- Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the
downtown of your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin
overdose, just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying:
"Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work."
-
- Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter
Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article today reporting
that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan's stunningly corrupt President
Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the world's major opium-producing
nation, has for eight years been on the CIA payroll.
-
- Okay, the article was lacking much historical perspective
(more on that later), and the dead hand of top editors was evident in the
overly cautious tone (I loved the third paragraph, which stated that "The
financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence
agency and Mr. Karzai raises significant questions about America's war
strategy, which is currently under review at the White House."
-
- Well, duh. It should be raising questions about
why we are even in Afghanistan, about who should be going to jail at the
CIA, and about how can the government explain this to the over 1000 soldiers
and Marines who have died supposedly helping to build a new Afghanistan).
-
- That said, the newspaper that helped cheerlead us into
the pointless and criminal Iraq invasion in 2003, and that prevented journalist
Risen from running his exposé of the Bush/Cheney administration's
massive warrantless National Security Agency electronic spying operation
until after the 2004 presidential election, this time gave a critically
important story full play, and even, appropriately, included a teaser in
the same front-page story about October being the most deadly month yet
for the US in Afghanistan.
-
- What the article didn't mention at all is that there
is a clear historical pattern here. During the Vietnam War, the CIA, and
its Air America airline front-company, were neck deep in the Southeast
Asian heroin trade. At the time, it was Southeast Asia, not Afghanistan,
that was the leading producer and exporter of opium, mostly to the US,
where there was a heroin epidemic....
-
- For the rest of this story, please go to:
-
- http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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