Bush Afghan drug policy slammed

[sabra]

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20061027-123713-5071r

Bush Afghan drug policy slammed

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Afghanistan has become a narco-state funding the Taliban, President Clinton's former drug policy spokesman said Friday.

"Afghanistan has become a narco-state funding the Taliban, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda yet we're passing the buck to Afghanistan, the British, and NATO," Robert Weiner, former spokesman for the White House National Drug Policy Office from 1995 to 2001, said in a statement.

"We need a 'Plan Afghanistan,'" Weiner said. "Afghanistan has just cultivated record opium crops and now supplies 92 percent of the world's heroin-producing opium according to the United Nations this month.

"Inaction against Afghanistan drugs is defeating our own purpose of stopping the funding source of the terrorism against us," he said.

Weiner called the Bush administration's failure to come up with a comprehensive plan to cut back Afghan drug crop growth "incomprehensible."

[dethl]

1. But where else is * gonna get his heroin?

He needs to keep his everlasting high going!

[ovidsen]

2. Afghanistan?? What's that?

Too busy with Iraq I guess. Ignoring Afghanistan, which is bigger, more populous, and chock full of more international terrorists than Iraq's ever had.

U.S. commander in Afghanistan says NATO presence needed for another decade
The Associated Press

Published: October 26, 2006
VANCOUVER, British Columbia The NATO presence in Afghanistan could last at least another decade, the commander of U.S. forces in the central Asian nation said Thursday.

"We need perseverance. We need patience," Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, commander of the Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan, told the Asia Pacific Summit in Vancouver.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/26/america/NA_GEN_Canada_NATO_Afghanistan.php

The incompetence of the Bush White House is mind-boggling.

[High Plains]

3. I'd like to see Weiner's plan...this is a tough nut to crack.

This guy is a drug war hack from the Clinton years. I suspect he's angling to be named drug czar in the event of a Democratic victory in 2008.

We don't need more drug war. We need to end drug prohibition, with all its nasty consequences, and embrace an approach of regulation, taxation, and control.