Kerry the drug warrior with Beers by his side

[Virgil]

From http://www.counterpunch.org/donahue01262004.html

The Toxic Career of Rand Beers
Kerry's Drug War Zealot
By SEAN DONAHUE

When Rand Beers quit his job as counter-terrorism advisor to President Bush, and signed up with John Kerry's presidential campaign, he quickly became a hero to Democratic Party loyalists and the "Anybody but Bush" crowd. But Beers, who has become Kerry's top national security advisor and would likely serve as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State in a Kerry administration, has a dark history. Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and was one of the chief architects of and apologists for the United States' cruel policies in Colombia.

Beers was most closely associated with the disastrous aerial crop fumigation program the U.S. introduced in southern Colombia. The State Department hired DynCorp, a private military contractor, to fly crop dusters at high altitudes over the rainforests of southern Colombia, spraying a chemical cocktail that includes a stronger version of Monsanto's popular and controversial herbicide, Round-Up, over suspected coca fields. Beers was the public face of the fumigation program, defending and advocating for it in Congressional hearings and in the media.

Touted as a way of stopping cocaine from entering the U.S., the fumigation program targets the poorest people with the least involvement in international drug trafficking--the coca growers--while leaving the cocaine processors and exporters, who make the real profits in the drug trade, completely untouched. In a good year, a farmer planting 5 acres of coca can bring in $4,000. Once that coca is processed into cocaine and brought to the U.S. it has a street value of close to $800,000. During a visit to Putumayo, the main coca growing area in southern Colombia in 2001, a parish priest told me "We look on in great pain when we see how the farmers are trampled on like cockroaches while the big traffickers walk the streets of New York and L.A."

The processing and export of cocaine are largely controlled by wealthy landowners and the right-wing paramilitaries that support them, while coca growers are "taxed" by the Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC.) The paramilitaries are technically considered terrorists by the U.S., but play a significant role in protecting U.S. economic interests by using massacres to clear off land for oil development, logging, hydro-electric dams, and cattle ranching, and by assassinating union organizers, indigenous leaders, and other critics of the political and economic order in Colombia, while the FARC keeps attacking oil pipelines and kidnapping wealthy people--and so the FARC is defined as a "narco-terrorist group," and U.S. policy is focused on weakening the FARC. Fumigating coca crops indirectly cuts into FARC revenues, and so the program is sold to the public as part of both the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Beers played a central role in creating the myth of the "narco-terrorist" which has been used to justify both the fumigations and continued U.S. military aid to Colombia.
<snipped>

Kerry is just another plutocratic representative. He could care less about people as he has been in the Senate while the US imposes a civil war on Colombia that killed 35,000 "people" last year. This is a great article in that it shows they are not about stopping cocaine smuggling. They are about getting the peasants land. It is all lies and something that is silenced on conglomerate news. The fifth paragraph contains this line -"The truly difficult materials for cocaine producers to procure are the chemicals used to process coca into cocaine. But the U.S. has made only minimal efforts to regulate the export of these chemicals."

Say no to Kerry and his henchman Beers. He might not be a Neocon, but he is not for democracy. He is for plutocratic rule.

"If you can say Constitution, you can say Kucinich!"

[barbaraann]

1. Wasn't Skull and Bones founded with drug (opium) money?

And don't they still exploit the drug trade/War on Drugs for profit?

[mopinko]

2. sorry john kerry is part of the problem

he may be better than bush, but he is part of the problem.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

3. What exactly is it that Kerry did that you object to?

[Virgil]

5. You need to read the article

Kerry is just another person for plutocratic rule in one of the two divisions of America's one party system. He has sat in Washington and raged on with the failure, injustices, corruption, and disinformation of the drug wars.

If he knows so much about how to make America a better place, then why has he not spoken out before as the treasury was raided, our inalienable rights ignored and laughed at, the country led an illegal war of aggression against Iraq.

Kerry is all about Kerry and preserving the Corporate States of America.


From http://www.onlinepot.org/ -

The Drug Warrior's Pledge:

"I Pledge Allegiance to the Drug War of the United States of America, And to the Hypocrisy for Which It Stands, One Notion, Under Czar, Indefensible, With Incarceration and Injustice for All." - Thomas Paine

[Feanorcurufinwe]

7. I read it - Kerry isn't accused of doing anything, it's just a hit piece.

Or do you read it differently?

What exactly is it that Kerry did that you object to?

[blm]

4. Except Kerry is FOR decriminalizing pot and legalizing

medical marijuana.

He has always gone after the hard drug trade that FUNDS TERRORISM and promoted by governments like the US through covert actions.

Ever hear of the CIA drugrunning? That was Kerry who uncovered it.

Ever hear how Poppy Bush got his nickname?

You are FOR the covert wars funded by drugs?

btw...Kerry recieved an A- from the pot groups. Kucinich got an A+.

[Virgil]

8. Bull crap

Oil funds terrorism. Prohibition drives up prices but the CIA can track who gets the money. It is not the peasants that this article talks about. Screw Kerry.

I am quite familiar with Kerry's grade. I am very familiar with the Iran-Contra commission that he chaired where he saw the direct involvement of the USG of dealing in cocaine to get money to buy arms from the American military industrial complex.

If Kerry is for Medical Marijuana why has he not decried the vicious and malicious ways the federal government has warped the commerce clause to skirt the 10th amendment in raiding the compassion clubs in California. Why has he not denounced the false and bogus position that cannabis is a Schedule 1 Narcotic?

I read about the drug wars and I know how Kerry whitewashed the USG cocaine dealing when he heard the testimony and wrote the Kerry report. Kerry is a drug warrior in my book and a representative of the plutocracy that cares more about the Heinz fortune of his wife than the does about my inalienable rights.

The issue of the drug wars was not debated in the last election by agreement between Gore and Bush. We do not have drug policy in this country. We have attitude. The only policy they really have is for silence and disinformation. Well, I hope the drug war position that Kerry has maintained sinks his boat. Not that I care about Kerry, but that I care about America and the real meaning of the Constitution and putting an end to the plunder of the world by using a bogus drug war as the tool.

"Marijuana is the safest therapeutically active substance known to man... safer than many foods we commonly consume."
-- DEA Judge Francis L. Young, Sept. 6, 1988

[blm]

9. Exposing the CIA drugrunning means nothing to you?

Alerting how governments use covert drug deals to fund their illegal activities means nothing to you?

Tarring Kerry with the positions of Bush and Gore is absurd. Kerry has the best chance to move this issue where it needs to go. He'll use the power of the presidency responsibly and progressively.

[bigtree]

6. Who is Beers?

Top White House anti-terror boss resigns
By P. Mitchell Prothero
Published 3/19/2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030319-040543-3049r

WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- The top National Security Council official in the war on terror resigned this week for what a NSC spokesman said were personal reasons, but intelligence sources say the move reflects concern that the looming war with Iraq is hurting the fight against terrorism.

Rand Beers would not comment for this article, but he and several sources close to him are emphatic that the resignation was not a protest against an invasion of Iraq. But the same sources, and other current and former intelligence officials, described a broad consensus in the anti-terrorism and intelligence community that an invasion of Iraq would divert critical resources from the war on terror.

"I found his resignation shocking," said one official closely involved in the domestic fight on terror. "And it might reflect a certain frustration over the allocation of resources. But I'm not positive that there's a consensus (among intelligence services) that deposing Saddam's regime is a bad idea for fighting terror. I think that there are serious concerns about resources and alienating allies, but some of us see an upside."

But others point out that the CIA warned Congress last year that an invasion might lead to a rise in terrorism. This, they say, is evidence there's more than just ambivalence about the war among the spy community.


Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror

By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 16, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62941-2003Jun15?language=printer

"Things were dicey," said Rand Beers, recalling the stack of classified reports about plots to shoot, bomb, burn and poison Americans. He stared at the color-coded threats for five minutes. Then he called his wife: I'm quitting.

"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out."

No single issue has defined the Bush presidency more than fighting terrorism. And no issue has both animated and intimidated Democrats. Into this tricky intersection of terrorism, policy and politics steps Beers, a lifelong bureaucrat, unassuming and tight-lipped until now. He is an unlikely insurgent. He served on the NSC under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and the current Bush. The oath of office hangs on the wall by his bed; he tears up when he watches "The West Wing." Yet Beers decided that he wanted out, and he is offering a rare glimpse in.

In a series of interviews, Beers, 60, critiqued Bush's war on terrorism. He is a man in transition, alternately reluctant about and empowered by his criticism of the government. After 35 years of issuing measured statements from inside intelligence circles, he speaks more like a public servant than a public figure. Much of what he knows is classified and cannot be discussed. Nevertheless, Beers will say that the administration is "underestimating the enemy." It has failed to address the root causes of terror, he said. "The difficult, long-term issues both at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged and generally underfunded."


Comments: Rand Beers from johnkerry.com: Foreign Policy in John Kerry's First 100 Days

http://www.blog.johnkerry.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=816

[Moderator]

10. Locking.....copyright

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