Pure lies!

Originally posted by ferretman2
Some of you should learn a little more about Afgainistan.

Afgainistan is desolate....there is no oil, minerals, good farming land or infustructure...it is literally a bronze-age country.....Afgainistan does not produce anything to be exported (except herion).

The reason the afganis grow poppies is becasue poppies are extremely hardy plants.....they can grow in the worst soil.......Since the afganis have nothing else they need to survive somehow.

What you you do to survive?

Couldn't they grow cannabis for pharmaceutical reasons or clothes?

Originally posted by crisko
Hmmm, no credible sources.

This topic (in regards to the U.S.funding drug lords) is bunk

[edit on 13-6-2006 by crisko]

I saw, on 60 MINUTES, a segment about the opium in Afghanistan a while back. They ADMITTED that the production had went up 2000% since the invasion. Do you see that number?

Just another coincidence...



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[edit on 13-6-2006 by mrwupy]

This is taken from the transcript of a BBC programme, Panorama, from 24th July 2005 :

Britain's Heroin Fix (Transcript)

JANE CORBIN (Presenter): Afghanistan wasn't always the world's biggest opium producer. During the Russian occupation in the 80s the rural economy was destroyed and people turned to the easily cultivated poppy. When the Taliban took over they encouraged opium production and took their cut. But by 2000 the pariah regime was seeking international recognition. We've discovered the Taliban did a secret deal, aid from Britain in return for a poppy ban.

As with most things, I imagine the truth is far more complex than we think.

[edit on 13-6-2006 by KhieuSamphan]

www.e-ariana.com...

KANAI - Abdullah, a black-turbaned shepherd, said he was watching over his sheep one night in early February when he heard a plane pass low overhead three times. By morning his eyes were so swollen he could not open them and the sheep around him were dying in convulsions.

Although farmers had noticed a white powder on their crops, they cut grass and clover for their animals and picked spinach to eat anyway. Within hours the animals were severely ill, people here said, and the villagers complained of fevers, skin rashes and bloody diarrhea. The children were particularly affected. A week later, the crops - wheat, vegetables and poppies - were dying, and a dozen dead animals, including newborn lambs, lay tossed in a heap.

The incident on Feb. 3 has left the herders of sheep and goats in this remote mountain area in Helmand Province deeply angered and suspicious. They are convinced that someone is surreptitiously spraying their lands or dusting them with chemicals, presumably in a clandestine effort to eradicate Afghanistan's bumper poppy crop, the world's leading source of opium.

The incident in Kanai was not the first time that Afghan villagers - or Afghan government officials - had complained of what they suspected was nighttime spraying. In November, villagers in Nimla, in Nangarhar Province, said their fields, too, had been laced with chemicals when a plane passed overhead several times during the night.

Afterward, Afghan and foreign officials who investigated returned with samples of tiny gray granules that they said provided evidence that spraying had occurred. Two Western embassies sent samples abroad for analysis but have not yet received the results.

At that time, President Hamid Karzai publicly condemned the spraying. Though it was never clear who was responsible, members of his staff said they suspected the United States or Britain, which together have been leading the struggle to rein in Afghan poppy cultivation, which has reached record levels. Both countries finance outside security firms to train Afghan counternarcotics forces.

President Karzai said his government was not spraying fields and had no knowledge of such activity, and he called in the American and British ambassadors for an explanation. Then, as now, the American and British Embassies denied any involvement.

"There is no credible evidence that aerial spraying has taken place in Helmand," the American Embassy said in a statement this time. "No agency, personnel or contractors associated with the United States government have conducted or been involved in any such activity in Helmand or any other province of Afghanistan."

What does this tell you...I wonder?

Yet American officials have not ruled out the possible need for aerial eradication and financing, which was included in a supplemental request in February for $82 billion by the Bush administration for Iraq and Afghanistan, an American counternarcotics official in Kabul said.

One option considered by American officials last year was to rent civilian planes and spray the general weed killer Roundup over the provinces of Helmand and Badakhshan, two of the largest producers of poppies in the country, according to one official familiar with the plan.

American military officials in Afghanistan and those with the United States Agency for International Development are also against aerial spraying, foreign officials in Kabul say. Development officials argue that spraying will affect all agriculture and especially the poorest farmers; instead, they advocate alternative livelihood programs for farmers to dissuade them from growing poppies.

The military fears that spraying will turn the population against the government and the American presence in Afghanistan and increase support for insurgents, who remain active in southern Afghanistan.

In fact, the belief that they have been sprayed has angered villagers all the more because the local police came here only 40 days before and destroyed their poppy fields on government orders, a fact that the district police chief, Abdul Hakim Karezwal, confirmed.

The farmers said they had instead planted wheat, which was now yellow and rotting along with the clover, spinach and greens they had also planted. Some farmers kept growing small patches of poppies inside high garden walls, but most of the fields in the village showed shoots of young wheat.

"Karzai lied to us," one farmer, Ahmadullah, said. "He said, 'We will give you assistance,' and he didn't. So we grew poppy to be able to feed our families. Then the president ordered it destroyed and so we destroyed it. And now he is destroying our wheat. What will be left of our lives? They destroyed everything. We will have to abandon the village."

Well theres the reason why we have so much problems in eradicating the poppies. It just gonna make people mad in Afghanistan.

Originally posted by deltaboy
www.e-ariana.com...

What does this tell you...I wonder?

It tells me that if that story is true, the U.S indiscriminately sprayed an unknown substance all over the farmers, their animals, and their crops. Killing crops of wheat, and vegetables, as well as Poppies. Animals also died, and people became sick, according to that report. I hope you aren't trying to use this as back up for your claims that the interim government and the U.S are doing everything they can to wipe out Poppies. Just what did you intend for that report to tell us?

Originally posted by deltaboy
Well theres the reason why we have so much problems in eradicating the poppies. It just gonna make people mad in Afghanistan.

Was that supposed to be a joke? We can't stop the flow of Opium out of that country because 'It just gonna make people mad in Afghanistan?" That's absurd.






[edit on 13-6-2006 by Communication_Burger]

Originally posted by Communication_Burger
Clearly our little War on Drugs isn't working, just like the War on Terror. More Drugs, more Terror, you know the routine by now. How can the biggest bunch of Terrorists on the planet conduct any kind of effective War on Terror? How can we trust the biggest Dealers who ever walked the face of the Earth to eliminate the flow of Drugs? It's insane. I'm sick of the lies. The media are now trying to just whitewash everything, and they are getting away with it. Sky News last night was the last straw.

Something must be done!

Propaganda and ratings. That's what the Media is all about. Misinformation is the middle name of the Media.

Wisconsin

I remember when the US was gearing up to invade Afghanistan, there was a report released by the UN in which it was stated that the Taliban had all but eradicated poppy cultivation in that country.

Simultaneously, I remember the US publishing a report which claimed precisely the opposite. Surprise, the USG's line was the one the mainstream media went with.

Months after the invasion, the stories began to emerge about how opium production was rising again after years of falling under the Taliban. THEN, surprise surprise, reports started coming in about how the US was warning the UK that massively increased heroin production would cause an upswing in addiction.

I wonder which US base they flew the UK market heroin into?

Originally posted by Communication_Burger


Was that supposed to be a joke? We can't stop the flow of Opium out of that country because 'It just gonna make people mad in Afghanistan?" That's absurd.

Think of this way, what would your reaction be if the govt destroyed your only source of income to feed your family. Its really simple.

Originally posted by deltaboy
Think of this way, what would your reaction be if the govt destroyed your only source of income to feed your family. Its really simple.

It's not their only source of income though. Wheat and Vegetables can be planted. It's not as profitable as Skag Farming, I know, but at least it's a decent, honest, living.