Is the real reason President Obama would like to keep U.S. troops
in Afghanistan until 2024 to allow the CIA to cash in on its $50 billion
annual opium crop?
When the Taliban ruled Pakistan, it suppressed the opium trade.
It is indisputable this situation radically worsened after the U.S. invaded.
Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research, Montreal, wrote:
"The Taliban prohibition had indeed caused the beginning of a heroin shortage in
Europe by the end of 2001."
After the October 2001 invasion, though, opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the opium
price was almost 10 times higher than in 2000. There was money to be
made.Indeed, noted Canadian journalist Eric Walberg wrote in his "Postmodern Imperialism"(Clarity): "Within two years of the CIA operation in Afghanistan,the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer."
Hewrites, "opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001
to 6100 tons in 2006. In 2007, Afghanistan provided approximately 93% of
the global supply of heroin"" If the Central Intelligence Agency was not involved fang-and-claw in the Afghan drug
trade it would be acting out of character. The CIA's history of dope
peddling is well documented. The practice yielded tidy sums the CIA
could spend at will, without going to Congress.
Keep in mind, too, that President Obama,a former CIA payoller, said when the
CIA asked to expand the drone bomber fleet, "The CIA gets what the CIA
wants." His relationship with the Agency is more than cozy.
In the Fifties, writes William Blum in "Rogue State" (Common Courage
Press), the CIA organized defeated Chinese Nationalist troops in Burma
to wage war against Red China. The Agency closed its eyes to the fact
the soldiers "were becoming the opium barons of The Golden Triangle,"
(parts of Burma, Thailand, and Laos.) The CIA's private Air America,
"flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia, to sites where the opium was
processed into heroin, and to trans-shipment points on the route to
Western customers," Blum reported.
Former Rep. Ron Paul (R.-Tex.), according to the "Huffington Post, told a gathering
of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, that the
CIA was involved in trafficking drugs as part of the Iran-Contra
debacle. Drug trafficking is "a gold mine for
people who want to raise money in the underground government in order to
finance projects that they can't get legitimately," Rep. Paul claimed.
"It is very clear that the CIA has been very much involved with drug
dealings," the Huffington Post quotes him as saying.
Paul said: "The CIA was very much involved in the Iran-Contra scandals. I'm
not making up the stories; we saw it on television. They were hauling
down weapons and drugs back. And the CIA and government officials were
closing their eyes, fighting a war that was technically illegal," Paul said.
In an interview on RT television on
August 20, 2009, Russian General Mahmut Gareev, a former commander in
the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, said, "The U.S. is not going to
stop production of drugs in Afghanistan as it covers the costs of its
military presence there."
Gareev added, "I don't make anything up. Americans themselves admit that drugs are often transported out of Afghanistan on American planes.
Drug trafficking in
Afghanistan brings them about 50 billion dollars a year -- which fully
covers the expenses tied to keeping their troops there."
The general asserted, "They (the Americans) engage in military action only
when they are attacked. They don't have any planned military action to
eliminate the Mujahideen."
The general's observation may go a long way to explain why the U.S. defeated Italy,
Germany and Japan in World War II in just three and a half years while
it has so far spent 12 years in comparatively tiny (30-million people)
Afghanistan and can eke out no "victory."
Is it possible the U.S. has no intention of "winning" the War in
Afghanistan? But instead sees it as a profit-center for milking the
opium crop? Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The United States Criminals In Action (CIA) has been involved in several
drug trafficking operations. Often, the CIA worked with groups which it
knew were involved in drug trafficking, so that these groups would
provide them with useful intelligence and material support, in exchange
for allowing their criminal activities to continue, and impeding or
preventing their arrest, indictment, and imprisonment by U.S. law
enforcement agencies
CIA and Kuomintang (KMT) opium smuggling operations
In order to provide covert funds for the Kuomintang (KMT) forces loyal
to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, who were fighting the Chinese
communists under Mao, the CIA helped the KMT smuggle opium from China
and Burma to Bangkok, Thailand, by providing airplanes owned by one of
their front businesses, Air America.
Historian Alfred W. McCoy stated that:
"In most cases, the CIA's role involved various forms of complicity,
tolerance or studied ignorance about the trade, not any direct
culpability in the actual trafficking ... [t]he CIA did not handle
heroin, but it did provide its drug-lord allies with transport, arms,
and political protection. In sum, the CIA's role in the Southeast Asian
heroin trade involved indirect complicity rather than direct
culpability." Mexico
According to Peter Dale Scott, the Dirección Federal de Seguridad was in
part a CIA creation, and "the CIA's closest government allies were for
years in the DFS". DFS badges, "handed out to top-level Mexican
drug-traffickers, have been labelled by DEA agents a virtual 'license to
traffic.'" Scott says that "The Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico's most
powerful drug-trafficking network in the early 1980s, prospered largely
because it enjoyed the protection of the DFS, under its chief Miguel
Nassar (or Nazar) Haro, a CIA asset."
Iran Contra Affair Main article: CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US
Released on April 13, 1989, the Kerry Committee report concluded that
members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the
Contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras
themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from
drug traffickers."
In 1996 Gary Webb wrote a series of articles published in the San Jose
Mercury News, which investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed
Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then
distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to
the Contras. The CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large
shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel and directly
aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras.
In 1996 CIA Director John M. Deutch went to Los Angeles to attempt to
refute the allegations raised by the Gary Webb articles, and was
famously confronted by former LAPD officer Michael Ruppert, who
testified that he had witnessed it occurring.
Venezuelan National Guard Affair
The CIA - in spite of objections from the Drug Enforcement
Administration, allowed at least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to be
shipped into Miami International Airport. The CIA claimed to have done
this as a way of gathering information about Colombian drug cartels.
But
the cocaine ended up being sold on the street
In November 1996 a Miami jury indicted former Venezuelan anti-narcotics
chief and longtime CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who was
smuggling many tons of cocaine into the United States from a Venezuelan
warehouse owned by the CIA. In his trial defense, Guillen claimed that
all of his drug smuggling operations were approved by the CIA
Haiti
According to unnamed sources in the mid 1980s, the CIA created a unit in
Haiti, whose purported purpose was anti-drug activity, but was in
reality "used as an instrument of political terror", and was heavily
involved in drug trafficking. The members of the unit were known to
torture Aristide supporters, and threatened to kill the local head of
the DEA. According to one U.S. official, the unit was trafficking drugs
and never produced any useful drug intelligence.
Panama The U.S. military invasion of Panama after which dictator Manuel Noriega was captured.
In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just
Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head
of government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra
groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S.-which, in exchange,
allowed him to continue his drug-trafficking activities-which they had
known about since the 1960s. When the DEA tried to indict
Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so.[The CIA,
which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided
Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for
his work in Latin America.[ However, when CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus
was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the
plane revealed many of the CIA's activities in Latin America, and the
CIA's connections with Noriega became a public relations "liability" for
the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for
drug trafficking, after decades of allowing his drug operations to
proceed unchecked.Operation Just Cause, whose ostensible purpose
was to capture Noriega, pushed the former Panamanian leader back into
the town asylum along with Papal Nuncio where he surrendered to U.S.
authorities. His trial took place in Miami, where he was sentenced to 45
years in prison.
See also ;
- War on Drugs,
- United States and state terrorism
- MKULTRA
- Air America
- War crimes committed by the United States
- Human experimentation in the United States CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US
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