to our invasion of Afghanistan, while also becoming Bush’s deputy secretary of state stationed in Afghanistan.
Our “enemy,” or course, was the Taliban “terrorists.” But George Tenet, Colin Powell, Porter Goss, and Armitage had developed a close relationship with Pakistan’s military head of the ISI—General Mahmoud Ahmad— who was cited in a Sept. 2001 FBI report as “supporting and financing the alleged 9-11 terrorists, as well as having links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
The line between friend and foe gets even murkier. Afghan President Hamid Karzai not only collaborated with the Taliban, but he was also on Unocal’s payroll in the mid-1990s. He is also described by Saudi Arabia’s Al-Watan newspaper as being “a Central Intelligence Agency covert operator since the 1980s that collaborated with the CIA in funding U.S. aid to the Taliban.”
Capturing a new, abundant source for heroin was an integral part of the U.S. “war on terror.” Hamid Karzai is a puppet ruler of the CIA; Afghanistan is a full-fledged narco-state; and the poppies that flourish there have yet to be eradicated, as was proven in 2003 when the Bush administration refused to destroy the crops, despite having the chance to do so. Major drug dealers are rarely arrested, smugglers enjoy carte blanche immunity, and Nushin Arbabzadah, writing for The Guardian, theorized that “U.S. Army planes leave Afghanistan carrying coffins empty of bodies, but filled with drugs.” Is that why the military protested so vehemently when reporters tried to photograph returning caskets?
Colonel Bo Gritz can tell you loads of stories about Armitage....and blocking/destruction of efforts to get POWs out....along with first hand evidence of heroin involvement with General Khun Sa....
CIA: aka. Contraband Import Agency
http://www.bcrevolution.ca/cia_druglords.htm
The Spoils of War: Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO404A.html
NY Times: Afghan Opium Kingpin On CIA Payroll
But exposé serves as little more than a whitewash because it fails to mention decades-long U.S. agenda to support lucrative Golden Crescent drug trade.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ny-times-af ... yroll.html
January 2001 Issue #43:"A People's History of the CIA: The Subversion of Democracy from Australia to Zaire"
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/i ... ssue43.htm
FYI - Articles available from the Table of Contents drop down list at the link above....