Posner: Taliban trying to addict US soldiers to heroin
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Investigative journalist Gerald Posner told MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan that the Taliban is using heroin as a tactical weapon against US soldiers. "They understand this is an additional weapon and getting their money, as you said, from the heroin and opium crop and looking at the possibility of hooking Americans not only on the cheap heroin but according to the U.S. intelligence report and picking up conversations, they developed the ability now for smokeable heroin," explained Posner.
The Daily Beast has more details here.
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And who is surprised. The CIA will be sure to supply the newly minted junkies when they return to the USA. For a substantial profit, it should be understood.
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End the wars, dismantle the Corporate Perpetual War Machine.
on point.
I wonder if the CIA will use the drones for local transport.
The arrogant government of U.S. spends billions of our tax money a year ,, to fight a small group of so-called terrorist , insurgents. They grow drugs to fight against our multi-billion dollar weapons,,, And we call ourselves the mightiest country/military on the face of the earth..
We have the greatest supply of expensive weapons which has put the American citizens in the poor house or no house at all...
What do you believe will happen to our soldiers when they return to our country to live with their additions..
What does this say about our leaders ability to lead???
Bush """ the enemy is trying to destroy us and So are we!!!!!
and "we" are winning. we'll destroy us because no one else can.
I thought RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris already made that.
And Jim Beam.
My sister kicked crack and tobacco and I was more surprised about the tobacco if I am honest. I am an ex-smoker and though I can never smoke again, I still look wistfully at packs of Marlboro Ultra-Lights.
Smackheads here in Britain already have smokeable heroin. My hubby helped his workmate stop smoking it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G1tRCfMNxc&fe...
Posner is an idiot/propagandist. The CIA is a collection of liars.
.
Based on what exactly? I've only seen him a few times, but I have always found him to be spot on and better than the average so-called journalists we have today.
I'd say primarily on the fact that smokable heroin isn't anything new at all. The stuff is all over the freaking suburbs. Why wouldn't it be available to the troops as well?
Sounds like he's reading old Vietnam stories and changing the location to Afghanistan.
He's an idiot because his book "Case Closed", claims Lee Oswald acted alone. Even other single gunman advocates have said his explanations are completely chaotic.
He's a propagandist because he purports to have access to inside CIA information. He is a piss poor propaganda outlet for the CIA.
And he dresses funny.
game set and match!
:)
Dishonorable discharges, denial of addiction treatment and health care in general. Welcome home, boys!
They already don't treat our soldiers for PTSD and any other mental/ emotional ailments that come from fighting wars, so I would not be shocked by them denying addiction treatment.
God, this makes me sad. War is indeed hell.
Our heroes are attempting to become heroines?
Now there's a scoop fer ya!
don't tell.
Don't smell! There's nothing worse than herion smoke on a potentially psychotic date.
I enjoy how these "Taliban=Heroin!" articles always neglect to mention that the Northern Alliance was *entirely* financed by opium money (well, not counting the CIA money), and that the the US gubmint gave the Taliban 10s of millions of dollars ($39m? the exact number excapes me) for their poppy ERADICATION efforts.
Drugs are bad, mmmmkay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-AfOhyn_S4
:)
what, like you couldn't smoke heroin before?
hell, if I was stuck over there in that shithole, I'd do smack, too.
and lighter fluid if i were in that shithole
Afghanistan and it will be reported on FOX that it is because of his heroin addiction.
Gee ... sounds familiar ... hmmm lemme check
doop-de-doo- ...
gosh here we go:
Article: SOVIET SOLDIERS IN AFGHANISTAN USING MORE HEROIN, US OFFICIALS SAY
Article from:
The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
Article date:
January 31, 1987
Author:
Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff CopyrightCopyright 1987 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
The use of heroin among Soviet troops in Afghanistan is increasing, according to US officials.
Officials in the Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department said recent intelligence reports suggest that the increase in heroin use is linked to morale problems among Soviet troops.
The officials said some supporters of Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet forces claimed that they were selling heroin to the soldiers to weaken the Russian war effort.
On Thursday, a spokesman for the Afghan Embassy in Washington called the reports of increased heroin use among Soviet troops "not true." He declined further comment.
Repeated efforts to reach officials at the Soviet Embassy in ...
Good catch, Earl. Plus I liked the little sounds as you looked up the article.
I remember the nightmare that was Russia vs Afghanistan ... too bad Baby Bu$h didn't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFy3gPzuGQc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4s-8zhSJP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2yZHJhpFLg
I was in college during the Soviet-Afghan war and this was discussed in one of my political science classes. The professor said Afghanistan had turned into USSR's Vietnam. The war was going nowhere, over 10,000 Soviet troops had died, and morale was below low. And as the American soldiers in Vietnam had partaken of the local recreational substances, so were the Soviets, except this time the drug of choice was heroin. Oh, yeah, and the Soviet public, largely due to their declining economic situation (sound familiar?), was heavily against the war. And, what, three years after withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Soviet Union collapsed. There is some famous line about history that very well applies here...I didn't even major in poly sci and I was against sending our troops into Afghanistan.
... too bad Baby Bu$h majored in Jack Daniels with a minor in Cheerleading, what could possibly go wrong?
i like the sound of that so i had to repeat it.
but regardless of great sounds, i take umbrage here because those russian soldiers were not fighting for the lord, their's was a godless country (at the time). without god, they were weak and were obvious targets for the dark lord's sweet sugar. our war is different. our war is great. our war will...aw screw it. you are right, i just wanted to say doop de doo.
yeah sometimes (like the last 8 yrs ...doop-dee-do is all you can say ... BOYCOTT NEWSCORP c'mon do it!
http://www.cjr.org/resources/?c=newscorp
Smoking opium was prevalent in Viet Nam. Many soldiers were addicted. The similarities between Viet Nam and Afghanistan wars are disturbing.
Opium was cheap and plentiful in Nam and it came back with the troops. The difference, in my opinion, is that Opium was not cheap or plentiful in the US, so crack and meth filled the void.
Lets face it. War is fucked up and should be a last resort always. The problem is that it is so damned profitable for the defense industry and if we don't have a war every so often, people will be led to the natural assumption that maybe we do not need to spend as much as we do on National Defense.
That is what kills me on the Health Care debate. One year in Afganistan and Iraq would pay for 10 years of healthcare. Do we have our priorities in order, or what?
From what I've read on Vietnam, the US and France sought to control the opium cartel in Vietnam and use them to support Diem. I'm wondering if the same type of thing is occurring in Afghanistan.
.... when you get government and corporations in bed together.
You can expect ugly children at the very best.
The OSS supported the Golden Triangle warlords against the Imperial Japanese by buying their opium base and morphine, in exchange for weapons. After WW2 ended, this same business relationship was adopted in the USA's fight against the Red Chinese. When the National Security Act of 1947 became law, the OSS morphed into the CIA, with the same leadership and the same agendas.
The CIA escalated these programs in Central and South America against emerging left-of-center regimes, including land-reform/liberation theology movements like the Sandanistas (Iran-Contra debacle). The CIA has Always been involved in the illicit drug trade - this source of funding allows CIA covert operations outside the purview of Congressional oversight.
It was no surprise (to me) that the CIA would fly plane-loads of USA currency to the Northern Alliance to buy their assistance against the Taliban and al-Queda. I have no doubt that these drug warlords were "forgotten" allies left over from the war against the Soviet Russian invasion of 1979. All of this puts the Big Lie to the USA's Global War on Drugs, more aptly called our Global War OF Drugs.
Anyone that denies the many parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan have either been drinking the NeoCon M-I-C Corporatist Kool-Aid, are directly benefiting as war profiteers, or have their proverbial heads stuck up their bung-holes.
It is long overdue for the USA and its allies to find a graceful peace settlement, like a coalition government with the less radical Taliban, and get out. Most of the Afghanis are rural, dirt-poor, and fiercely independent - a surge of cash like that which fueled the Sunni Awakening in Iraq, to hire and train a rural militia against any further ingress by al-Queda, would be our ticket out of there. It would still be far cheaper than the blood and treasure we are wasting there today.
Just call it an extension of the American War and there are no problems with continuity. Vietnam -> Afghanistan -> Iraq -> Afghanistan The theater changes, but the production company is the same.
Is smokeable heroin something new?
Nope, ten to fifteen years ago we had yuppie teenagers in Plano TX dropping dead from smokable heroin. They didn't think they were junkies if there was no needle.
Of course it might be new in Afghanistan.
just left you a reply back at the McChrystal leak post. Oddly enough we're even more contemporaries then you thought. I did my last 11 months in the Army's Communications Command.
"Chase the Dragon"
"Black Tar"
our "war" against al qaida? or whomever it is we are now fighting in the middle east?
"chasing the dragon" seems to have all of the same qualities
it's been around for ages. And opium, the base for heroin, is smoked, as I'm sure you are aware.
didn't they chase the dragon in goodfellas?
they just sprinkled the h on heated tinfoil and breathed the fumes
so, what is so special about this new and improved h?
New Sony notebook PC in Poppy Pink
The opportunity to claim any sort of victory has passed long ago and no matter what we say, 8 years sure looks like an occupation, especially by the occupied.
Terrorists should be handled by policing, not military actions. Even if we left now, we will continue to pay the costs of this war for years to come.
PTSD, lost limbs, and now heroin addictions.
Don't our soldiers deserve better than this?
They deserve better. Quite often they haven't gotten better.
Mercenaries, thats what they are. American troops are mercenaries plane and simple. They fight for Corporate Scumbags. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, then Iran and Pakistan. Always chasing the boogey man, pathetic. Fine young men but stupid. Unemployed? Go join the fucking Army and kill innocent people. Shock and Awe and boo yah. The bravest are the hot shot pilots killing whoever with nobody shooting back, real men my ass, and these so called winged warriors have got college degrees.
and killing people by remote control from half-way around the fucking globe. I was glad to hear (iirc, on Terri Gross today) that these baby killers are actually suffering PTSD...
Can we leave that country now?
Dave
Viet Vet
has been around longer - late 70s, that I first heard of it. My vague recollection was that it was mixed/cut/some-process with caffiene (as in No-Doz or similar). Also, that smoking heroin was considered wasteful/inefficient/sissy versus other means.
Then again, this was told to me by some junkies that I eventually evicted from a building I managed while I was in college, so who knows.
in the early 80's when I was in Germany. I think they just sprinkled it into their tobacco there but I'm not sure.
Speaking of tobacco, are we not trying to get the world addicted to cigarettes?
...to the 17th Century (AD).
...opium.
this?
Sounds like a buncha hooey to me.
The country is filled with opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) ever since the US Military 'took over' the country. The Taliban had wiped it out for the most part. Loads of Viet Nam vets came back addicted to the stuff, and I am unaware of there having been big opium poppy grow ops in Nam.
Just because a guy lies almost all of the time doesn't mean he lies all of the time.
Go to a foreign third world country where people are shooting at you everyday and you see buddies die, every day.
Escapist drugs start to look pretty damned good after a while. You convince yourself that you need it to get through the days.
All the Taliban has to do is make sure its there, as it has been for hundreds of years.
Heroin has been smoked for longer then this idiots been alive. And if he took his worthless ass over to Afghanistan and went outside Kabul he'd most likely find that warlords NOT aligned with the Taliban are the main suppliers of opium and heroin. With a little help from their CIA allies of course.
Hell, us Brits tried something reminiscent of this with China.
The Taliban is over their trying to get our young men an women addicted to heroin while conservatives and the military industrial complex here tries to get them addicted to war.
Tough being a young American these days.
And some of the best reefer you EVER tasted.
Good times.
n/t
I'd rather be a roper than a hippie doper.
a stump-broke heifer?
In the article, the author states that "the true extent of the heroin problem among American soldiers now serving in Afghanistan, and Iraq, is unknown." This means to me that there needs to be more research on this issue before people can accurately state what is or is not occurring. Essentially, there are no stats to back-up this guy's assertions. Thus, this article is nothing more than a propaganda piece to show Americans how "evil" the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are (i.e. see...the Taliban is using heroin to fight our soldiers). Furthermore, the article doesn't even address the reason why deployed soldiers start using drugs in the first place -- the answer isn't because the Taliban is using heroin as a tactical weapon. Finally, this article begins on the false premise that the Vietnam War could have actually been won if it wasn't "undermined by heroin addiction among U.S. troops" and in turn, implies that Afghanistan is winnable if the US and its soldiers don't fall into the same pitfalls like they did in Vietnam (a standard neo-con revisionist viewpoint of Vietnam..."We could have won Vietnam if we had more troops" or whatever is the excuse de jour). This article by Mr. Posner is tripe and should have not even been posted online. Really.
I would suggest Mr. Posner put down whatever he's smoking that allowed him to write such a dishonest piece and pick up a book like Vietnam and America: A Documented History. Maybe then, he might write something that is fit to print.
but if it happened to the Soviets, and 90% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan, isn't it worth bringing up the issue for debate and possible intervention? (My intervention would be to get the hell out of there.) Poser admits "these problems don't show up until 5-10 years after the conflict." Former CIA guy Jack Rice says he has spoken to soldiers who say heroin is "everywhere" in Afghanistan. I don't get the accusation of a dishonest story here.
....and war atrocities. ALWAYS!
It is the nature of the beast and we should be aware of this going in.
The bright side is that this is easily avoidable by avoiding war.
production before the invasion and now it's everywhere wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the occupation by the US military is trying to get US soldiers hooked? Because there was NO necessity for the invasion and occupation. If soldiers are indeed getting hooked on heroin it's the fault of the Bush administration not the Taliban. Hell even IF the Taliban ARE responsible for the opium production, which I highly question, I'd expect the GOPers to be cheering on their free market ideas.
I'm not disagreeing with him on military personnel use of heroin in Afghanistan. That's not my problem with his article. I do think that drug addiction among military personnel is a very serious problem that should be addressed in a caring, supportive way as should be the case for all people who are addicted to drugs whether legal or not.
The reason why I think his article is dishonest is because he fallaciously attributes deployed soldier heroin use and addiction to a new military tactic from the Taliban instead of a more likely cause: war is hell and when it's not hell soldiers are bored. But, see I am speculating now as is this author because he gives no strong facts or statistics or anything to back up his assertion -- he even states on page two of his article that a lot is unknown about military heroin use in Afghanistan. He just states that the Taliban is trying to make American soldiers addicts in order for us to "lose" the war.
My other point is the framing of the entire article. He comes from this idea that somehow the Vietnam War was winnable; yet, it is clear in the light of history that Vietnam was never and will never be a winnable war. Then, he uses this faulty neo-con revisionist framework -- that the US could have won the Vietnam War-- to infer that in order for the US to "win" in Afghanistan and not "lose" like we did in Vietnam we must stop the Taliban from making our soldiers into heroine addicts. His framing infers that if the US only did this we could possibly "win" the war in Afghanistan when in reality we will never "win" anything there.
Finally, he doesn't even try to make the logical point that our soldiers wouldn't be inundated with heroin if we had decided not to invade Afghanistan. Thus, Posner negates the critical role that the US government had in the creation of military heroin addicts and dismisses any US governmental responsibility to these poor people who are now heroin addicts. He is using the Taliban as a scapegoat for the problems created by the US government. Based on these reasons, I see his article as a dishonest framing and discussion of the issue of military personnel heroin addiction in Afghanistan.
And, I guess another thing is that correlation does not imply causation.
Remi9nd me again why we haven't just dropped tons of napalm on the poppy fields over the last 8 years?
....we had with Agent Orange in Nam?
a typical response from one of those heroic jet jockeys that keep "fucking up" and in the course of their hazardous mission kill large groups of innocent civilians. Then again it could be someone who watches way to much of the Military Channel. All The Right Stuff.
....is not interrupted.
I don't mind that we went into Afganistan, but we should have taken care of business and got out in a couple years max.
Trying to be "Nation Builders" or spreaders of Democracy is a lost cause and we do it poorly.
China, on the other hand, goes in and builds hospitals and schools. Assuming you are a citizen in a country that sure feels "occupied", which country are you going to look more favorably on?
just ask any neocon.
Hey, it worked in 'Nam, and in the 80's in Afghanistan against the Soviets. It even worked for the CIA (suppliers) and US citizens (users) in the Iran-Contra deal.
Reason #861 to get our boys out of the Middle East now.
the cycle just never ends, does it?
Posner's terrible book (Cased Closed) was published to coincide with the Stone JFK movie, and was trumpeted by all the usual MSM outlets. The deserved drubbing occurred once people had a chance to review his methodologies. No matter, he had moved on to writing about another "lone gunman" James Earl Ray, with a book timed to deflect attention from the King family's civil suit.
Issues with the Afghan heroin story? Does he ever say that most if not all of the poppy-producing regions are under NATO control, and the drug routes travel through NATO controlled regions and enclaves? Didn't think so.
The first junkie that really made sense to me was a llBravo from the Nam that I met in New York City. I tried to say, hey, you're a decent guy, why do you do that shit?
He said, how many problems do you have? I started listing them, women, sex, my future and on and on and on. He said, "I only have one problem, when and where do I score next?" Made sense to me, couple of days later I opened the door of his cubicle and asked for my guard that hadn't shown up. He said, It's cool, It's so and so, he's cool. My guard was drooling and vomiting. He took the guard."
These people are coming home,people.
My top sergeant in finance would go to have a nap. When he came back and drooled, I'd hit him with the shit that wasn't right. People estimated that since he had not left Vietnam for R & R or for reenlistment leave for four years that his addiction was over $1000 per day if he paid stateside rates.
What happened to just smoking the opium?
He is a better source of Drug information than listed in that report or could be; He is a Drug Lord.
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