U.S Government is funding Al Qaeda and even the Taliban's comeback in Afghanistan
By Demophilus Posted in Archived — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
As the worlds leading proponent of the 132 old failed War on Drugs* our government is indirectly funding the Taliban as well as it's evil twin Al-Qaeda. The U.S.led failed War on Drugs is an irresponsible disaster that not only put's our troops in harms way by funding the enemy but it also endangers the entire nation. This 132 year old insane policy seems to be the only thing that Republicans and Democrats have ever stood shoulder to shoulder on.
Taliban netting millions from poppies
http://www.mercurynews.com/nationworld/ci_5634657
"Officials say the militia nets tens of millions by forcing farmers to plant poppies and taxing the harvest, driving the country's skyrocketing opium production to fund the fight against what they consider an even greater evil—U.S. and NATO troops."
"Afghanistan's opium crop grew 59 percent in 2006 to 407,000 acres, yielding a record crop of 6,100 tons, enough to make 610 tons of heroin—90 percent of the world's supply, according to the U.N. Western and Afghan officials say they expect a similar crop this year."
"The street value of the heroin was estimated at $3.5 billion, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime."
Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's deputy minister for counter-narcotics estimates that the Taliban takes in $140 million each year.
"The Taliban uses the money to buy weapons and pay soldiers, and as one Western official put it: "You can buy quite a bit of insurgency for $10 million."
Corruption also plays it's regular large role as usual when dealing with the failed War on Drugs anywhere on the planet.
"Corrupt government officials, both low-level police and high-level leaders, also protect the drug trade in exchange for bribes, a recent U.N. report found."
"The police definitely have a hand in the poppies. Those two police vehicles near the compound help with the drug smuggling and run supplies for the Taliban"
Perhaps the most shocking example of indirectly funding terrorism by giving aid to so called Drug War allies came in May of 2001 (less than 4 months before 9-11) when our government stupidly sent 43 million of our hard earned tax dollars to Mullah Omar and his vicious Taliban gang because they claimed to have banned opium.
How Washington Funded the Taliban
http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-02-02.html
"The United States has made common cause with an assortment of dubious regimes around the world to wage the war on drugs. Perhaps the most shocking example was Washington's decision in May 2001 to financially reward Afghanistan's infamous Taliban government for its edict ordering a halt to the cultivation of opium poppies."
Our government officials actually praised the Taliban!!
"In mid-May, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a $43 million grant to Afghanistan in addition to the humanitarian aid the United States had long been providing to agencies assisting Afghan refugees."
The 43 million dollars was a reward for the Talibans anti-drug efforts.
What makes this story even more sickening is that our government was fooled by the Taliban into thinking that they had ended the poppy trade.(HEROIN)
"To make matters worse, U.S. officials were naive to take the Taliban edict at face value. The much-touted crackdown on opium poppy cultivation appears to have been little more than an illusion. Despite U.S. and UN reports that the Taliban had virtually wiped out the poppy crop in 2000-2001, authorities in neighboring Tajikistan reported that the amounts coming across the border were actually increasing. In reality, the Taliban gave its order to halt cultivation merely to drive up the price of opium the regime had already stockpiled."
"Washington's approach came to an especially calamitous end in September 2001 when the Taliban regime was linked to bin Laden's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed some 3,000 people. Moreover, evidence quickly emerged that the Taliban all along had been collecting millions of dollars in profits from the illicit drug trade, with much of that money going into the coffers of the terrorists. Rarely is there such graphic evidence of the bankruptcy of U.S. drug policy."
Believe or it or not it even get's more frightening.
Drug money sustains Al Qaeda
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031229-120302-2009r.htm
"Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network has become deeply involved in international drug trafficking, using the money to buy arms and, possibly, radioactive material for use in a so-called "dirty" nuclear bomb, senior U.S. officials say."
"Bin Laden does not mind trafficking in drugs, even though it's against the teaching of Islam, because it's being used to kill Westerners," said a defense official who asked not to be named."
They obviously deal drugs in order to finance their JIHAD against us.
"If you're going to get terrorism under control, we've got to stop their livelihood, which is money," said the defense official. "Without money, they die."
"The methods by which terrorists and other underworld actors move drugs are the same routes that are used to move weapons, terrorists and, potentially, [weapons of mass destruction].
Al Qaeda also takes the drugs as payment and uses them to buy arms.
"There are unconfirmed intelligence reports that al Qaeda has bought radioactive material for use in a "dirty bomb."
"The United States does know, however, that smugglers are trafficking in radioactive substances. Police in Tbilisi, Georgia, arrested a man carrying boxes labeled "Danger: Radiation." Inside were two capsules of the radioactive metals strontium and cesium. A third vial contained a substance used to make the chemical weapon mustard gas."
Why does our government continue to waste 69 Billion dollars a year on the failed War on Drugs? Why does our government keep insisting on this disastrous policy that is so obviously much more dangerous to us than drugs could ever possibly be.
The first drug law in this country was enacted by the city of San Francisco in 1875* when it banned Opium smoking. This is the same exact product(Opium, morphine,and Heroin)extracted from the exact same flower(poppies)that today 132 years later in the year 2007 the Taliban and their terrorist buddies Al Queda use to finance their deadly Jihad against us.
State's war on drugs a 100-year-old bust
Rate of addiction has doubled since crackdown on use
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/04/ING44OD4AU1....
*"In 1875, San Francisco passed the nation's first anti-drug law, the Opium Den Ordinance, aimed specifically at Chinese opium smoking."
If the 132 year old failed ban on a flower(Poppy)and it's derivatives the Opiates(Heroin,Morphine,& Opium)was ever going to be successful it would have been well before now. We have never altered the way in which we deal with our nations drug problem. We have only used the exact same approach that was used back in 1875 and Law enforcement, Punishment, and prohibition to drive the price up just hasn't worked even worse I doubt that it ever stopped one single user since drugs are widely available in our nations prisons and jails. Our government has only done the same exact thing over and over again since 1875.(only 10 years after the Civil War ended.)
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. ”
-Benjamin Franklin
Maybe our government should start using some of that 69 Billion wasted tax payers dollars that they flush down the toilet each and every year to simply buy up the Heroin(Poppy) crops directly from the growers themselves they wouldn't have to spend that much since the street value is only 3.5 billion
heck they could even get a discount.Furthermore they could even buy up the Cocaine crops from South America while they are at it then the government would even have enough money left over to get the fence built on the Mexican with billions to spare.
However the best bet to stop funding the terrorists is to legalize all of the so called illegal drugs since the government obviously has failed quite miserably from stopping the people who are using illegal drugs anyway.
“I think the Drug War has been arguably the single most devastating, dysfunctional, harmful social policy since slavery.”
—Retired Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)
or the financing of it.As far as there being a black market it would disappear over night if drugs were made cheap and legal.
It's cheaper to manufacture drugs than it is to manufacture alcohol any old redneck moonshiner could tell you that.
meth does to a person? It totally destroys people and many are hooked after the first time they try it. Do you want one of your family members to try legal meth. It's made in the back woods of this country everyday and has nothing to do with jihad. It has everthing to do with crime.
This is their own statistics only a fool would want to allocate 69 billion dollars a year for a 1% success rate thats crazy and I appreciate my tax money being wasted on that size a failure. What if the FBI only solved less than 1% of it's murder cases or any other violent crimes it would be disbanded thats exactly what would happen.
"In 2005, the DEA seized a reported $1.4 billion in drug trade related assets and $477 million worth of drugs. However, according to the White House's Office of Drug Control Policy, the total value of all of the drugs sold in the US is as much as $64 billion a year making the DEA's efforts to intercept the flow of drugs into and within the US less than 1% effective."
http://www.dea.gov/pubs/pressrel/pr122805.html
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/drugfact/american_users...
the failed drug war to do harm to our nation.
Make Al Quaida fund your Social Security and Medicare!
"...and each wasted evening is
a gross violation against the
natural course of your only life;"
-Charles Buckowski
We should spend more resources finding & prosecuting those who sell/give hard drugs, like cocaine and heroin, to minors. And we should punish them even more severely than we do now. We might also increase the penalties for driving under the influence of such drugs, since that directly risks harm to others. We should use education, family guidance, social pressure, and workplace drug testing to deter and diminish the use of such drugs.
But adults who continue to use such drugs should be able to buy them legally from American companies. The underlying coca and poppy crops might also be grown in America as well.
The Taliban would lose BILLIONS of dollars every year. So would violent gangs and paramilitaries in Colombia and Mexico. The piles of money that currently enrich these enemies would instead go to:
(1) American farmers who choose to grow the underlying crops, and the companies that manufacture the machinery & supplies the farmers will need for the increased acreage;
(2) American companies that test, process, package, and distribute the products;
(3) American retailers who choose to sell the products;
(4) the federal, state, and local governments, which will collect excise and sales taxes.
We are so blindly devoted to the "drug war" that we won't step back and re-think even though it provides the Taliban's main source of income.
under 18 a mandatory 10 year sentence someone who knowingly sold drugs to person between the ages of 18-20 should get 5 years. I would allow people 21 and up to buy all drugs legally . Were not stopping them anyway the way I look at there is a ceratin amount of people who are hell bent on killing themselves so they should legally be able to just like people who get to legally kill themselves from drinking to much,smoking cigarettes,and also the 500,000 a year dying of obesity from visiting fast food establishments.I have read that only 2500 die each year from all of the illegal drugs combined.
under 18 a mandatory 10 year sentence someone who knowingly sold drugs to person between the ages of 18-20 should get 5 years. I would allow people 21 and up to buy all drugs legally . Were not stopping them anyway the way I look at there is a ceratin amount of people who are hell bent on killing themselves so they should legally be able to just like people who get to legally kill themselves from drinking to much,smoking cigarettes,and also the 500,000 a year dying of obesity from visiting fast food establishments.I have read that only 2500 die each year from all of the illegal drugs combined.
again I apologize.
Just because it's not 100% effective we should just pack up and go home?
Although legalizing would have the free-market effect of knocking the floor out of the drug market, causing it to crash. sounds like a good idea...........
There are some areas of public safetey that government should fight for. Preventing stoners is one of them. Thus, while I oppose taxing something out of existence, I've no qualms about people agreeing to just ban something if it's a health risk, i.e. asbestos and/or smoking.
There will always be a black market.
"Any love letter is incomplete without a Ronald Reagan quote"
--my sophomore year roommate