Being totally incompetant. Remember a country called Afghanistan? The one we went and invaded with you know, actual justification. The one where there was virtually no dissent from anyone on the war waged there? That place. The one that the 1600 Crew tried to starve of reconstruction funds. The place where the 1600 Crew allowed Osama bin Forgotten to haul ass and thumb his nose at Preznit Kissin' Condi.
Remember all that vaunted Democracy? Well, as in all things it touches, the 1600 Crew is managing to do what Fearless Leader does best: Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.
Heroin production is booming in Afghanistan, undermining democracy and putting money in the coffers of terrorists, according to a U.N. report Thursday that called on U.S. and NATO-led forces get more involved in fighting drug traffickers.
``Fighting narcotics is equivalent to fighting terrorism,'' said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. ``It would be an historical error to abandon Afghanistan to opium, right after we reclaimed it from the Taliban and al-Qaida.''
...
Opium is the ``main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples,'' the report said. It valued the trade at $2.8 billion, or more than 60 percent of Afghanistan's 2003 gross domestic product.
Most is smuggled across the eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida remnants demand transit and protection fees, Costa told reporters.
And folks wonder what was going through that swiss-cheese inside his skull when he traded Sammy Sosa; the same thing that's going through it now: Nothing. Preznit Rexall Wrangler: a $5,000 suit on a buck-fifty intellect with six-bits of common sense. No Shit. All that policy-making and evasion of duty, it's Hard Work.
posted by Jo Fish on 11.18.04 at 07:30 PM
Comments:
buck fitty intellect?
Damm Jo, yer sure givin him the benefit of the doubt.
I say the 6 bits of common sense is a mighty loooooooooooong stretch too.
posted by: Barndog on 11.18.04 at 08:24 PM [permalink]
I remember stuff about opium production having been almost, if not completely, shut down under the Taliban. At $2.8B in revenue, that's a lot of dough. Wouldn't put it past some of them New England Old-Money-from-Rum-and-Slave-trade families to want to keep the opium fields in production. It's just a thought, wish I had a way to track it down.
Yes, 6 bits seems a mite generous. And any self-respecting (pet) billy goat would be offended at the comparison.
posted by: Brenda Helverson on 11.19.04 at 10:05 AM [permalink]
Seems like I recall the Bushies gave the Taliban some kind of award pre-9-11 for shutting down the heroin trade. I could be wrong about that, though.
posted by: Tony Goins on 11.19.04 at 10:17 AM [permalink]
So, I take it that you don't believe the very well-repeated story about Carlyle Group having an interest (as an overseer, not as a direct handler) in the Afghani bumper crop?
posted by: Lurch on 11.19.04 at 10:29 AM [permalink]
Hardly any dissent? I don't recall that. I recall lots and lots of folks saying bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age wouldn't solve anything and wouldn't get bin Laden or his stateless organization, that it would be far better to use spy networks and treat 9-11 like the mass crime it was rather than as a declaration of war.
