This story on Afghanistan's drug trade reminded me

[LittleClarkie]

of how right John Kerry was on alot of issues. I plan to keep track of the news stories that show this: sort of an "I told you so" watch.

Today's story came from the NYT on Saturday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/international/asia/19afghanistan.html

I read in Kerry's book, "A New War" that one of the things Kerry wanted to fight terrorism was cut off it's funding through the sale of drugs. I believe he cited Afghanistan's trade specifically.

"Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level, U.N. Says
By CARLOTTA GALL

Published: November 19, 2004

ABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the source of most of the opium and heroin on Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching the highest levels in the country's history and in the world, the United Nations announced on Thursday.

"In Afghanistan, drugs are now a clear and present danger," said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, on the release of the 2004 Afghanistan opium survey. "The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality."
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Afghan officials and foreign diplomats called the sharp rise in cultivation and production a major failure for President Hamid Karzai and the international effort to counter narcotics.

More than 321,236 acres of land were planted with poppy in 2004, a 64 percent increase over last year, the United Nations survey found. Poppy has spread to every province in the country, it said.

It was only by chance that drought and disease ravaged much of the crop and prevented the harvest from exceeding the all-time high, the report said. The harvest in 2004 was estimated at 4,200 metric tons, an increase of 17 percent from last year.

The scale of poppy cultivation is particularly alarming, because of the growing stranglehold wealthy traffickers and drug lords hold over farmers, and their influence over the economy and government, Afghan officials and foreign experts said.

The income from production and trafficking of opium in 2004 was estimated at $2.8 billion, equivalent to about 60 percent of the country's legal gross domestic product, or more than a third of the total economy, the report said.

If the drug problem persists, "the political and military successes of the last three years will be lost," Mr. Costa said in a preface to the report. There are indications that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are profiting from the Afghan trade, the report said."

I definitely would have felt safer in the world with John Kerry in office. Even when he talks like a hawk, I believe he does so with good reason. (where DID my inner hippy go?)

[New Earth]

1. i had no idea Kerry had a book

written by him, or by someone else about him? when did it come out?

[LittleClarkie]

2. "A New War: The Web of Crime That Threatens America's Security"

by Sen. John Kerry
copyright 1997
ISBN 0-684-84614-4

Here is a quote from the book -- THE quote, in fact, that slapped me in the face when I was just browsing through the book.

"Though this country will continue to face danger from religious extremists, homegrown anarchists, and perennial lone-bomber types, they are all in some sense “old news.” The terrorists of tomorrow will be better armed and organized. It will take only one mega
terrorist event in any of the great cities of the world to change the world in a single day. As we shall see, that event could be nuclear or could just as easily occur on the Internet, but whether our sense of secure well-being ends with a bang or a whimper will not be the cause of the debate."

Dang it, he was talking about a 9/11-type event, and it was only 1997. This was about when he became more hawkish in his military voting. Even though the Cold War was over, I think he saw a danger in the world he was trying to combat.

The book is echoed in the material on Kerry's site, most notably an article on the Bush Admin's focus on Missile Defense just before 9/11 called "An Effective Missile Defense."

Here's Bush from May, 2001
Bush Said “Most Urgent Threat” Was Ballistic Missiles.
Bush: “Most troubling of all, the list of these countries includes some of the World’s least responsible states. Unlike the Cold War, today’s most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life. They seek weapons of mass destruction to intimidate their neighbors, and to keep the United States and other responsible nations from helping allies and friends in strategic parts of the world.”

Here's Kerry from May 2001
Kerry Said “Immediate Threat” was From Terrorists and “Non-State Actors.”
Kerry: “But let me underscore that missile defense will do nothing to address what the Pentagon itself considers a much more likely and immediate threat to the American homeland from terrorists and from nonstate actors, who can quietly slip explosives into a building, unleash chemical weapons into a crowded subway, or send a crude nuclear weapon into a busy harbor.”

And then there's this from good old Rummy:
Rumsfeld Threatened Veto Of Plan To Divert Money From Missile Defense to Terrorism.
On September 9, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld threatened to urge a presidential veto of a Senate plan to divert $600 million from missile defense systems to counterterrorism. Instead of anti-terror planning, “the whole Bush national-security team was obsessed with setting up a national system of missile defense.”

And our new SoS Rice:
Rice Focused On Matters “Other Than Terrorism.”
In the months prior to the September 11 attacks, Condoleezza Rice “was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism, for reasons that had to do with her own background, her management style and the unusually close, personal nature of her relationship with Mr. Bush.”

Rice’s Major Foreign Policy Address - Scheduled For 9/11/01 – Was to Focus on Missile Defense, Downplay Terrorist Threat.
The Washington Post reported that “on Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address ‘the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday’ -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.” Rice's speech was postponed by the terrorist attacks, and while “it mentioned terrorism” it “did so in the context used in other Bush administration speeches in early 2001: as one of the dangers from rogue nations, such as Iraq, that might use weapons of terror, rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States.

----------------------------------

This stuff drives me nuts. Looking at the above, which would YOU say understands the world after 9/11, and which one was going to keep us safer. I used to go around posting similar things on the web before the election, but I didn't get much of a rise out of folks. I never understood why.

Anyway, the book is quite interesting in the context of what's happened since. I think the Oklahoma bombing and the first WTC attack had happened by then. He talks about the globalization of terrorism around the world and the ideologies that drive it, about illegal immigration, the drug trade. He does indeed seem to see terrorism as international crime, as Cheney said. But I don't understand why that's wrong. Kerry was a district attorney after all. Of course he sees things in those terms.

I was able to pick it up by special order at Barnes and Noble. Otherwise, check the library.

Also Faye, there are several books about Kerry around. One of the better ones is "Tour of Duty" by David Brinkley (I think I have that right.) Also, the Boston Globe biography doesn't look too bad either. Beware the hatchet jobs, though. No Swiftees, no "The Many Faces of John Kerry" etc.

[WildEyedLiberal]

3. Douglas Brinkley actually

And "Tour of Duty" is a great book. I really fell in love with John Kerry reading that book. Reading about him as a young man in Vietnam just made him incredibly real for me. I had no idea he had a book about terrorism or that he basically predicted 9/11 four years early - and I consider myself a diligent student of current events and politics. Why wasn't any of this - the things you pointed out - why wasn't this brought up during the campaign season? Why weren't all of John Kerry's immense qualifications fairly discussed by the media?

Oh, I forgot. Silly me, pretending we have an independent and objective media that fairly and accurately reports the truth and facts as they are. Ha, ha. I forgot we have no better than state controlled news in this country. Well, I hope the wingnuts get what they deserve. I hope Bush goes down in flames. I just hope he doesn't take all of us down with him.

[LittleClarkie]

4. Oops, you're right

David was the anchorman, I believe.

I guess the Kerry campaign expected people to go to johnkerry.com and dig around much more than they actually did. There was decent stuff there and on www.factcheck.org (it was amazing how many times the same lie was repeated over and over by the Bush campaign), and www.snopes.com was good for debunking myths.