Pace says Colombia model for Afghanistan (OMFG)!!!

[Say_What]

Please, say it ain't so... One failed war on drugs is enough.

Wood, the US ambassador to Colombia the largest cocaine producer on the planet, was just appointed by El Mono Bush to be ambassador to Afghanistan the planet's largest heroin producer! You gotta wonder about that one. Is he gonna manage the heroin trade for the CIA's cash cow?

It's easy to see how this will play out... the USSA will give Karzai more money to get rid of the poppies, but just like Colombia, heroin production will increase. Your tax dollars at work. :crazy:

<clips>

BOGOTA, Colombia - The United States' top military official said Friday that American-backed anti-drug and counterinsurgent operations in Colombia — the world's largest producer of cocaine — could serve as a template for Afghan efforts to fight drug production.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Colombia's campaign to "rid certain areas of terrorists," followed by relief and jobs programs for the poor, was a "good model for (Afghan) President Hamid Karzai to consider as he looks at how to reduce the amount of drug trafficking in his country."

Afghanistan has been plagued by skyrocketing heroin production. But critics say it would be a mistake for the country to duplicate Colombia's model, which they say has been ineffective.

Pace's comments, at the end of a two-day visit, were made in the presence of William Wood, who on Thursday was nominated by the White House to become its next ambassador in Afghanistan. Wood has served as U.S. ambassador to Bogota since 2003.

Pace also thanked the government of President Alvaro Uribe — Washington's staunchest ally in Latin America — for the way "he has reached out to Karzai and his government to provide experience and teams of experts" in combatting drugs.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070120/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_afghan_drugs_1

[Judi Lynn]

1. Isn't this bizarre? We just stumble around in the dark, wondering what it all means!

Whatever it is, it's not all that noble, is it? Sure would be great seeing some Democrats running things for a change.



Looks like Alvaro's going to have to skootch over to make room for another puppet.

[Porcupine]

2. New day, same old death squads.

These idiots tried this tactic by sending Negroponte to Iraq to get the Shia to use death squad tactics against the Sunnis. That worked great didn't it?

Just to be clear; they have no intention of slowing the flow of drugs from Afghanistan. It's the only source of income the Afghans have as well as being fuel for the prison-industrial complex. Has a republican EVER met a prison they didn't like? Shit even Raygun was more interested in the SS than the victims of Aushwitz.

Total ignorance of local cultures and customs seems to be the modus oporandi for the GOP. That and promoting drug trade. The majority of my adult life I have suffered rethuglicans in the White House. Each year they bitch and moan about the war on drugs and each year serious drugs remain freely available while they pack people into prisons.

This is going to be a disaster.

[Say_What]

From DemocracyNow in early December

.... Afghanistan Heroin Blamed for Rising Addiction, Overdose
In California, an influx of high-potent heroin from Afghanistan is being blamed for an increase in addiction and overdoses in Los Angeles. Heroin-related deaths have increased 75% in the past three years. Over nearly the same period, the share of Afghanistan heroin on the US market has doubled to 14%. Thousands of Afghan farmers were forced to turn poppy production following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. A spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff’s told the Los Angeles Times heroin from Afghanistan is the single biggest rising threat in the fight against narcotics.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/27/1644237

[struggle4progress]

3. Reading this on the theory that the Administration's lackeys are fluent in New Speak,

so that whatever they say should be turned upside down, remembering the long history of CIA involvement in drug-smuggling, noting that King George may be nervous about the possibility that Congress could eventually cut off funding for George's Excellent Adventure, recalling how Reagan set out to fund his little war independently, and keeping in mind the the large influx of Reagan-era Iran-Contra thugs into the Administration in its earliest days -- I am inclined to suspect King George is investigating whether the international blackmarket in opiates and cocaine could help arm his mercenaries ...

[Say_What]

4. In Afghanistan, heroin trade soars despite U.S. aid

<clips>

The suspicious whirring of a motor came from somewhere in the dark skies above the river separating Northern Afghanistan from Tajikistan. Tajik border guards say they shouted warnings and then opened fire. What fell out of the sky was a motorized parachute carrying 18 kilograms of heroin.

It was a small drop in a mighty flood of Afghan heroin that is reshaping the world drug market. Once best known for opium, the active ingredient in heroin, Afghanistan has been working its way up the production ladder. Now it's the world's largest producer and exporter of heroin. Clandestine labs churn out so much product that the average heroin price in Western Europe tumbled to $75 a gram from $251 in 1990, adjusted for inflation, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

In Hamburg, Germany, a single hypodermic shot of Afghan heroin goes for just three euros, or about one-third the price a decade ago. "Even 13-year-old children have enough money to get into serious trouble," says Mathias Engelmann, a police detective in nearby Schacht-Audorf.

The business is also spreading disease and addiction in Central Asia and Russia, where traffickers have ramped up a smuggling route to the heart of Europe. Roughly a third of Afghanistan's drug exports go through this so-called northern route, supplementing the more-established routes through Iran and Pakistan.

In Afghanistan itself, the heroin trade jeopardizes the nation's fragile democracy, which is struggling to consolidate since U.S.-led forces ousted the extremist Taliban and their al Qaeda allies in 2001. The drug industry dwarfs honest business activity. In 2005, Afghanistan earned $2.7 billion from opium exports, which amounts to 52 percent of the country's gross domestic product of $5.2 billion, according to UNODC estimates. "You probably can't build democracy in a country where narcotics are such a large part of the economy," says John Carnevale, a former senior counternarcotics official in the first Bush administration and in the Clinton administration.

The heroin business has blossomed despite the continued presence of thousands of U.S. and European troops. Some Afghan officials have argued that foreign soldiers should take a direct role in combatting traffickers. But Western commanders have resisted, arguing that they don't have the resources to broaden their mission. And they worry about alienating local civilians. "Our primary mission is a combat mission," says Col. Jim Yonts, a spokesman for the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. "We stay focused on our role of defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06018/640103.stm

[Porcupine]

8. Remember when Afghanis were content to make hashish?

Way back in the Carter days before cocaine was king in america potent hashish made it's way from Afghanistan and Lebanon. This stuff was a reasonably priced, compact and affordable way to blow your mind.

Now mysteriously all the formerly hash growing regions of the world switched to selling us heroin just about the time Ronald Reagan was sending the CIA into these areas to ramp up the "War on Drugs." We are all too aware of what the results of that war has been...

Pot, hashish and hallucinogens are now expensive or unavailable. They were also largely harmless and nonaddictive. Cocaine, Heroin and Methamphetamine are now available everywhere and mysteriously cheap. Our prisons are crammed with people trapped in the drug war with absolutely no effect on availability of the most dangerous drugs.

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. Reagan's War on Drugs

was actually a War on the Ghetto.

I worked in Miami in the 80's and part of my job was to do home visits in places like Overtown and Liberty City.

Up until 1985, pot was the drug of choice. Then Reagan used the Coast Guard to go after the freighters that would sit offshore waiting to unload their cargo onto the smaller speed boats. They were an easy target. The result was that the dealers switched to cocaine because it was smaller and lighter and all you need is a guy with a suitcase. Almost overnight everything changed. You couldn't find a joint but this new thing 'crack' was suddenly everywhere. The price of coke crashed and the price of the pot went sky high. It was a win-win for a lot of people, except of course the poor and oppressed.

[kineneb]

13. ah, yes, the R.s' "Southern Strategy" ramped up a notch

all this started with the infamous "Southern Strategy" back in the Nixon days... nothing new, move along, move along...

[High Plains]

12. They're still growing good hash in Afghanistan.

You can buy a pencil-sized and -shaped chunk for about 50 cents in Kabul. I was there for three weeks and still had half of it left when I left.

You can also buy a softball-sized chunk of opium for about $100.

[0rganism]

5. Wow, there are so very many things WRONG with this statement, it's hard to know where to start

Jeezus, could Pace have picked a less-appealing role model? The list is pretty short.

Fuckin' idiots over there. Yeah let's just run it all like Colombia, with its murderous death squads and refugees by the millions, that'll go over real well.

But the reality of the situation is, niether the US military nor Hamid Kharzai is calling the shots there anymore. The way things are going now, Mr. Kharzai will be lucky to escape with his life when the Taliban make their move on Kabul.

[madrchsod]

6. heroin comes to the usa while coke goes to europe

interesting....i wonder why the guy that was in columbia is now going to afghanistan....

[LynnTheDem]

7. bush; "Afghanistan is a role model for Iraq"

Ya really truly just can't make this insane shit up.

Ya really can't.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Uribe, Morales, Chavez exchange barbs at Mercosur summit

Uribe, Morales, Chavez exchange barbs at Mercosur summit

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Friday January 19, 2007

Rio de Janeiro- The presidents of Bolivia, Colombia and
Venezuela exchanged barbs Friday in the 32nd summit of the Mercosur
trade alliance in Rio de Janeiro, expressing underlying tensions in
the region.

Bolivian President Evo Morales got the ball rolling. He mentioned
"sovereign" and "anti-imperialist" countries like Cuba, noting that
they can live with dignity and autonomy.

Later, left-wing populist Morales quoted figures from the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) which
according to him show that Colombia, where the United States poured
millions of dollars with the "pretext" of fighting drug traffic,
suffers trade and fiscal deficits.

Conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe found Morales'
remarks "surprising."
(snip/...)

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Uribe_Morales_Chavez_exchange_barbs_01192007.html

[bahrbearian]

11. Our Military Likes being the Drug Mule

[frylock]

14. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia - Alfred W. McCoy

required reading when the topic of opium production in Central Asia is discussed.

http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/default.htm

Alfred W. McCoy is a historian and current Professor of History in the "Center for Southeast Asian Studies", at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and his PhD in Southeastern Asian history from Yale University.

McCoy primarily researches and writes about Philippines history and on the Golden Triangle drug trades of opium and heroin; his The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia was a landmark work documenting the interactions between the CIA and drug cartels in Southeast Asia.

McCoy's principal thesis is that, following the effective suppression of the heroin trade in America during World War II and the subsequent decision to stamp out opium growing by Turkey -- which had been one of the main sources of raw opium -- organized crime organizations in America and Europe collaborated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to establish new centers of opium production, heroin refining and distribution in Southeast Asia, and that their efforts were greatly facilitated by the Central Intelligence Agency and the unstable political situation created by the ongoing Vietnam War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_W._McCoy