FR WAR NEWS!WAR News at Home and Abroad You'll Hear Nowhere Else!
All the News the MSM refuses to use!
Or if they do report it, without the anti-War Agenda Spin!
Posted on 06/14/2007 4:57:00 PM PDT by SandRat
WASHINGTON, June 14, 2007 – A top priority for U.S. government officials working in Afghanistan is eradicating poppy plants and creating alternative livelihoods for farmers, a Defense Department counternarcotics official said today. Richard Douglas, deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics, counterproliferation and global threats, spoke to military analysts in a teleconference from Kabul, Afghanistan. He said the Defense Department is working with U.S. Central Command, the U.S. State Department, and the British government to combat the narcotics problem in Afghanistan.
“It’s Afghanistan’s future and their fight, but we do what we can to support the combatant commander as well as the Drug Enforcement Administration in carrying out the effort here,” Douglas said. “It’s a very important effort. As you are well aware, there are some huge challenges here, but we’re doing what we can to help (Navy Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of Central Command) and his folks here get their arms around it and make a contribution.”
The State Department is leading a reassessment of the approach to poppy eradication, Douglas said, including a focus on creating viable alternative crops for farmers. The partner agencies also are looking at attacking the money that comes from the narcotics trade in Afghanistan and funds drug traffickers and the Taliban, he said.
“I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the Taliban and other armed insurgents have awakened to the value to them of this source of income, and part of our challenge here is to help the combatant commander help other actors over here, both from the United States and from other countries, get a better handle on where this money’s going, because as we’ve learned in our own hemisphere, an important way to hurt the drug trafficker and to hurt the terrorists that work hand in glove with them is to go after the money,” Douglas said.
This is Douglas’ fourth trip to Afghanistan since taking office in January 2006. He said there are challenges on the ground, but he sees progress in the fight against drugs in Afghanistan.
“It’s not an easy problem to solve, but I do believe that the State Department and the British government appreciate the nature of the challenge,” he said. “I think they’ve been taking a serious approach not only to the strategy but also reassessing the best way to go about this.”
FR WAR NEWS!Get’em to grow corn for our ethanol (sarcasm).
WUNNERFULL, WUNNERFULL, WUNNERFULL, but I don’t live in Afganistan, just close off our Southern border, Dammit!
Seal it up so damned tight that a roach ain’t gonna slip through it, and we won’t have to worry about Afghani opium farmers. Hell, they don’t grow that shit because of it’s food value!
can you turn opium into bio-fuels?
Our destroying their poppy fields because heroin corrupts and addicts some of our people is like their destroying Hollywood because American movies and porn corrupt and addict some of their people.
If we’re going to have a war on drugs at all let’s do it at home.
I’d rather run across a heroin addict nodding off than a crack or meth addict hyped up and crazy.
Mrs VS
Probably easier and cheaper just to buy up the crops ourselves.
Agent Orange????
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