KABUL, Afghanistan The interpreter's hand-held radio crackled with the sound of intercepted Taliban transmissions, and he signaled the infantry patrol to wait while he translated. At 7 a.m. one morning late in the summer, peasants were already out scything wheat, with their children tending fields of pink and white poppies that would soon add to Afghanistan's record-setting opium and heroin supplies. We were 9,000 feet up, in the hamlet of Larzab, in a remote part of Zabul province -- the heart of Talibanland. [continues 2110 words]
A Different Tyranny If Afghanistan had a national motto, it could be: Democracy is dicey and poppies proliferate. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there was a clearly appropriate military response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. The link to 9/11 was definite and direct. The attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan. There, the ruling Taliban was an eager supporter of bin Laden. [continues 268 words]
Editor's Note: Remarks appear as prepared in advance and differ slightly from those delivered. Washington Square Salt Lake City, Utah August 30, 2006 A patriot is a person who loves his or her country. Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our world? And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth? [continues 3316 words]
THE GOOD NEWS, for drug fiends, is that Afghanistan has just harvested its biggest opium crop ever, up a whopping 59 percent from last year and big enough to cover 130 percent of the entire world market. The street price for illegal heroin, 92 percent of which now comes from Afghanistan, should be way down from Bangkok to London, and for those shooting up in the back alleys of Chicago. The bad news, for the rest of us, is that in Bush-liberated Afghanistan, billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban. [continues 731 words]
UN Drug Report Finds 'Staggering' Rise In Afghanistan Output KABUL, Afghanistan -- Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan increased 59 percent this year, producing a record-breaking 6,100 metric tons of opium, in part because of efforts by the Taliban and other insurgents in the troubled south, according to a UN survey. Antonio Maria Costa, the United Nations anti-drug chief, called the crop "staggering." Afghanistan now produces 92 percent of the world's opium supply. If security in the south does not improve, entire provinces could fail. The southern part of the country is "displaying the ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse," Costa said Saturday. [continues 548 words]
From the lack of body counts in Iraq, to drug wars to torture, the United States is making the world a worse place to live in. The following three subchapters are excerpted from John Tirman's 100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World (Harper Perennial, 2006). Read another excerpt here. Three ways America is screwing up the world: 1. "We Don't Do Body Counts" When U.S. General Tommy Franks uttered those words in 2003, he was conveying the new sentiments of the American military and its civilian leadership, that counting the dead of "the enemy" was not necessary or useful. Franks, who may be remembered as the only general in the annals of American history to lose two wars, was simply repeating what his political handlers told him to say, as all active duty generals do. In this case, it was an attempt to deflect the moral consequences of a "war of choice," a lesson Frank's generation learned from Vietnam. But the "no body counts" policy reverberates around the Arab and Muslim world, to America's detriment. [continues 2183 words]
Sara Jane Olson has gone from SLA fugitive to suburban mother to low-key inmate. Now, in 'enforced idleness,' she awaits her 2009 release. CHOWCHILLA, Calif. -- Shortly after 8 each weekday morning, Inmate W94197 reports for work on the prison yard. She earns 24 cents an hour emptying trash cans and tidying up. She is grateful for the job. Caught in 1999 after living as a fugitive for 23 years, she was convicted of murder and other crimes stemming from her link with the Symbionese Liberation Army, a violent band of radicals best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. [continues 2398 words]
Aimed At Children, Displays Show Impact On Everyday People, Crime, Terrorism First there was "Just Say No." Then came the frying egg and a dire warning: "This is your brain on drugs." Now the anti-drug message is spread across 5,000 square feet at the Museum of Science and Industry, replete with depictions of a drug-addled brain, a mock methamphetamine lab and twisted wreckage from the World Trade Center. The traveling exhibit, sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is equal parts science, history and social commentary. Critics say it is propaganda that lacks balance, but thousands of schoolchildren in five cities have passed through its halls, including teen drug and alcohol offenders sentenced to see it by a Michigan judge. [continues 596 words]
DEA Defends Traveling Exhibit as Critics Draw Parallels to Prohibition Era A photograph of President Bush waving a flag after the Sept. 11 attacks is juxtaposed against a black-and-white image of an African American mother smoking crack cocaine in bed next to her baby. Larger-than-life portraits of Osama bin Laden and Pablo Escobar line the walls. The central message of a traveling Drug Enforcement Administration exhibit unveiled at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry yesterday is that terrorism and drugs are inextricably linked. [continues 763 words]
Why Stabilising Afghanistan Will Be A Stiff Test For Nato The world's most successful military alliance takes on a new role in Afghanistan today - and it has its work cut out. Nato, the organisation that prides itself on having won the cold war, is assuming responsibility for the country's perilous south at a critical time. Soldiers from Nato countries have already died in preparatory operations and much is at stake for Afghanistan itself. Five years after the fundamentalist Taliban government was toppled by a US-led invasion, many Afghans are yet to see any improvement in their lives. The country faces a Taliban resurgence and other long-standing problems remain pressing, such as the power of warlords and heavy economic dependence on poppies destined for heroin production. And while reconstruction in other parts of the country has progressed, it is in the south that such problems are concentrated. [continues 1852 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lavishly praised embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday, arguing that his leadership shows how far Afghanistan has come since the fall of the Taliban 4 1/2 years ago. "I don't know anyone who is more admired or respected by the international community" than Karzai, Rice said. During a 90-minute meeting, Rice told Karzai that the administration was considering a boost in reconstruction funding, an aide to Rice said. The additional money -- to be directed especially at troubled areas in the south -- would be accompanied by a shift from big nationwide projects such as roads to smaller community projects. [continues 833 words]
In Response to More Aggressive Taliban, Attacks Are Double Those in Iraq War As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East. The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs. Save & ShareTag This Article Saving options1. Save to description: Headline (required) Subheadline Byline 2. Save to notes (255 character max): Subheadline Blurb None 3. Tag This Article [continues 1181 words]
'Opportunist' Taliban Making Moves To Grab Power, Says American Military Washington -- As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 air strikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East. The air strikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs. [continues 720 words]
What A Deadly Harvest. As British troops move in to replace Americans in some of the most volatile parts of southern Afghanistan, their valiant battle for democracy is being undermined by their own Government's confused war on opium. Yesterday the Senlis Council, an international security and development policy think-tank, cautioned that the southern states are slipping into a "state of war". Afghans, faced with overwhelming poverty caused by the West's obliteration of their poppy crops, are switching allegiance to the Taleban and other insurgents. You cannot attack poppies and insurgents at the same time. Attacks on one breed the other. [continues 849 words]
A Prison Gang Shows Its Deadly Power and Flatfoots The Politicians RIO DE JANEIRO is more beautiful, but residents of Sao Paulo boast that their city is safer. At least they did until May 12th, when a wave of violence orchestrated from within the prison system struck Brazil's biggest city and several neighbouring towns. In five days of mayhem and retribution some 150 people, a quarter of them policemen, were killed; 82 buses were torched and 17 bank branches attacked. Rebellions erupted at 74 of the 140 prisons in Sao Paulo state. Schools, shopping centres and offices shut down; transport froze. For several days, paulistanos could not even claim that their city was safer than Baghdad. [continues 852 words]
Group Pleased With Reception By Police Two dozen Guardian Angels sporting red berets will be patrolling Calgary streets by August, says the head of the U.S.-based anti-crime group. Curtis Sliwa emerged from a meeting with Calgary police Monday heaping praise on the pleasant reception he received from the long arm of the law. "It couldn't be nicer. If I were a diabetic, I would have had insulin shots," said Sliwa, who was invited to Calgary by citizens concerned about street crime. [continues 831 words]
Mayor Welcomes Volunteer Patrol Group CALGARY -- The Guardian Angels may have been given the cold shoulder in Toronto and other Canadian cities, but Calgary has laid out the welcome mat for the controversial volunteer foot patrol group. "In Toronto I got the fleabag treatment -- I might as well have been a terrorist of al-Qaeda," Angels founder Curtis Sliwa said yesterday after spending more than an hour with officials at the Calgary Police Service. "Here, I was given the royal red-carpet treatment. It was like people who are used to dealing with the streets talking shop." [continues 545 words]
Economist Milton Friedman predicted in Newsweek nearly 34 years ago that Richard Nixon's ambitious "global war against drugs" would be a failure. Much evidence today suggests that he was right. But the war rages on with little mainstream challenge of its basic weapon, prohibition. To be sure, Mr. Friedman wasn't the only critic. William Buckley's National Review declared a decade ago that the U.S. had "lost" the drug war, bolstering its case with testimony from the likes of Joseph D. McNamara, a former police chief in Kansas City, Mo., and San Jose, Calif. But today discussion of the war's depressing cost-benefit ratio is being mainly conducted in the blogosphere, where the tone is predominantly libertarian. In the broader polity, support for the great Nixon crusade remains sufficiently strong to discourage effective counterattacks. [continues 920 words]
It is widely recognized that access by belligerent groups to the gains from drug production and trafficking contributes to the intensity and prolongation of military conflict. Also, that such groups -- terrorists, insurgents, or warlords -- grow stronger when they successfully exploit the drug trade. The United States' response -- its antinarcotics policy -- emphasizes crop eradication. This strategy is too simplistic and, ultimately, ineffective. Incorrect assumptions Because anti-government forces can derive large financial resources from the drug economy, Washington has given high priority to eradication in its relations with Afghanistan, Colombia, and Peru, among other countries. The United States also insists that other Western countries and local governments adopt the same approach. [continues 1810 words]
Texans Call On U.S. To Send Aid As Threat From Drug Cartels Mounts WASHINGTON - Texas border sheriffs pleaded Tuesday for more federal help to confront Mexican drug trafficking cartels that are arming themselves with more powerful weaponry and deploying tactics that pose an ever-greater danger to U.S. law enforcement. Appearing before a congressional panel examining border incursions allegedly by Mexican soldiers protecting drug shipments, the sheriffs of El Paso and Hudspeth counties detailed deteriorating conditions in a region where rival cartels are locked in deadly competition. [continues 846 words]
Drug Cartels Cross Into Deadly Territory With Cache Found In Laredo SAN ANTONIO - Customs investigators seized grenades, pipe bombs and material to make improvised explosive devices twice in the last week in Laredo, federal law enforcement agents said Friday, a sign that the violence among warring drug cartels continues to escalate along the U.S.-Mexico border. Laredo law enforcement officials called the weapons' discovery - which apparently marks the first time such explosives have been found in the city - a worrisome development. [continues 1104 words]
Four years after the Allies moved in, Afghanistan remains the world's major source of heroin. Will more British troops end the drug warlords' reign? By Westminster Editor James Cusick Seven months after the Iraq war, the distinctive figure of Hamid Karzai helped Tony Blair through one of his most difficult Labour conferences. On the conference platform in Bournemouth, wearing his trademark cape and hat, the Afghan leader said his country had received help from the rest of the world and his people had "joined hands with them to free ourselves". Karzai helped boost Blair's crumbling authority by saying he supported the war "because we want exactly the same thing for the Iraqi people". [continues 1380 words]
A Threat To Fragile Democracy, The Drug Spreads Death On Its Route To Europe Just Three Euros For A Shot The suspicious whirring of a motor came from somewhere in the dark skies above the river separating Northern Afghanistan from Tajikistan. Tajik border guards say they shouted warnings and then opened fire. What fell out of the sky was a motorized parachute carrying 18 kilograms of heroin. It was a small drop in a mighty flood of Afghan heroin that is reshaping the world drug market. [continues 2605 words]
THERE IS A STRIKING ANTIDOTE to worsening security in Afghanistan, where suicide bombing and convoy ambushes now occur every day. Increasingly, these Taliban- and Al Qaeda-sponsored attacks are linked to opium and heroin trafficking. Afghanistan supplies 80 percent of Europe's heroin and is the largest grower of poppies in the world. Instead of legalizing poppy growing or attempting to eradicate the stubborn plants and destroy the livelihoods of impoverished farmers, why not pay the farmers to grow something else? Afghans already grow wheat as their staple grain. [continues 671 words]
NATO, Other Allies Take On New Roles KABUL, Afghanistan -- Four years into a mammoth reconstruction effort here that has been largely led, funded and secured by Americans, the United States is showing a growing willingness to cede those jobs to others. The most dramatic example will come by this summer, when the U.S. military officially hands over control of the volatile southern region - -- plagued by persistent attacks from Islamic militias -- to an international force led by the NATO alliance. The United States will cut its troop strength by 2,500, even though it is not clear how aggressively NATO troops will pursue insurgents, who have shown no sign of relenting. [continues 1421 words]
The Santa Maria Times continually reports on law enforcement making arrests for possession of controlled substances. While the U.S. major media sensationalizes the war on drugs, prosecutors and judges sentence addicts to long prison terms where there is little or no rehabilitation. Lawmakers everywhere don't want to appear soft on crime, so draconian laws are written and rewritten. The war on drugs is another failed war in our time. This war was declared in 1971 by President Nixon and is the most expensive social experiment in history. It's historical cost would include all federal, state and local law enforcement, the prosecutors, defending attorneys and prisons. [continues 652 words]
When U.S. Must Do Our Policing, Martin's Defiance Rings Hollow It's fine in this election for Prime Minister Paul Martin to campaign against the U.S., instead of Stephen Harper, with his apparently stern warnings he will not be dictated to. But both Martin and his predecessor have been pathetically weak in defence of the sovereignty to which it is now electorally convenient for him to appeal. This goes much beyond matters of national defence, although an American submarine at the North Pole is a timely (and probably intentional) reminder that Canadian claims in the High North depend more on U.S. goodwill than Canadian ability to patrol it. (Harper's proposal last week for three armed icebreakers to assume that role is a suitable response.) [continues 567 words]
DEA Raids 13 Marijuana Dispensaries In San Diego Medical marijuana activists gathered in the University Heights area of San Diego on Monday, December 12, furious about raids on pot dispensaries and vowing not to back down in the face of what they called federal law-enforcement intimidation. Earlier that day, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration led a multi-agency assault on 13 dispensaries in San Diego County, handcuffing those inside the shops and confiscating products, computers, and patient records. Tony Amarine, 32, who runs Utopia, an Ocean Beach dispensary, said the aggressive manner in which heavily armed agents came bursting into his shop made him feel like they must have thought it was Al Qaeda's headquarters: "Guns to my forehead, handcuffed, down on the ground." He pulled up a pant leg and revealed a bloody scrape he said he suffered when manhandled. [continues 551 words]
Farmers Report Threats From Group KHANISHIN, Afghanistan -- The threatening tracts were pinned on mosque doors and shop windows, the village elder said. Signed ''The Taliban," their message was simple. ''They said, 'Cultivate the poppy or we will come and kill you,' " said Haji Nazarullah, an elder in Khanishin, a village on the fringe of Afghanistan's lawless southern desert. ''A lot of people are very scared." According to farmers, elders, and senior police officials, the Taliban, which condemned the opium trade as ''un-Islamic" while in power, has allied with drug smugglers in the southwestern province of Helmand. The threats are part of a worrying slide in security just months before US forces are due to hand control of the southern region to a 6,000-strong, British-led NATO force. [continues 1283 words]
San Diego, CA -- Already steaming mad about the county Board of Supervisors' decision to sue the state in federal court to overturn the law that allows sick people to use marijuana as medicine, activists who gathered in University Heights Monday night were furious about the raids on pot dispensaries that occurred earlier in the day-and vowing not to back down in the face of what they called federal law-enforcement intimidation. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration on Monday led a multi-agency assault on 13 dispensaries in San Diego County, handcuffing whomever was inside the shops and confiscating products, computers and patient records. [continues 728 words]
"Of course we're growing poppy this year," said the district chief. "The government, the foreigners - they promised us help if we stopped. But where is it?" A farmer extracting opium from a poppy blossom In 2004, Afghanistan produced 90% of the world's opium You hear similar things from many other people in Helmand province in Afghanistan - the number one opium poppy producing region in the number one opium producing country in the world. If there's a central focus for the international and Afghan government campaign to stamp out the trade, it's here. [continues 960 words]
Prosecutor Says Officials Working for Traffickers Targeted Rival Cartel Corrupt federal agents working for drug traffickers are the primary authors of a shocking video in which four enforcers for a rival cartel are interrogated and one is shot in the head, a top Mexican prosecutor said Thursday. Eight federal agents and two civilians are in custody, accused of kidnapping and torturing the Nuevo Laredo-based Zetas, allies of the Gulf cartel, said Deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos. The eight are members of the elite Federal Investigative Agency, modeled on the FBI. Three more agents are considered fugitives, he added, and seven civilians are still at large. [continues 1024 words]
Participants Say Effort Called On Broadest Array Of Agencies And Institutions LIMA, Ohio - Mary Williamson watched news reports of the riot in North Toledo two weeks ago and wished she could share with Toledo a little bit of what her city has learned about confronting gang violence. "I think Lima has come up out of the ashes," said Mrs. Williamson, a lifetime Lima resident who stood by her city even when gangs were terrorizing neighborhoods in the 1990s. Lima officials say the key to their success at reducing gang problems is the fact that no one expected one agency to solve the difficulties. [continues 964 words]
ZAMBOANGA CITY -- Troops tracking down Abu Sayyaf militants have tumbled into a large marijuana plantation in the southern Philippine island of Jolo, Sulu, officials said Saturday. Officials said troops discovered the illegal plantation in the hinterland village of Patao in Maimbung town, where security forces were tracking down the Abu Sayyaf. More soldiers and policemen were sent to the villages to secure the plantation, as troops combed the area for bombs or booby traps. No arrest was made, but officials said security forces destroyed the plantation, believed owned by the Abu Sayyaf militants tied to the al-Qaeda. [continues 99 words]
Will our troops get mired in Colombian-style combat over poppies? Afghanistan - Besides worries that Canada will be saddled with the Bush admin's bad human rights rap in Afghanistan, there are now concerns that our forces could end up smack in the middle of a Colombian-style drug war. Observers fear that the U.S., which has been somewhat restrained until this point for strategic reasons, is stepping up pressure for eradication of the purple and pink poppy fields. And they predict that Canada's approximately 1,000 troops in Kandahar will suddenly find themselves mired in a full-scale shootout, not just with al Qaeda forces but with opium gangs. [continues 1114 words]
LOS ANGELES -- It is fair to say that outlaw biker Donald "Red Dog" Jarvis is freaking the squares at his neighborhood Denny's, the moms and pops with their kids sitting at the nearby tables, suddenly just staring at their waffles and trying very hard to avoid eye contact with Jarvis as he explains why it would have been wrong to whack Billy Queen. "We're not stupid people. We have rules, you know, we have . . ." -- Jarvis searches for the word -- "we have policies." [continues 2331 words]
NORTHERN MENDOCINO COUNTY, Calif. In the waning days of a record season, a helicopter buzzes treetops here in a remote corner of the "Emerald Triangle," redwood country notorious as the USA's premier producer of marijuana. (Photo gallery: Rooting out pot hot spots) State narcotics officers from CAMP — Campaign Against Marijuana Planting — are searching for "gardens" to eradicate and find six on a warm, cloudless day. They strap onto a 150-foot cable dangling from the chopper, drop into the pot patches, hack down the plants and bundle them for the chopper to haul back to a landing zone. [continues 1734 words]
This Is Your Society. This Is Your Society On An Endless, Losing Campaign Against Drugs. NOW DO YOU GET IT? Howard Woolridge is outside of Utica, N.Y., heading east on horseback on a beautiful late summer day. He's wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "Cops Say Legalize Drugs. Ask Me Why." For the last 3,000 miles, he's been switching off between his two horses, Misty and Sam. But the t-shirt slogan has stayed the same. [continues 6100 words]
Cocaine and Columbia have lived in violent wedded bliss for the better part of the past three decades, an adulterous relationship that sired billionaire drug barons and misery for anyone who crossed them. While Pablo Escobar and his Medillon Cartel's murderous ways drew most of the attention in the early days of the drug war, a few hundred miles to the north in Cali Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez were quietly leading a cocaine revolution that would change the way the lethal drug was distributed throughout the world. [continues 896 words]
If the War on Pornography is as successful as the War on Drugs, we can look forward to the DVD "Booty & the Beast" being sold on street corners instead of out-of-the-way sex shops. Prohibition doesn't work. Unfortunately, that never stops us from trying. On July 29, Denver's FBI field office, along with the 56 others around the nation, received a message calling for recruits interested in working with a new anti-obscenity squad. The initiative, as reported in The Washington Post, was "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller. [continues 564 words]
The latest episode of American led "reefer madness" is a good example of the world according to Dubya. A Canadian judge allowed our warring neighbours to orchestrate the arrest of a Canadian citizen on our soil, for a crime we don't give a damn about. Just who runs our justice system? A bunch of Texas rednecks? Since when do we arrange the arrest of a Canadian for offences we deem trivial, to face a lifetime in an alien jail. The Americans are facing self destruction from their right wing agenda and under no circumstances should Canadian authorities cooperate in any way. [continues 110 words]
Keep Taliban Flag in Display, and in Perspective A new Detroit Science Center exhibit on drugs and their connections to terrorism contains many disturbing images, including models of a crack house and cocaine processing lab, and a video on how drugs affect the brain. But it is a handmade flag of the Taliban in Afghanistan, tucked behind a display showing the rubble of 9/11, that has generated the most discomfort. Some Arab Americans and Muslims are upset because they believe the white flag -- proclaiming in Arabic: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah" -- unfairly ties Islam to terrorism and distorts the religion's message. They want the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which created the exhibit, to remove the flag. It's part of a small display on possible connections between the Taliban, Al Qaeda and drug trafficking. [continues 168 words]
The latest episode of American led "reefer madness" is a good example of the world according to Dubya. A Canadian judge allowed our warring neighbours to orchestrate the arrest of a Canadian citizen on our soil, for a crime we don't give a damn about. Just who runs our justice system? A bunch of Texas rednecks? Since when do we arrange the arrest of a Canadian for offences we deem trivial, to face a lifetime in an alien jail? The Americans are facing self destruction from their right wing agenda and under no circumstances should Canadian authorities co-operate in any way. When does this stop? [continues 102 words]
The latest episode of American led "reefer madness" is a good example of the world according to Dubya. A Canadian judge allowed our warring neighbours to orchestrate the arrest of a Canadian citizen on our soil, for a crime we don't give a damn about. Just who runs our justice system? A bunch of Texas rednecks? Since when do we arrange the arrest of a Canadian for offences we deem trivial, to face a lifetime in an alien jail. The Americans are facing self destruction from their right wing agenda and under no circumstances should Canadian authorities co-operate in any way. [continues 109 words]
Forget Meth And Other Hard-Core Drugs -- The Administration Would Rather Waste Taxpayer Dollars In An All-Out Assault On Marijuana America's long-running war on drugs has, literally, gone to pot. More than two decades after it was launched in response to the spread of crack cocaine -- and in the midst of a brand-new wave of methamphetamine use sweeping the country -- the government crackdown has shifted from hard drugs to marijuana. Pot now accounts for nearly half of drug arrests nationwide -- up from barely a quarter of all busts a decade ago. Spurred by a Supreme Court decision in June affirming the right of federal agents to crack down on medical marijuana, [continues 2025 words]
Osama bin Laden tried to buy a massive amount of cocaine, spike it with poison and sell it in the United States, hoping to kill thousands of Americans one year after the 9/11 attacks, The Post has learned. The evil plot failed when the Colombian drug lords bin Laden approached decided it would be bad for their business - and, possibly, for their own health, according to law-enforcement sources familiar with the Drug Enforcement Administration's probe of the aborted transaction. The feds were told of the scheme earlier this year, but its existence had never been made public. The Post has reviewed a document detailing the DEA's findings in the matter, in addition to interviewing sources familiar with the case. [continues 330 words]
LAHORE, Pakistan The terrifying spectacle of a great city once again plunged into chaos and grief underlines one of the more glaring failures of the U.S.-led war on terrorism: the failure to capture Osama bin Laden. Washington has mainly itself to blame. By transferring resources, satellite surveillance and manpower to Iraq, the United States not only took the pressure off bin Laden, but also gave the Taliban, Al Qaeda, drug barons and warlords time and space to reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks are causing the bloodiest summer since 2001. [continues 653 words]
The Man Was Listed As A Possible Terrorist Because He Was Overheard Allegedly Praising Bin Laden The manager of a Middle Eastern restaurant, who was taken into custody because his name turned up on a terrorist watch list, is now facing deportation to his native Egypt because he bought a small amount of marijuana in 1999. Police arrested Basuyouy Mamdouh Ebaid, 44, in February after they say he sold liquor to minors. Officers then ran his name through a computer database, which listed him as a possible terrorist because he was overheard allegedly praising al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and suicide bombers. [continues 265 words]
In a six-to-three vote announced June 6, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied Angel Raich and Diane Monson the right -established by California voters in 1996- to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes. Phony Tony awards go to Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, two of the five justices who advocate limits on federal power but in this case made a War-on-Drugs exception to their "principles." John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion, was joined by Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Steven Breyer. Scalia wrote a concurring opinion trying to justify his switcheroo. Kennedy didn't feel he owed the public an explanation. [continues 4243 words]
Both during and since the recent meeting of President Bush and Afghani President Hamid Karzai, the administration has danced around the critical issue of Afghanistan's growing drug crisis and its impact on the terror threat. The late April arrest of Hajji Bashir Noorzai, whom the Drug Enforcement Administration called the ''Pablo Escobar of heroin trafficking in Asia'' for providing heroin money financing Osama bin Laden, proved once again the connection between Afghan drugs and terrorism. Noorzai even used al Qaeda operatives to transport the heroin out of Afghanistan. [continues 677 words]
