U.N. Says Opium Production Is Rising

[CShine]

MOSCOW - Worldwide opium production is increasing, driven by a sharp rise in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the United Nations said Friday in a report released in Russia, one of the prime routes for Afghan opium and heroin reaching the West. Opium poppy cultivation declined in two major producing countries, Myanmar and Laos, the 2004 World Drug Report said. But Afghanistan has more than made up for the shortfall due to a production increase and a higher yield per acre than in Southeast Asia. Afghanistan was responsible for three-quarters of the world's illegal opium supply, and for a 5 percent increase in the world supply between 2002 and 2003, the report said.

"We expect even more production in Afghanistan next year," Sandeep Chawla, chief of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said at a news conference in Vienna, Austria. "The international community faces the problems ... of reducing production, providing alternative employment for farmers, and extending the rule of law ... to allow the national government to take control."

Overall, the spread of drug abuse was slowing in contrast to the significant growth in the past half-century, the report said. It said that 185 million people — 3 percent of the global population or 4.7 percent of those aged 15-64 — had used drugs at least once in the past 12 months.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=1276&e=1&u=/ap/20040625/ap_on_re_as/un_drug_report

[truthspeaker]

1. Well, duh. We let Afghanistan revert to anarchy.

Of course this was going to happen.

You'd think I would have had better luck scoring some opium at Bonnaroo.

[Minstrel Boy]

2. Mission accomplished!

[tridim]

3. Bush's legacy..

Opium is the opiate of the masses.

[Laughing Mirror]

4. and just in time too

as the American middle class shrinks, and the masses become more massive.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Great post by Tinoire

Remind me again who was head of the CIA during Vietnam

when the CIA was packing the coffins of dead soldiers with heroin?

===
A Nation Betrayed
The following is a transcript of the video, "A NATION BETRAYED". It documents alleged CIA involvement in covert drug running activities. It was originally transcribed by Jim Burnes and has been reposted primarily by John Dinardo.

Lieutenant Colonel James 'Bo' Gritz is the most decorated Green Beret commander of the Vietnam Era. General William Westmoreland, in writing his memoirs, singled out Bo Gritz as the "American Soldier" for his exemplary courage in combat and outstanding ingenuity in recovering a highly secret black-box the Vietcong had taken from a crashed U2 spy plane. The feature films Rambo, Uncommon Valor and Missing in Action were based in part upon his real-life military experiences.


What I want to tell you very quickly is something that I feel is more heinous than the Bataan death march. Certainly it is of more concern to you as Americans than the Watergate. What I'm talking about is something we found out in Burma - May 1987. We found it out from a man named Khun Sa. He is the recognized overlord of heroin in the world.

Last year he sent 900 tons of opiates and heroin into the free world. This year it will be 1200 tons.

On video tape he said to us something that was most astounding: that US government officials have been and are now his biggest customers, and have been for the last twenty years.

We've been embracing organized crime. Now you've all looked and heard about Ollie North, about the Contras, about nobody knowing anything.

The general offered to stop the flow of opium and heroin into the free world. He was told by White House officials, "Bo, there's no one here that supports that." His reply, "What? Vice-President Bush has been appointed by president Reagan as the Number One policeman to control drug entry into the United States. How can you say there's no interest and no support when we bring back a video tape with a direct interview with a man who puts 900 tons of opium and heroin across into the free world every year and is willing to stop it?" And they said, "Bo, what can I tell you?"

"All I can say is there is no interest in doing that here."

<snip>

http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/opi007.htm

===

William Colby

This former CIA director disappeared in an apparent boating accident, and a body was later discovered (minus the life jacket Colby's friends insisted he always wore while boating) and buried promptly. John DeCamp, a lawyer from Lincoln, Nebraska, and Colby's close friend and confidant, said Colby's death was not an accident. He stated that Colby was prepared to disclose that missing P.O.W.'s were working for a dope smuggling operation orchestrated by General Colin Powell, Pentagon official Richard Armitage, and George H. W. Bush.
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATcolby.htm


Bush: Afghanistan now a vital national interest

The Global US Government Drugs Scene

"US President George W Bush has decided to waive sanctions against Afghanistan despite acknowledging its failure to tackle illegal drugs....... Of the 23 nations on the US drugs blacklist, all but Afghanistan, Haiti and Burma were removed this year on the grounds that they were meeting anti-drugs standards. But President Bush also waived anti-drugs sanctions against Haiti in view of its extreme poverty."
US drops Afghan drug sanctions
BBC Online, 25 February, 2002

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1841119.stm

"After his appointment in 1981, Armitage began working in Southeast Asia to track down reports of MIAs <'Missing In Action' soldiers> in Viet-Nam; Perot suspected him of not doing enough. Last October, Perot met with Armitage at the Pentagon and bluntly demanded that he resign. Perot's stated reason was that Armitage had written, on Pentagon stationery, a glowing character reference for a Vietnamese woman refugee, Nguyet Thi O'Rourke, who had been convicted of running a gambling operation in Virginia. Armitage later conceded that using Pentagon stationery had been 'dumb', but not illegal or improper. At the meeting, Armitage vigorously denied any implication that he had anything to do with an illicit arms or drug network, Perot then took his case to George Bush . The Vice President's office has confirmed that Perot raised 'what he considered to be evidence of wrongdoing ' by Armitage. Bush told Perot to go to the 'proper authorities.' So the billionaire called on FBI Director William Webster. Perot has also made at least one visit to the White House carrying a pile of documents. Yet he has received no support from the Reagan Administration. In fact, National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci in January called him in to ask him to stop pursuing Armitage....."
PEROT'S PRIVATE PROBES
Time Magazine, 3 May 1987

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101870504-146522,00....

===

"Michael J. Hand, a Vietnam war hero and later a CIA agent in Asia, disappeared after his founding-partner of the Australian Nugan-Hand Bank was found dead. Four Australian government investigations produced voluminous reports that do little to clear up the mystery of a financial operation said to have become a 'giant theft machine.' Some of the Iran-Contra hearing's characters came under scrutiny: Gen. Richard Secord, the CIA's Tom Clines and Ted Shackley .... That's why the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry began its work after former U.S. government officials shredded Nugan-Hand records when the bank failed seven years ago. ....The bank laundered money from the Southeast Asian drug trade. Profits bought arms to be sold to the world's trouble spots... Former chief of special operations for the U.S. Air Force, Fletcher Prouty, says it began when drugs were used to pay anti-Japanese tribesmen in World war II. Out of this sprang a drug trade that then became the means by which U.S. run guerrillas fought the secret wars of Indochina. This drug trade, he states, was the reason for starting the Nugan Hand Bank and 'Michael Hand worked out of my office before going to Indochina'....The men who perfected the guns-for-dope traffic moved to the Middle East as experts in the sale of sophisticated arms, protected by officials at the top in the Pentagon and CIA. Richard Armitage, now the key Pentagon official in counter-terror and covert operations is named consistently by investigators as the man who helped the drug warlords market their crops. Gen. Khun Sa, who governs the Shan territory of Upper Burma with an army that dominates the infamous Golden Triangle, the world's biggest single source of dope, testified recently that U.S. officials facilitated his business running funds through the Australian bank with Armitage's help.... Daily News Digest reports, 'There is an enormous amount of coroborative material being sent to our office nearly every day. It supports the conclusion that a formal or informal organization of high CIA and military officers, some former, some present, exists which has for decades been a major, if not the major importer of heroin and cocaine into the U.S.' The most prominent name recurring in this connection is Vice President George Bush. While he was CIA director, much of these activities blossomed, but more serious charges are being made by former intelligence officers who believe passionately in the need for a powerful secret intelligence capability but who fear that their institutions have been corrupted by a few self-proclaimed patriots."
BANK OF INTRIGUE
Toronto Sun, 13 August 1987

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATcolby.htm

More here: http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATcolby.htm

============

Halliburton Corporation's Brown and Root is one of the major components of THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE


http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html

===============

Wednesday, November 19, 2003 www.kpfa.org/cgi-bin/gen-mpegurl.m3u?server=209.81.10.18&port=80&mount... |Listen> D\'load
Special Archive Edition of Flashpoints: Program from the Pacifica Archives: Contras/Cocaine/CIA. A look back on a 'conspiracy theory' that was unfortunately all too true during the Reagan/Bush years.

For nearly four decades US Government Agencies, most notably the CIA have collaborated with major narco traffickers in pursuit of certain covert operations that could not be funded through more traditional means.

During the late 60's, the early 70's and during the height of Vietnam War, there were troubling revelations about the relationship between the CIA and Golden Triangle traffickers. US narcotics enforcement agents were shocked to learn about narcotics rings that were for instance importing heroin in the coffins of dead GIs. Typically US Government Agencies constructed a marriage of convenience with traffickers. Starting with an interview with Alfred McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin. who states that the attempts at interdiction only strengthens a global interlocking trafficking network resulting always in a steady increase of both supply and demand.

This global expansion of drug trafficking steadly grew through the 1970's. In the early 1980's with Ronald Reagan presiding over this country, his wife Nancy began the second official drug campaign with her "Just Say NO" campaign. While Nancy was fighting the evils of drugs, her husband and his government was enlisting covert operators like Oliver North who piggybacked the Contra Operation on narcotic operations by the Columbian Cartel.

Iran Contragate, covered in depth by KPFA and Pacifica throughout the hearings.
Secret Covert Operations - Plausible Deniability - Presidential Disassociation . CIA supplying the pipeline for the LA cocaine and crack epidemic and the San Jose Meccury News reporter Gary Webb . Ref: Dark Alliance, by Gary Webb

http://www.flashpoints.net/archive/archive-2003-11-19.html

Plenty more here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=CIA+Vietnam...

And then... people want us to vilify Independents who say this system must change & embrace the people who voted to empower 2 men as evil as Reagan and Bush? Sorry if I cannot vilify those who want change & sorry if I refuse to embrace unrepentant voters who supported Reagan & Bush and now propose to dictate their "wisdom" on the Democratic party.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=494208