Pentagon divided on role in Afghan drug trade crackdown

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What’s missing from this “debate” is a discussion of the role drug profits play in the U.S. economy and the CIA’s long involvement in the drug trade worldwide.


http://news.ft.com/cms/s/16017424-5cff-11d9-bb9c-00000e2511c8.html
<snip>
Divisions have opened in the Pentagon over the role the military should play in an aggressive crackdown on Afghanistan's narco-economy amid fears that it could destabilise the country ahead of elections due in April.


Senior US generals are raising objections to moves to step up US troops' involvement in counter-narcotics operations that could alienate regional warlords whose support is needed to provide security for the poll. Officials involved in a tense debate inside the Pentagon over the US military's role in eradicating poppy fields said there is widespread agreement that the burgeoning drug trade risks corrupting the fledgling Karzai government.

But a split has opened between senior military officers, who are worried an onslaught on the trade could unsettle the country ahead of parliamentary elections, and Pentagon civilians who fear that increasing drug revenues could be used to influence the vote.


For a different angle, see:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/index.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_10_01_heroin.html
<snip>
FTW, October 10, 2001 - The governments of the United States and Britain - along with a lap-dog mainstream media all too willing to regurgitate falsehoods - are feeding us a line of demonstrably inaccurate lies about the Taliban and opium. We are being warned of a "new flood" of al-Q'aeda opium as the war expands. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair boasts, "We will bomb their poppy fields," he neglects to mention that there aren't any poppy fields in Taliban controlled areas to bomb. This outrageous deception of the public, in an effort to stir up support for the war effort, is further evidence that most of the rest of the government's line following the attacks of September 11, is simply not credible.

<snip>
In the 1960's and 70's, as the Vietnam War raged, the CIA fostered and maintained a series of covert wars in Laos and Cambodia. They did this by funding their operations with heroin, refined from opium grown by indigenous tribesmen including the Hmong in Laos. The Hmong, in turn became surrogate U.S. armies and the money from the trade supported the CIA and its allies as the region became totally unstable. In the years since, the only difference is that drug money has become a $500-600 billion a year cash flow that is now an essential part of the world banking and financial system because it provides the liquid cash necessary to make the "minimum monthly payments" on huge stock and derivative and investment bubbles in the U.S. and Britain. These bubbles were already bursting in the weeks prior to the September 11 attacks.

Now, as the CIA moves to control the drug trade in the region you can be sure of several things. First, when the world sees an explosion of heroin from the region it won't be the Taliban's doing. Second, the cash flows from the smuggling will now be directed through U.S. banks and stocks. That is what the CIA does. Third, those cash flows - as direct air operations from Tashkent to the U.S. become commonplace - will be taken away from Russia, the Balkans, Turkey and Eastern Europe. Fourth, the result of that will be de-stabilization of the entire region. Fifth, destabilization in the region will Balkanize Russia. Sixth, the increasing U.S. military and economic presence will consolidate U.S. control over the vast oil and gas reserves in the region. A revived Unocal-Saudi pipeline project, which will begin construction soon after the U.S. establishes control, will take the oil and gas from Central Asia, through Afghanistan, and down to the Pakistani coast where it will then be sold to China and Japan. The profits from those sales will come back into Wall Street. This will be a further drain on Russian influence in the region and greatly increase global instability.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/121103_afghan_poppy.html

AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION DOUBLES
December 11, 2003 100 PDT (FTW) -- Ever wonder why the markets are doing so well? As FTW has documented for years, with almost $600 billion in drug money being laundered through Wall Street and US banks, the markets should be improving. According to CNN, opium production in Afghanistan is 36 times higher than at the end of Taliban rule. Not every US policy overseas is a failure. Hamid Karzai controls a few square blocks of Kabul. But CIA-controlled warlords control the real estate that really matters.

And there’s more at
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.shtml#drugs

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1. Crossing the Rubicon

See Michael Ruppert's "Crossing the Rubicon" for a much more detailed discussion of this topic.

"Crossing the Rubicon" is listed as a nonfiction book of the year at
http://www.onlinereviewofbooks.com/

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2. Reviews of "Rubicon" on Amazon

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Mike Ruppert is the Publisher/Editor of From the Wilderness, a newsletter read by more than 16,000 subscribers in 40 countries. A former LAPD narcotics investigator, he is widely known for his groundbreaking stories on US involvement in the drug trade, Peak Oil and 9/11.

Product Description:
The attacks of September 11, 2001 were accomplished through an amazing orchestration of logistics and personnel. Crossing the Rubicon discovers and identifies key suspects - finding some of them in the highest echelons of American government - by showing how they acted in concert to guarantee that the attacks produced the desired result.

Crossing the Rubicon is unique not only for its case-breaking examination of 9/11, but for the breadth and depth of its world picture - an interdisciplinary analysis of petroleum, geopolitics, narco-traffic, intelligence and militarism - without which 9/11 cannot be understood.

The US manufacturing sector has been mostly replaced by speculation on financial data whose underlying economic reality is a dark secret. Hundreds of billions of dollars in laundered drug money flow through Wall Street each year from opium and coca fields maintained by CIA-sponsored warlords and US-backed covert paramilitary violence. America's global dominance depends on a continually turning mill of guns, drugs, oil and money. Oil and natural gas - the fuels that make economic growth possible - are subsidized by American military force and foreign lending.

In reality, 9/11 and the resulting "War on Terror" are parts of a massive authoritarian response to an emerging economic crisis of unprecedented scale. Peak Oil - the beginning of the end for our industrial civilization - is driving the elites of American power to implement unthinkably draconian measures of repression, warfare and population control. Crossing the Rubicon is more than a story. It is a map of the perilous terrain through which, together and alone, we are all now making our way.



38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

All Americans should read this book - crucial information!, October 22, 2004
Reviewer: Christophe J. Purdin "9/11 truth researcher" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

I have spoken to Michael Rupert at length in person and given him some of my writings to fuel him and give him ideas. He is a seriously talented researcher, a great writer and a patriot in the finest sense of the word. This book exposes the truth behind what transpired on 9/11. The facts he sites are all from mainstream sources, and are irrefutable.

VP Cheney's early 2001 energy task force has been shown to have been concerned with the coming crisis in America's energy needs. They stated that the US would need an additional 7.7 million bbl of oil per day by the year 2020. Production is declining in the US. Cheney's task force concluded that the Middle East was the only place that had the proven reserves to quench this addictive thirst for oil. Iraq was mapped out and designated as a target in July 2001. This has been proven. They did not use the occurrence of 9/11 as a pretext for invasion, they clearly instigated 9/11 as a means to accomplish what this administration saw as an essential strategy to maintain America's dominance and a strong economy for decades to come. Control of Middle East oil is the obvious lynch pin in this scheme. Mike Rupert does a stellar job of laying it our for us. Check out his website at fromthewildernesscom