Open season on the opium barons. About time.
The allied forces should have targeted them from the beginning, but nooooo, they let the opium barons make mountains of hard currency and bankroll the Taliban.
What do you think?
Posted on 08/10/2009 3:31:44 PM PDT by myknowledge
The Pentagon has put 50 of Afghanistan’s powerful opium barons on a “kill or capture” list, signalling a radical shift in tactics against the Taleban.
The announcement came as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, admitted that the insurgency, nurtured by tens of millions of dollars from the country’s vast poppy fields, now held the upper hand.
The existence of the “joint integrated prioritised target list” — a rogues’ gallery of drug lords who are earmarked for arrest or assassination — is revealed in an unpublished Senate report obtained yesterday by The Times.
It was confirmed by Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, the top US military spokesman in Afghanistan. “The list of targets are those that are contributing to the insurgency — the key leadership — and part of that obviously is the link between the narco-industry and the militants,” he said.
The report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee does not give names but it spells out the new military objectives clearly: “We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 targets who link drugs and insurgency,” a US general told the panel.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Open season on the opium barons. About time.
The allied forces should have targeted them from the beginning, but nooooo, they let the opium barons make mountains of hard currency and bankroll the Taliban.
What do you think?
I think they have the technology to make the fields barren for a VERY long time and they should do it...then there are no “Barons” to worry about...
All we need to do is buy the Opium for a better price and use it in RX drugs. Happy farmers and Taliban out of biz.
“an unpublished Senate report obtained yesterday by The Times.”
The Times tells the world! I hate those guys!
So now we’re exporting our failed drug war?
The Times only prints what they receive from their “unnamed source”, its the unnamed source I would go after first, then the NYT.
Or they take our money and still grow the drugs.
If by assignation you mean the transfer of property rights, I have no idea what you’re talking about. However if you misspelled ‘assassination’, then yes, Obama did have a fit over it. However, why wouldn’t Obama want to use assassinations to make his war (Afghanistan) “successful”? He hasn’t had any qualms about utilizing Bush’s other unconstitutional big government policies and measures.
Did you read the article? The drug money is used to bankroll the insurgency that is killing Americans. This is removing a major cash crop from the hands of insurgent supporters that in turn use the money to fund terrorism. Narco-traffiking and terrorism often go hand in hand.
And don't give me the libertarian "keep your laws off my drugs" answer. This is a war zone and needs to be treated as such. At least bammy has one hard policy that targets the shiite heads.
I have no problem with them destroying the crops and targeting the growers. As you said, it saves American lives. I just think the whole situation has become ridiculous over there.
Why not use crop harvesters and contaminate the soil with salt, preventing them from growing opium poppies ever again, just like the Romans did to the food plantations at Carthage following the Third Punic War?
Actually all it's going to do is drive the price even higher, thereby increasing the profit margin. But nobody ever said supporters of this ridiculous "War on (some) Drugs were smart.
I suppose just outbidding the Taleban for the opium and then selling the opium to Pharma companies so it can be refined into morphine is out of the question.
Naw, that would involve the Free Market, support individual liberty, and not risk American troops lives. It would also make sense.
So of course it will never be done.
L
Agree but there are too many opium growers to kill them all. They need to be taught how to grow substitute cash crops.
Meanwhile, we finally get an Admiral (Smith) who has some balls. Mullen is weak and McCrystalball sounds like a fool.
Watch how the media is spinning the list as one of “assassinations” instead of battlefield justified killings.
No due process?
No court appointed attorney?
Impeach Obama!!!!
Replace “assassinations” with targeted killings.
Why won’t the media ever come under military control?
The same thing was done in WWII.
Naw, that would involve the Free Market, support individual liberty, and not risk American troops lives. It would also make sense.
So long as we are there they have only the "right" to a Free Market and individual liberty we are willing to extend.
Again.... If they cared so much about their individual liberty they wouldn't be funding terrorists (read the article I am not talking about the farmers that are NOT providing aid and comfort to terrorists).
I'm willing to hazard a guess that you've been to neither Iraq or Afghanistan. I've been to the hash fields in Iraq..... we wished them a nice day and drove on. They were nice people and we had nothing to indicate they aided terrorists. We never had trouble in their village either.
US ‘shifts stance’ on Afghan war
By Daniel Dombey in Washington
Published: August 11 2009 03:00 | Last updated: August 11 2009 03:00
The Obama administration has raised the stakes in Afghanistan by expanding the war to include a full-scale attack on illegal narcotics and has authorised the killing or capture of 50 drug lords, according to a report to be released today.
The report, prepared for the US Senate foreign relations committee, saysBarack Obama has shifted from his earlier insistence that he was pursuing narrower goals than the Bush administration in Afghanistan. “The administration has raised the stakes by transforming the Afghan war from a limited intervention into a more ambitious and potentially risky counter-insurgency,” it says.
While the president said in February the US would focus on preventing the Taliban and al-Qaeda from re-establishing themselves and discounted any ambition to set up a “Jeffersonian democracy” in Afghanistan, his administration’s subsequent policy review called for a “comprehensive” approach to the insurgency.
The administration is not due to spell out its precise measures for success until September. But officials now give greater emphasis to the need to improve governance and the Afghan economy if the insurgency is to be defeated, while General Stanley McChrystal, the new US commander in the country, is expected to call for more resources.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published yesterday, he warned that the Taliban currently had momentum, that US casualties would remain high and that US troops would be redeployed to protect Afghan civilians.
The Senate report adds that the US, Britain, Canada and other countries in Afghanistan increasingly see counter-insurgency and curbing narcotics as inextricably linked and maintain that the Taliban cannot be defeated without cutting off financing by the Afghan opium industry, which marks up $3bn (€2.1bn, £1.8bn) a year in profits.
However, it notes that some recent estimates put the Taliban’s drug revenue at $70m-$125m a year, adding that the United Nations was revising its figures down from an estimate of $400m last year.
Two unnamed US generals in Afghanistan told the report authors the rules of engagement and the laws of war had been “interpreted to allow them to put drug traffickers with proven links to the insurgency on a kill list” that permits killing on the battlefield but not targeted assassination.
“We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 . . . who link drugs and insurgency,” the report quotes one of the officers as saying.
The focus on narcotics comes in spite of the Obama administration’s rejection of poppy eradication by methods such as aerial spraying, which officials say punishes ordinary peasants and risks stoking the insurgency.
The report adds that an international taskforce set up to tackle drug traffickers, insurgents and corrupt officials will soon begin operating out of Kandahar airfield and that 100 Afghan nationals are working with the US Drug Enforcement Agency to monitor telephone calls involving suspected drug and insurgent activity. But it says Afghan officials hindered previous attempts against drug lords and did not provide sufficient resources. *Taliban bombers, some disguised as women, stormed government buildings near Kabul yesterday in a brazen attack just 10 days before the presidential election, Reuters reports from Kabul .
Gunbattles lasted for hours and smoke poured from blasted buildings in Pul-e-Alam, capital of Logar province, about an hour’s drive from the capital. Three policemen and two civilians were reported killed, along with six militants.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3b98a152-860e-11de-98de-00144feabdc0.html
well that should really pizz off the RATS...
The ‘drug war’ is basically a sham, a charade if you will.
To fatten the money pot bellies of the drug lords is the goal.
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