Two soldiers shot in the head at Bagram in Afghanistan, doing payroll?

[babylonsister]

http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/2007/10/lying-liars-2-s.html

snip//

But the most impossible thing that has become possible came with the death and story about Ciara Durkin, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

CBS/AP) Exactly how Ciara Durkin died remains a mystery. The Army National Guard soldier from Massachusetts was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan last week, and now her family is demanding answers from the military. Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries “suffered from a non-combat related incident” at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation. Durkin had a desk job doing payroll in an office about three miles inside the secure Bagram Air Base. About 90 minutes after she left work last Friday, her family says she was found dead near a chapel on the base with a single gunshot wound to the head.

The reason my head went a-spinnin’ at the news is that it sounded horribly familiar. Juan Torres’ son John was also shot in the head, at Bagram, and John was…part of a finance unit. Doing payroll.

************************


http://www.nationinstitute.org/ifunds/15/it_s_easy_for_soldiers_to_score_heroin_in_afghanistan

snip//

At the Bagram Bazaar, as I stood waiting for the teen courier to return with my order, I compared shopping for junk in Afghanistan in 2007 to shopping for junk in 2006. In May of 2006, I had toured the shops for the first time with Juan Torres and Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi, who served as guide and translator. Juan Torres' son, Spc. John Torres, was found dead of a gunshot wound while serving at Bagram in July of 2004. At the time Spc. Torres' family, and some members of his unit, believed he may have been killed for speaking out about heroin use on base. John's death turned out to be attributable to another cause, which became the subject of the film I am now completing, but his accusations about the ready availability of heroin, and similar claims by other Bagram soldiers, had prompted me to investigate how heroin was making its way to U.S. soldiers.

**************************

Drug-related Murders in the Military or something else?
by MichiganGirl
Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 12:59:09 AM PDT

While reading the comments in Ekaterin's excellent dairy Slain Soldier Feared 'Something Might Happen to Her', I was struck by a comment thread about Afghanistan's heroin trade.

snip//

So off I went to the google, because I had intended to find links to the articles that I had read, and post them in that comment thread... Only I think I may have found something else:

Apparently this seems to be a reoccurring theme at Bagram Airfield. It seems Bagram Airfield has a bit of a heroin problem.

Another coincidence is that Spc. Durkin isn't the only Spc. that had reported things they didn't like at Bagram, only to end up with a bullet in their head under suspicious circumstances.

The circumstances surrounding Spc. Juan Torres' death at Bagram Airfield in 2004 seem eerily *similar to Spc. Durkin's.

As usual, Seymour Hersh was on top of the storie WAY before anyone else. The man is rather amazing isn't he? Sy Hersh is a National Treasure.

I am now wondering if Spc. Durkin and Spc. Torres deaths were drug-related murders, or is it possible that Spc. Durkin stumbled upon whatever it was that got Spc. Torres killed in 2004? I've tried to find more information about Spc. Torres' death on the google, but there really isn't much from sources that seem very credible.


more...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/4/3292/84543

*********************

[bigscott]

1. I did not know

that Ciara Durkin was an out lesbian. I just read about her in the New England gay-rag INEWSWeekly. Why do i believe this had something to do with it!?!

[babylonsister]

3. I don't think that at all; she was worried about something she found

at work.

[Tesha]

18. Perhaps because she was surrounded by men with guns, penises, and no other outlets...

Perhaps because she was surrounded by men with guns, penises,
nd no other outlets for their aggressions, sexual and otherwise?

Tesha

[formercia]

2. Gangstas in the military...

it was bound to happen.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[zeemike]

4. Or the drug thing could be a red hearing

Reporting drug abuse will not get you killed because they can always cover it up with no problem.
But if billions of dollars are in question then death is the only sure way to stop the squealers.

[formercia]

8. There maybe no connection to the killing.

but there surely is a drug issue there.

I would suspect phony disbursements to contractors.

[xchrom]

5. drugs and the military -- afghanistan -- by way of the invasion --

has become a paradise for opium poppy production.

well -- why wouldn't the drug make it's way to american military personnel?

it's certainly not the first time that drugs and our military have become intimately involved.

and that someone or someones have been making a sideline business out of it.

there were all kinds of soldiers involved in the drug biz in viet nam.

it's just not a huge leap to think that these paths have intersected.

[fed-up]

6. and Jan 2005 article-"Meth reportedly fueling fanaticism in Iraq"-North County Times (CA)

Jan 2005 article-"Meth reportedly fueling fanaticism in Iraq"-North County Times (CA)

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/01/07/news/columnists/another_tilt/20_38_341_6_05.txt

Meth reportedly fueling fanaticism in Iraq
Last modified Thursday, January 6, 2005 11:45 PM PST

By: J. STRYKER MEYER - Staff Writer

As the war in Iraq goes on, it's interesting to note that our combat troops are finding a chemical element used by enemy combatants that is commonly used by crooks, thieves and other social degenerates in the United States: forms of the illegal stimulant methamphetamine.

..snip

One military man told me: "It was surprising to us as to how much crystal meth, or some other form of methamphetamine, that the bad guys had in Fallujah. ... Sometimes it was hard understanding what to us was insane conduct ---- even in combat situations ---- until we realized many of them were hyped on meth. They acted as though they were impervious to our gunfire sometimes, which meant it might take a few extra rounds to kill 'em."

..snip

Additionally, methamphetamine abusers in the United States are capable of heinous crimes against friends, relatives and neighbors, all in the quest to get money to feed their nasty drug habit. Ask any cop on the street. They can tell you that they can pick out most methamphetamine abusers in a matter of seconds, compared with people who abuse heroin, cocaine or ecstasy.

...snip
In Iraq, the military is running into an enemy who is driven not only by religious fanaticism, but whose motivation to harm U.S. troops is fueled by methamphetamine.

This isn't the first time U.S. military forces have run into combatants using some version of methamphetamine to get their high before going into combat. During the Vietnam War, Marines fighting outside of Da Nang and later in Khe Sahn reported combating communist troops who were high on some sort of stimulant.

..snip

[formercia]

7. Coffins full of China White.

Delivery to the bereaved family.

[flyarm]

9. somehow those poppies are making it to Turkey..to be processed..into heroin

and moved throughout Europe..and gee who is in charge in Afganistan?? let me think...:sarcasm:

and somewhere a profit is being made..and where is that money being funneled?? by who and to who?

I have read that Turkey has the processing centers and wearhouses for the Heroin porduction..so who is getting it there..who is paying to get it there? who is benefiting from getting it there..and who is doing the books?????????

Did these two soldiers stumble on it?..was it being put through our military channels?

i just wonder..


meantime two of our soldiers are shot in the head..forever taken from their families.

fly

[TheLastMohican]

17. You might want to research Camp Bondsteele

Yep, this is Kosovo. A lot of narcotics end up there through flights from Afganistan and later are being distributed by Albanian drug mafia throughout Europe.

[Richard Steele]

19. Not any more. The Afghan Heroin Industry has modernized, and expanded like never before.

They aren't exporting raw poppies these days. They've built
large industrial processing plants, and are producing the
heroin right at the source. Keeping that extra layer of profit
in the Afghan warlords' pockets.

Here's on story about it from the UK's "Daily Mail":
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=469983&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true

[AntiFascist]

20. That is an excellent article, it explains much!

...

Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

...

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

...

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

...

But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan.

...

But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility.

[Joanne98]

10. I'm not buying the drug use theory. I'm thinking money laudering!

[babylonsister]

11. I'm thinking that, too.

:thumbsup:

[xchrom]

14. where there is money laundering there are drugs and drug use.

we alredy know from experiences like viet nam that our troops are not immune to using drugs.

i mean these are americans after all -- and drug use in our culture is hardly unknown.

[watercolors]

12. my grandson is in Bragam

he has said there is a problem with drugs. All of their winter cloths went missing, they were in storage, they figure they were stolen.

[babylonsister]

15. May he stay safe, watercolors!

:hi:

[AntiFascist]

16. The Russian mafiya heroin drug trade appears to be huge...

and some claim that Bagram airbase is a major transfer point. Here is an article by Peter Dale Scott:


http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm

...

How the U.S. Restored Narco-Barons to Power in Afghanistan, 2001

It is clear that the Blair and Bush Administrations did have drugs in mind when in 2001 they developed a strategy for ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their plans focused chiefly on Ahmad Shah Massoud, overcoming the long-time resistance in Washington to supporting this known drug trafficker.<100>

...

If Raman is correct, therefore, the CIA not only blessed but controlled the flow of drugs from Afridi, Zaman, and Abdul Qadeer into the hands of Soviet troops like Vladimir Filin and Aleksei Likhvintsev.<105>