Two Plus Two, Part 7

We continue with our Two Plus Two series; previous installments are at these links:

Two Plus Two, Part 1

Two Plus Two, Part 2

Two Plus Two, Part 3

Two Plus Two, Part 4

Two Plus Two, Part 5

Two Plus Two, Part 6

We begin with an article entitled McCAIN AND THE KLA CONNECTION by Justin Raimondo -- from February 25, 2000. I have reproduced the text in its entirety, with much of its formatting but not its links, and interspersed my comments.

George W. Bush has been taken out to the woodshed by the liberals for appearing on the stage at Bob Jones University – in this day and age, to even appear on a platform provided by a politically incorrect group or institution is enough to condemn a candidate to perdition. And the McCain campaign was quick to capitalize on it. But why isn't McCain subjected to the same scrutiny? Please direct your attention to the photo below: the caption informs us that McCain is speaking at "a pro-Kosovo, pro-McCain rally across the street from his New York City hotel Friday morning, Feb. 11, 2000. McCain is in New York for the day to attend fundraisers and to talk to the press before returning to South Carolina Friday night." But who is the man on the right, with the colorful KLA scarf and his big mouth wide open? The caption-writer is mute on this point, but to anyone who knows anything about New York's ethnic politics, the face is all-too-familiar: it is none other than former Republican Congressman Joe DioGuardi, now the loquacious leader of the Albanian-American Civic League (AACL) – a group that not only actively represents the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in America, but whose leader has become a spokesman for the most radical fringe elements of the KLA.

Here is an image from that article, showing the photo in question:



See also McCain's Ties to Islamic Terrorists -- and Heroin Traffickers?, Smuggler's Blues, Part 1, Smuggler's Blues, Part 2 and The Next Two Balkan Wars.

WHO IS JOE DIOGUARDI?

DioGuardi is an extremist who lost his seat in Congress because his growing preoccupation with creating a "Greater Albania" did not exactly fit in with the pothole-fixing skills that must be the first concern of New York City politicians. Most Albanian-Americans support independence for Kosovo, and look with disdain and bewilderment at the US government's official position that Kosovo is still an "autonomous" province of Yugoslavia. But DioGuardi goes one step – indeed, several steps – further, and envisions a "Greater Albania." Visitors to AACL's website are confronted with a map of this Albanian Empire, which, as Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute said in his testimony before Congress, illustrates "a breathtaking agenda," including as it does "Albania, Kosovo, western Macedonia (along with its capital, Skopje), southeastern Montenegro (along with its capital, Podgorica), northern Greece, and southern Serbia (north of Kosovo)." A comment found in Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch newsletter on this outrageous map hit the nail on the head:

"When I first saw this map it struck a recollection of something I had seen before. It occurred to me that it is quite similar to one I have (printed by the State Department in 1947) of interim territorial arrangements during World War II. I can understand that there is an element of hyperbole in critics' calling NATO's air campaign "Nazi," but fail to see what interest the United States has in helping to restore the Nazi-imposed borders of 1943 or how this helps preserve European stability."

THE KLA: A SHORT HISTORY

It is well-known that the original straight-arm salute of the KLA was suppressed, by its CIA and German intelligence handlers, in favor of a less controversial American-style greeting. While one wing of the KLA looks to the old-fashioned Stalinism of Enver Hoxha, the Albanian Communist dictator who aided the early student organizations that made up the Albanian separatist movement, the other looks to the "Skanderberg Division" of the Nazi SS, Albanians recruited by the Germans to fight for Hitler's cause, for its political antecedents. DioGuardi has been a vigorous publicist on behalf of the KLA political commissar, Adem Demaci, a militant who spent years in Yugoslav prisons. Demaci denounced the Rambouillet agreement as a sellout and (along with DioGuardi) rejected all negotiations on principle. DioGuardi even wrote a letter congratulating his fellow extremist when Demaci was appointed chief of the KLA's political wing.

FOLLOW THAT GENIE!

Demaci, DioGuardi, and the KLA militants are now acting on their dream of a "Greater Albania": this is the meaning of recent events in Kosovo. Madeleine Albright is so frightened by the rising demands of the pan-Albanians that she made a special trip to Tirana to denounce the idea as "no more viable than that of a Greater Serbia." But the genie is already out of the bottle, and the question is: what will the next Administration do?

A GREATER ALBANIA

As the KLA conducts its reign of terror in Kosovo, driving out the Serbs and marching, in tens of thousands, on the northern city of Mitrovica in an effort to storm the last Serb bastion, John McCain is standing alongside a man who is the chief apologist, organizer, and fundraiser of the KLA in America, a man who once declared:

"It is unfortunate that misguided European politics, overly and unfairly influenced by Russia and Greece in the early part of the twentieth century, resulted in a partition of the Albanian nation so that more than half the Albanians in the Balkans live outside the state of Albania in hostile Slavic regimes, especially Serbia and Macedonia. . . . With UDBA in Belgrade and the Sigurimi in Tirana collaborating to buy, trick or kill those Albanians with democratic aspirations, it is no wonder that it has been extremely difficult for seven million. Albanians to organize themselves as a nation, or even politically within the five jurisdictions in which they reside. While there is some cooperation among political parties in certain areas and across borders, true democratic, independent-minded Albanian leadership has been lacking and this has contributed to the divisions, confusion, and betrayal of the Albanian cause in the Balkans and in America."

CONSPIRACY THEORY

How's that for a conspiracy theory? According to DioGuardi, all the nations of Europe conspired to keep his people disunited. Naturally it is assumed that every living ethnic Albanian must live in an Albanian state, since, in the neo-fascist ideology of the KLA, the State embodies the Race and must defend its interests irrespective of current national borders. And, oh yes, that's what we definitely need: more "cooperation among parties in certain areas and across borders," so as to spread the rabidly revanchist ideology of the KLA and set the Balkans aflame.

Here is Kosovo, populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, and now independent as of this year:



Greater Albania will mean a spread of the Balkan wars into nearby nations, specifically into those regions of neighboring nations populated by ethnic Albanians.



And, to be sure, ethnic Albanians are not the problem, any more than Americans are the problem because of criminals and terrorists in our midst. But, DioGuardi represents a violent, criminal element in ethnic Albanian circles, which, in turn, is closely tied in to Islamic extremists, including to Osama bin Laden -- I point this out frequently at posts on my blog.

THE DIOGUARDI-McCAIN CONNECTION

There they are, the two of them, DioGuardi and McCain, side by side: one who would carve an Albanian empire in the midst of the blood-soaked Balkans, and the other who would be President of the United States. It is a disturbing juxtaposition, to say the very least. For if we can accuse poor Dubya of endorsing the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Bob Jones fundamentalists simply by speaking at their auditorium, then what are we to make of would-be President John McCain appearing with a radical Albanian nationalist who sees not only Belgrade but also Skopje and Athens as the enemy? After all, this is perhaps the wrong signal to the Macedonians, who have so far enjoyed a fragile peace, and no doubt the Greeks, our NATO allies, would be less than pleased. And what of the Montenegrins, whose capital city DioGuardi and the Albanian lobby covet, and whose independence we are pledged to defend against the alleged threat posed by Milosevic? If Bush must be called to account for supposedly aligning himself with the forces of intolerance in the US, for the sin of appearing at Bob Jones U, then should we not call McCain to account for sharing the platform with a radical Albanian extremist and endangering the peace of Europe.

TURNING THE TABLES

Although the McCain campaign piously denied it, it has since come out that they were responsible for phone calls during the Michigan primary, run ostensibly by a group called "Catholic Voter Alert," which demanded to know why Bush had not disavowed the rhetoric of Bob Jones and his flock about the church being "a Satanic cult'! This from the campaign McCain piously described to his followers as "one you can be proud of"! Well, then, is it not time to turn the tables, and send out a "Voter Alert" demanding to know why McCain hasn't repudiated the rhetoric of Joe DioGuardi and his KLA friends who want to ignite the Balkan tinderbox with their crazed scheme to create an Albanian empire? Indeed, this is a lot fairer than the alleged Bush-Jones connection, because Bush has no history of anti-Catholicism – the news of his sudden conversion to the Jonesian doctrine that the Church is "the great Whore" foretold in the Bible came as a bit of a surprise. But McCain's apparent conversion to the cause of pan-Albanian nationalism is far more credible. For McCain was the most militant and visible supporter of the Kosovo war, who demanded Clinton pull out all the stops and send in the ground troops – even going so far as to introduce a Senate resolution that went down to a well-deserved defeat at the hands of his Republican colleagues.

THE KLA CANDIDATE

As General Wesley Clark, the US commander of our troops in Kosovo, calls on NATO and Washington to send in more troops – and I see, as I write this, that the Marines are practically on the way – the crisis in the Balkans is approaching critical mass. The NATO-crats are cranking up the propaganda machine, as the KLA gets ready to complete the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and proceed to the next stage of the ongoing struggle for a "Greater Albania." Ideologues like Adem Demaci, in Kosovo, and Joe Dioguardi, in America, want to drag the US into yet another Balkan war, to "finish the job" and completely dismember the remnants of Yugoslavia – using the US and NATO as both their sword and their shield. With a sympathetic President in the White House, who remembers how much money and political support was raised on that trip to New York at a crucial time in his campaign, DioGuardi and the KLA may yet see their expansionist dream realized. With Serbia finally subjugated, Albania would be free to expand, absorbing not only Kosovo but also destabilizing Macedonia and threatening Greece.

HOW MUCH?

The last GOP presidential candidate to cash in on the Albanian connection was Bob Dole: in May 1987, Dole and DioGuardi attended an Albanian-American fund-raiser in New York City that raised $1.2 million for Dole's campaign and $50,000 for DioGuardi's, according to journalist Diana Johnstone and researcher Benjamin Works. The caption accompanying the above photo says McCain was in New York doing some fundraising, and it is fair to ask: how much money did he get from the Albanian lobby? As the great "reform" candidate who denounces the influence of "special interests" and the power of money in politics, McCain had better tell us exactly how much the Albanian lobby has thrown his way – and to what effect. Of all the lobbyists in Washington, it is the "special interests" represented by the agents of foreign powers that pose the greatest threat to the integrity of the Presidency. Joe DioGuardi, rabid Albanian nationalist and chief American apologist for the drug-connected totalitarians of the KLA, has spread the money from his political action committees far and wide, and no doubt McCain is also the recipient of his largess – but at what price to the American people? The McCain campaign must immediately release the figures, and give us some "straight talk" about the KLA-McCain connection: how much did they get-and in return for what? The American people have a right to know how many American soldiers will be put at risk in the Balkans in the service of paying off President McCain's political debts.

ALBANIAN PANDERFEST

Republicans are screaming about the panderfest presided over by the Reverend Al Sharpton, at which Al Gore and Bill Bradley outdid each other in denouncing "white skin privilege," but what about McCain's panderfest with the Albanian warmongers, who want to drag the US even deeper into the Balkan quagmire? At least Sharpton isn't demanding that the lives of American soldiers be put at risk.

THE BUCHANAN FACTOR

Naturally the American media, which made itself into the willing instrument of the War Party during the Kosovo conflict, is reluctant to uncover the fact of McCain’s connection to Albanian extremists. The inability or unwillingness of the Bush campaign to call McCain to account on this question is due in large part to its own commitment to the Albanian lobby; their foreign policy advisor, Richard Perle, was also an advisor to the Bosnian Muslims, who enthusiastically supported the Kosovo war. The only major candidate who has made opposition to the Kosovo war – and opposition to the influence of foreign lobbyists – a campaign issue has been Patrick J. Buchanan, the likely Reform Party candidate. Buchanan is the specter that is haunting this primary season, with everyone and his brother claiming the mantle of "reform" – but scurrying away from the vital foreign policy issue, which only Buchanan has addressed. If McCain, the would-be conqueror of the Balkans, is the GOP nominee, then the Republicans, independents, and Democrats who opposed that war – and are horrified by its frightening results – will be driven into the Reform Party column. Combined with the general distaste for McCain among conservatives, this is the one factor that those who prate about the "electability" of the Warrior Candidate never discuss. Once again, the Bush people are constrained from making their best argument against McCain, this time for fear of breaking the embargo on all discussion of Buchanan and Reform as viable alternatives. The impotence of the Bush campaign in the face of the McCain insurgency is a function not only of the shortcomings of their candidate, but of the internationalism of his Establishment foreign policy advisors and their instinctive fear of the Right. And that, in the end, will be their undoing.

That was 2000 -- now it is 2008.

If elected, McCain's foreign policy will be subservient to the interests of those who traffic in heroin, arms, women for forced prostitution, nuclear secrets, and any other contraband-du-jour -- McCain's foreign policy will mean supporting close allies of Osama bin Laden in the Balkans.

We see McCain, because of his military experience and status as a war hero due to his time in captivity in Vietnam, as stronger in the "War on Terror" -- but long before there was a "War on Terror", McCain very knowingly sold his country out to the very terrorists against whom our troops now fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, a vote for Obama is a vote for peace? Not exactly, and for a variety of reasons. As we have seen in previous posts in this series, and as we shall see again -- very soon, because the election is just over two weeks away! -- Obama's foreign policy will be steered by the very same organized crime faction that seeks to carve an organized crime and militant Islamic extremist empire in the Balkans.

Stay tuned, as we look again at Obama's running mate, Senator Biden.

The Sword of Allah, Part 10

Following on to Part 9, we actually continue from Part 6 by finishing our review of Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

That is where we are today. The solution remains a simple one: execute the policy developed in 2007. It requires the following steps:

1. Inform President Karzai that he must stop protecting drug lords and narco-farmers or he will lose U.S. support. Karzai should issue a new decree of zero tolerance for poppy cultivation during the coming growing season. He should order farmers to plant wheat, and guarantee today's high wheat prices. Karzai must simultaneously authorize aggressive force-protected manual and aerial eradication of poppies in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces for those farmers who do not plant legal crops.

2. Order the Pentagon to support this strategy. Position allied and Afghan troops in places that create security pockets so that Afghan counternarcotics police can arrest powerful drug lords. Enable force-protected eradication with the Afghan-set goal of eradicating 50,000 hectares as the benchmark.

3. Increase the number of D.E.A. agents in Kabul and assist the Afghan attorney general in prosecuting key traffickers and corrupt government officials from all ethnic groups, including southern Pashtuns.

4. Get new development projects quickly to the provinces that become poppy-free or stay poppy free. The north should see significant rewards for its successful anticultivation efforts. Do not, however, provide cash to farmers for eradication.

5. Ask the allies either to help in this effort or stand down and let us do the job.

There are other initiatives that could help as well: better engagement of Afghanistan's neighbors, more drug-treatment centers in Afghanistan, stopping the flow into Afghanistan of precursor chemicals needed to make heroin and increased demand-reduction programs. But if we — the Afghans and the U.S. — do just the five items listed above, we will bring the rule of law to a lawless country; and we will cut off a key source of financing to the Taliban.

But we know that will never happen, don't we.



From 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

CD: Can you elaborate here on what countries you mean?

SE: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, "OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?"

CD: But of course, you're not implying...

SE: And then to compare that little survey with what countries we've been putting military bases in --

From Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SH: And as you pointed [out], some of this information has been confirmed in the public. I know when you speak about the Iranian informant...

SE: Correct.

SH: ...who warned in April of 2001 -- that was even confirmed by Mueller, the director of the FBI.

SE: Absolutely there was actually an article in the Chicago Tribune in July 2004 saying that even Mueller expressed surprise that during the hearings, the commissioners didn't ask about this. And guess what, nobody reported all these omissions. What would happen if you hit them with 20 cases? And I'm talking about 20 affidavits from experts and veteran agents.

SH: This is all about the question of prior knowledge and who knew what, when before the attack.

SE: And also what happened afterward. I started working three days after Sept. 11 with a lot of documents and wiretaps that I was translating. Some of them dated back to 1997, 1998. Even after Sept. 11, covering up these investigations and not pursuing some of these investigations because the Department of State says, "You know what, you can't pursue this because that may deal with this particular country. If this country that the investigation deals with are not one of the Axis of Evil, we don't want to pursue them." The American people have the right to know this. They are giving this grand illusion that there are some investigations, but there are none. You know, they are coming down on these charities as the finance of al-Qaeda. Well, if you were to talk about the financing of al-Qaeda, a very small percentage comes from these charity foundations. The vast majority of their financing comes from narcotics. Look, we had 4 to 6 percent of the narcotics coming from the East, coming from Pakistan, coming from Afghanistan via the Balkans to the United States. Today, three or four years after Sept. 11, that has reached over 15 percent. How is it getting here? Who are getting the proceedings from those big narcotics?

From Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.

From 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

SE: The fact that there are no investigations -- I will give you an analogy, okay? Say if we decided to have a "war on drugs," but said in the beginning, "right, we're only going to go after the young black guys on the street level." Hey, we already have tens of thousands of them in our jails anyway, why not a few more? But we decided never to go after the middle levels, let alone the top levels...

It's like this with the so-called war on terror. We go for the Attas and Hamdis -- but never touch the guys on the top.

CD: You think they [the government] know who they are, the top guys, and where?

SE: Oh yeah, they know.

CD: So why don't they get them?

SE: It's like I told you before -- this would upset "certain foreign relations." But it would also expose certain of our elected officials, who have significant connections with high-level drugs- and weapons-smuggling -- and thus with the criminal underground, even with the terrorists themselves.

Heroin -- the Sword of Allah!

May Allah be pleased with our officials in Washington this Ramadan!

:)

The Sword of Allah, Part 9

We continue from Part 8 reviewing Heroin: New markets for an old scourge, "Opium's surge complicates U.S. drug control efforts at home, abroad", by Michael E. Ross, first published in 2004, updated in 2005:

Supply and demand

Drug traffickers have had no problem meeting the growing demand, at least in part because of a surge in production of opium — heroin's precursor ingredient — and other drugs from Afghanistan, with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Afghanistan has re-emerged as the world's leading opium producer, accounting for about 75 percent of global production.

Again there's evidence of differing analyses: The Philadelphia Inquirer Web site reported in May 2004 that, in congressional testimony about heroin flow from Afghanistan, DEA director Karen Tandy testified about "potential links" and "possible relationships' between Afghan traffickers and terrorists.

But a senior Russian officer who monitored drug traffic from Asia told The Inquirer that "[t]he connection is absolutely obvious to us. ... Drugs, weapons, ammunition, terrorism, more drugs, more terrorism — it's a closed circle."

Heroin -- the Sword of Allah!

More recent fears of Afghanistan becoming a "narco-state" are underscored by opium continuing to be lucrative. The United Nations Opium Survey, released in November 2004, found that "[t]he yearly gross income of opium growing families was estimated at around U.S.$1,700 in 2004. The gross income from poppy cultivation per hectare amounted to U.S. $4,600, a decline by 64 percent from a year earlier, but still almost 12 times higher than the gross income a farmer could expect from one hectare of wheat (U.S. $390)."

A hectare is 2.47 acres.

Water availability

The weather has made such opium production possible. In a Rapid Assessment Report released in March, the United Nations reported that poppy growing conditions are better this year than in 2004.

"It is expected that more water will be available for the irrigation both of rain-fed and irrigated areas, due to the large amount of snow in many parts of Afghanistan in January 2005," the report said. " ... This could have a positive effect on agricultural production, possibly including higher yields of wheat and opium."

Rachel Ehrenfeld, a Defense Department consultant and author of "Funding Evil," a 2003 book on the complicity of terrorist organizations in the distribution of illicit drugs in the United States, told MSNBC TV's Dan Abrams that drug ties to terrorism are an old story now being refreshed.

"This has been going for many, many years, actually. It has been a major tool of the Islamist organizations in their fight against the West. It's a very good tool as far as they're concerned," said Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center of Democracy, based in New York.

"Not only does it provide them with huge amounts of money; it also helps to corrupt the targeted countries to create health hazards, ruin the economy, and corrupt officials," Ehrenfeld said.

And, we're seeing some of those corrupt officials here -- that's what the Sibel Edmonds case is about -- and they're seeing some corrupt officials "across the pond" in the UK, as well.

(Please note that, for telling the truth about how terrorism is financed, Dr. Ehrenfeld is the target of a legal jihad that seeks to silence not just her, but others as well. If you enjoy the right of free speech, and wish to be able to tell the truth about those who seek to kill and enslave us, please visit Dr. Ehrenfeld's website; there, you will learn more about the funding of terrorism, and there you can make a tax-deductible contribution to her work and to the legal counterjihad.)

Other opium supply sources aren't half a world away, either: According to State Department estimates of illicit drug production in Mexico in 2003, acreage used for opium poppy cultivation increased to 11,900 acres, almost twice what it was the year before.

The Sword of Allah, Part 8

In Part 7 we looked at the impact increased heroin production in Afghanistan was having in Australia; now we look at the impact it is having in Chicago. We begin reviewing Heroin: New markets for an old scourge, "Opium's surge complicates U.S. drug control efforts at home, abroad", by Michael E. Ross, first published in 2004, updated in 2005:

As Afghan president Hamid Karzai prepares to meet with President Bush on Monday to discuss topics including the narcotic aspect of the war on terrorism, reports from the United Nations and various agencies point to the continuing persistence of opium and its offspring, heroin.

That drug's growing and purer supply, amid recent efforts to tailor it to the middle class, have led to what some health officials in the United States and abroad fear may be a deadly new trend of addiction in America.

The city of Chicago may well illustrate the complexity of what some call a high-purity heroin epidemic and its impact on the nation as a whole. For one scholar studying heroin use there, it's time to adjust the popular perception of exactly who heroin addicts are.

"The user of today is not the user of the 1970s," said Kathleen Kane-Willis, assistant director of Roosevelt University's Institute for Metropolitan Affairs and lead author of a study last year on heroin use in Chicago. "The user of today defies the traditional stereotype of being minority, urban, male and poor."

In Chicago, 'demographics have shifted'

The Roosevelt study found that in 2002 there were almost 13,000 heroin-related visits to Chicago-area hospital emergency rooms — the highest number in the United States for the fifth straight year.

"What I've seen in the Chicago area is there is a rise in middle-class users," she said in a May 2004 interview. "The demographics have shifted. ... It's no longer just an inner-city urban problem."

Other cities with recent or emerging heroin consumption problems include Rochester, N.Y.; Vancouver, Canada; Baltimore; Lewisburg, Pa.; and New York City.

For Kane-Willis, social forces have defused the aura of danger surrounding heroin. "I've heard of heroin showing up at rave parties," she said. "The ability to be able to inhale it removes the 'junky' stigma. It becomes just another drug choice, in a sense."

The rise of heroin use in America follows "heroin chic," the name given in the late 90's to pop culture's fascination with hard-drug use — an allure reflected in the "waif look" of gaunt runway models and the popularity of such films as "Pulp Fiction," "Trainspotting" and "The Basketball Diaries." Pop-culture's appeal persists today; New York federal authorities recently told NBC affiliate WNBC of a Bronx-based heroin ring that adopted pop culture-inspired brand names for its wares, names like "Sean John" and "J. Lo."

That explains a great deal.

In this blog, we have looked extensively at how heroin is tied in with the "War on Terror", on both sides; we have also seen how Washington, D.C., is awash in heroin money.



Now we know why: with the new demographic of heroin user, there is far more money to be made -- at the expense of America's middle-class teenagers.

Generational amnesia

"Because it's been so long since we had the last heroin epidemic, we might be in a process of generational forgetting," Kane-Willis said, alluding to the drug epidemic of the late '60s and early '70s.

"Middle-class users were probably never exposed to the epidemic of the 1970s. They might not know that the consequence of using can be addiction and death," Kane-Willis said. "That forgetting makes perfect sense if you live in an area where there aren't active drug users and it hasn't been made clear in your drug education. If you got it in fifth grade, do you remember it now?"

She also cites the current crop of anti-drug ads on TV. "They're not specific to heroin, they're specific to marijuana," she said. "I don't know that there's been much education about heroin use."

With such widespread use of marijuana, and with so much talk of legalization of marijuana, kids who don't know a great deal about heroin, but who compare it to marijuana, might think that being an occasional user of heroin is similar to being an occasional user of marijuana -- and that idea could kill them.

Heroin marketing

Heroin traffickers may be exploiting this lack of education. Drug interdiction officials have found that, in their bid to reach U.S. middle-class customers, traffickers have taken a page from a marketing handbook, all but adapting the language of infomericals to target the middle class: It's Improved! Cleaner! No Messy Needles! No Fear of Getting HIV/AIDS!

According to a March 2004 report by the International Narcotics Control Board, the U.N.'s Vienna-based drug monitoring agency, heroin smuggled into the United States increasingly is being packaged for inhalation instead of injection, "making it more acceptable to many middle-class Americans.'

"This shows how the illicit market operates in a very smart way by selling a drug to a new class of users by telling them, 'Use it in a different way and you won't become addicted,'" said Rainer Wolfgang, a member of the U.N. board.

Of course, it's just marketing -- opiates are highly addictive.

Authorities say many users prefer inhaling heroin because they don't have to worry about contracting blood-borne diseases like hepatitis and AIDS through needles, and because it spares them the physical discomfort of injection.

For IV users, risk vs. reward

But addicts usually ending up injecting the drug, Kane-Willis said. "There's kind of a cost-benefit analysis to it," she said. "They have to think of the cheapest modality there is, and that's injection. It's economically more efficient."

Heroin users who smoke the drug face a relatively new and dangerous risk. A 2003 study by the University of British Columbia found that heroin smokers have a higher risk of contracting toxic leukoencephalopathy, a sometimes fatal disorder that affects smokers more than other users of the drug, impairing motor and speech functions of the brain.

Another option: liquefied heroin in an inconspicuous squeeze bottle, much like a container for any over-the-counter nasal spray.

"Trafficking groups who want to continue to make money are constantly looking for new illicit marketing strategies to increase their profits... this is one of their cleverest tricks yet," Herbert Schaepe, secretariat of the U.N. agency, said in a March 2004 interview with The Observer (U.K.).

However the drug is administered, use of heroin has led to new and sometimes controversial approaches to controlling its worst effects. In February, hard-core heroin users began participating in a test program in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Researchers in the North American Opiate Maintenance Project study (NAOMI), with approval of Canadian health officials, are providing addicts with free heroin, in an attempt to find whether steadily decreasing doses of heroin is more effective than methadone use in weaning addicts off heroin.

Differing analyses

U.S. agencies that monitor drug use have been curiously at odds in their assessments of whether heroin is a growing problem.

"Heroin use in the United States and the number of new initiates have been relatively flat," said Dave Murray, an analyst with the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington. "I don't think there's much that's new. We have a reasonably good picture of heroin use in the U.S. as relatively unchanged in the last decade."

But Murray's assessment runs counter to analyses from other U.S. agencies.

The 2002 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that the rate of heroin use among youths ages 12 to 17 and adults 18 to 25 increased between 1995 and 2002.

While the annual number of new heroin users between 1988 and 1994 ranged between 28,000 and 80,000, the number of new users climbed between 1995 and 2001 to a number "consistently greater than 100,000," the study said.

Moreover, Murray's own office found that by June 2003, the number of hard-core heroin users in the United States had reached somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million — a sharp increase from the 630,000 users in 1992, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Stay tuned for Part 9!

The Sword of Allah, Part 7

In previous posts in this series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6), we saw how opiate production is not being effectively dealt with in Afghanistan, despite the fact that narcotics trafficking helps arm our enemies in the "War on Terror". The major reason for this given in this series is corruption in Afghanistan, although any frequent reader of my blog knows that corruption in Washington, D.C., is a major factor, as well.

In a companion series, Taking Care of Business, we also take a look at another aspect of corruption in government, as major players in the arms industry are in bed with those who are in bed with terrorists.

While the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other mujahideen are battling American, British, Afghan and other allied troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere, high enough up the ladder leaders on both sides are making a great deal of money dealing in narcotics, arms, nuclear secrets, sex slaves, and a variety of other commodities.

But, what does all this mean for people on the streets of infidel countries?



In a short article that was published on March 7, 2008, entitled Afghan heroin surging into Australia: Customs, we begin to get an idea of the impact of the narcotics trafficking on Australia (notice the new label).

Authorities are again concerned about a surge in the amount of pure, cheap heroin coming into Australia.

A confidential Customs report seen by ABC TV's Lateline program shows concerns by Australian agencies about heroin from Afghanistan.

Victorian Police Drug Squad head Detective Inspector Steve Smith says traditional criminal syndicates are still heavily involved in the importation of heroin.

"I'm also aware of data that indicates the purity of heroin that's available on the streets of Melbourne at the moment has increased, and that the price of heroin that is available has decreased, which may be indicative of the fact that there's more around," he said.

Melbourne's chief ambulance officer Alan Eade backs the concerns of police.

He says fatal heroin overdoses had decreased, but that is changing now.

"Of late, [heroin overdoses are] slowly starting to creep back up," he said.

"Whether that's availability, or just the swinging trend in drug use, I'm not sure why."

As the price comes down, more heroin can be bought; also, as the purity increases, the bang for each dose of smack increases. These two trends combine to have a great impact on the street, as more people can get more of a fix for the same amount of money.

But, an unexpected rise in heroin quality also tends to produce a rise in deaths due to overdoses, as heroin users taking the same amount they always take suddenly find themselves shooting up more potency. According to the article, Australia was just beginning to see this early this spring, although according to this next article, dated only several days later, it sounds like the increase in deaths was already more noticeable; Afghan brown heroin hits Sydney streets by John Kidman, March 16, 2008:

BROWN heroin from the opium fields of Afghanistan has made its way onto Sydney's streets for the first time.

The director of Sydney's Medically Supervised Injecting Centre Dr Ingrid van Beek said some use of brown heroin had been seen at the centre sporadically over the past nine months.

Inner-city heroin overdoses are also on the rise, with about one a day coming into the emergency department at St Vincent's Hospital. Experts are unclear why overdoses have increased.

Dr van Beek said there was sometimes confusion between acidic impure white heroin, which appeared brown in colour, and genuine Afghan heroin. But she said the limited demand for acidifiers to use with the drug indicated it was brown heroin.

Dr van Beek said the presence of Afghan heroin in Australia did not mean it was likely to "flood" the local market - the Australian market is simply too small and too far from the Middle East. And its arrival has not been linked to any surge in use, following a seven-year "drought" in which the common Asian strain of the deadly narcotic was superseded by ice.

The Medically Supervised Injecting Centre reports heroin use among its clients is generally at an all-time low. However, inner-city heroin overdoses are inexplicably on the rise, says Dr Gordian Fulde from St Vincent's Hospital's emergency department.

"Whereas we were seeing virtually none up until 18 months ago, we are now receiving about one overdose a day," Dr Fulde said. "It's not an 'Oh my God, it's the end of the world'-type thing at this stage. It's early days and the numbers are still small. I can't give you a trail of how or where or why but it's happening and it's not going away."

The spike is not matched in Sydney's south-west, where overdoses in and around Cabramatta were once common but are now "virtually unseen", said Liverpool Hospital's emergency director, Dr Richard Cracknell.

Australia-wide, the price of heroin is reportedly falling while customs and police seizures rose 30 per cent between 2006 and last year.

Perhaps not "flood" the market, but perhaps take market share from competitors, while encouraging new users through low prices?

In an article from February 8, 2008, AFGHANISTAN: Booming heroin crop finding its way to Australian streets, we get more information:

A big increase in Afghanistan's heroin crop is finding its way onto Australian streets. Afghan Brown heroin used to be rare in Australia, and local heroin users preferred the more highly refined product from south-east Asia. But a boom in opium production has made Afghanistan a major exporter and Australia a prime target.

Presenter: Michael Edwards

Speakers: Clive Williams, Terrorism and security analyst from the Australian National University; Gideon Warhaft from the New South Wales Users and AIDS Association; Annie Madden from the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: According to figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghan opium production is booming. It now accounts for 90 per cent of the world's supply. And much of this is produced in areas controlled by the Taliban.

Terrorism expert Clive Williams from Macquarie University says Afghanistan, opium and its eventual product heroin, are almost a natural fit.

CLIVE WILLIAMS: I think it's probably a lot to do with the difficulty of the environment there and there is no other crop that pays as well as growing opium.

And of course, there's always been a ready market both for exporting through Pakistan, and north through central Asia, which finds its way to Europe and Russia.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: And it appears some of this so-called Afghan Brown heroin is reaching Australia.

Traditionally, Australian heroin users preferred so-called China White heroin which is imported from south-east Asia. But now drug users' groups say there is an unprecedented shift towards Afghan Brown heroin in some parts of the country.

Annie Madden is from the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League.

ANNIE MADDEN: The reports we have been getting have been coming out of western Sydney and some parts of Adelaide. One of the factors that has changed recently, if you like, is that there is certainly evidence that the production of Afghan heroin has hugely increased over the last 12 months, 18 months.

And obviously that massive increase in production of brown heroin is going to be finding its way, has been finding its way and will continue to find its way into the world markets. And Australia could well be a new market for that form of heroin.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Gideon Warhaft is from the New South Wales Users and Aids Association.

He says presently on the streets of Sydney, users are finding it easier to get brown heroin rather than China White.

GIDEON WARHAFT: It is certainly possible, given you know, the huge yields of opium and heroin in Afghanistan over the last couple of years that people have decided to take advantage of that and have started importing Afghan heroin.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: And there are more differences to Afghan Brown than just its country of origin. Compared to south-east Asian China White heroin, Afghan Brown is unrefined and in many parts of the world it is smoked rather than injected.

But Annie Madden says some users do inject it and this can lead to health problems.

ANNIE MADDEN: If you do inject, it does tend to lead to more vein damage and abscesses and those sorts of things, because it is a more complex process to mix it into a solution suitable for injecting.

A key point is made in the above passage, that perhaps the market is beginning to favor Afghan heroin over other varieties. Recall what we learned in The Heroin Lobby, Part 3:

Just to get an idea of what we are talking about, the following is from the UN World Drug Report 2007. Heroin seizures worldwide are going way up,



and the price of heroin has come way down!



How come that happens with heroin, and not with gasoline?

This is not just an adult problem; as this graph shows, there has been an increase in heroin use in American high schools, including a spike in 2000:



On average, heroin use in American high schools has roughly doubled since American foreign policy has become subservient to the heroin lobby.

And, as I document in Smuggler's Blues, Part 1 and Smuggler's Blues, Part 2, this heroin is unusually pure and high quality; its purity and quality are catching drug users off-guard, causing a rise in overdoses and deaths.

As this last quoted passage alludes to, it isn't just in Australia that this increased flow of high quality heroin is washing ashore; it's getting very popular among middle class American teenagers, too.

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!

The Sword of Allah, Part 5

We continue from Part 4 reviewing Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

Then it all began to unravel.

In May 2007, Anthony Harriman, the senior director for Afghanistan at the National Security Council, in order to ensure the strategy paper would be executed, decided to take it to the Deputies Committee — a group of cabinet deputy secretaries led by Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, whom President Bush had appointed his "war czar" — which had the power to make the document official U.S. policy. Harriman asked me to start developing an unclassified version for public release.

Almost immediately, the Pentagon bureaucracy — particularly the South Asia office — made an about-face. First, they resisted bringing the paper to the deputies. When that effort failed (largely because of unexpected support for the plan from new field commanders like Gen. Dan McNeill, who saw the narcotics-insurgency nexus and were willing to buck their Pentagon minders), the Pentagon bureaucrats tried to prevent the release of an unclassified version to the public. Indeed, two senior Pentagon officials threatened me with professional retaliation if we made the unclassified document public. When we went ahead anyway, the Pentagon leaked the contents of the classified version to Peter Gilchrist, a British general posted in Washington. Defense Department officials were thus enlisting a foreign government to help kill U.S. policy — a policy that implicitly recognized that the Pentagon's "sequencing" approach had failed and that the Defense Department would have to get more involved in fighting the narcotics trade.

The plan that might win the war in Afghanistan, and that would certainly cut back the amount of heroin flooding into Russia, Europe and even America's Midwest, was killed by Pentagon bureaucrats.

In this context, let's consider a quote from Sibel Edmonds, which I had reproduced already in Part 1, from Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SH: I want to get to your appearance on Democracy Now! earlier in the week, referring to officials at the State Department, you used the word "treason." And I wonder whether this is specifically referring to the Sept. 11 attacks and whether you have information that indicates complicity on the part of American elites who are part of these semi-legit organizations that funded Sept. 11, or are we talking seven degrees of Kevin Bacon here?

SE: Again, it's hard to talk about this around the gag order, but this is what I have been saying for the past three years, that's why I refer to the transcript of CBS 60 Minutes. These people who call themselves Americans and these people are using their position, their official position within these agencies -- some of them in the Department of Defense, some of them in the Department of State -- and yet, what they are doing with their position, with their influence is against the United States' national security, it's against the best interests of its people, and that is treason. Be it giving information to those that are either quasi-allies -- and I would underline quasi, who one day will be another al-Qaeda -- and who are already are engaged in activities that are damaging to our country, its security and its interests -- and that is treason. So that's what I was referring to. And what would you call someone who, let's say if they were to go after Douglas Feith, and if they were to establish that Douglas Feith with his access to information, willingly, intentionally used the information he had and gave it to those that would one day use it or maybe right now are using that information against the United States. Would you call that treason?

SH: Well, if it's an overt act to benefit an American enemy then yes, that's treason.

SE: Correct, and I as I said, those lines are so blurry because there are certain countries that we call allies but I wouldn't call them allies, these people are, these countries are, quasi-allies.

SH: Okay, I'm going to go ahead and name some people whom I suspect inside the State Department and the Pentagon, and I suppose you won't be able to answer affirmative or negative on any of these, but I'm very curious when I read about this kind of corruption going on in the State Department, I immediately think of John Bolton and David Wurmser. Do those names mean anything to you?

SE: Well, first of all, I'm not going to answer that question at all, but also you should pay attention to the fact that some of these people have been there for a while, and some of these people had their roots in there even in the mid-1990s.

SH: So more career officials rather than political appointees.

SE: Or maybe a mixture of both.

Returning to Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

Gilchrist told me that the plan was unacceptable to Britain. Britain, apparently joined by Sweden (which has fewer than 500 troops in a part of the country where there is no poppy cultivation), sent letters to Karzai urging him to reject key elements of the U.S. plan. By the time Wood and Secretary Rice pressed Karzai for more aggressive action, Karzai told Rice that because some people in the U.S. government did not support the plan, and some allies did not support it, he was not going to support it, either. An operations-center assistant, who summarized the call for me over my car phone just after it occurred, made an uncharacteristic editorial comment: "It was not a good call, ambassador."

Even more startling, it appeared that top Pentagon officials knew nothing about the changing nature of the drug problem or about the new plan. When, through a back channel, I briefed the under secretary of defense for intelligence, James Clapper, on the relationship between drugs and the insurgency, he said he had "never heard any of this." Worse still, Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified to Congress in December 2007 that we did not have a strategy for fighting drugs in Afghanistan. I received a quick apology from the Pentagon counterdrugs unit, which sent a memo to Gates informing him that we actually did have a strategy.

This dissension was, I believe, music to Karzai's ears. When he convened all 34 Afghan provincial governors in Kabul in September 2007 (I was a "guest of honor"), he made antidrug statements at the beginning of his speech, but then lashed out at the international community for wanting to spray his people's crops and giving him conflicting advice. He got a wild ovation. Not surprising — since so many in the room were closely tied to the narcotics trade. Sure, Karzai had Taliban enemies who profited from drugs, but he had even more supporters who did.

That pretty much nails it. While both sides benefit from the heroin trade, "our" side benefits more, it seems.

Karzai was playing us like a fiddle: the U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement; the U.S. and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai's friends could get rich off the drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009 he would be elected to a new term.

Why does the U.S. have to fight the Taliban to support this guy?



There are some real differences we have with the Taliban -- things like the status of women in society, and so on.

Once we get past that though, I'm wondering if the U.S. shouldn't side with the Taliban against Karzai and Al Qaeda (with whom the Taliban don't have the best of relations, and who seem to traffic heroin with far more gusto than the Taliban).

This is not just speculation, even when you stick with unclassified materials. In September 2007, The Kabul Weekly, an independent newspaper, ran a blunt editorial laying out the issue: "It is obvious that the Afghan government is more than kind to poppy growers.... [It] opposes the American proposal for political reasons. The administration believes that it will lose popularity in the southern provinces where the majority of opium is cultivated. They're afraid of losing votes. More than 95 percent of the residents of ... the poppy growing provinces — voted for President Karzai." The editorial recommended aerial eradication. That same week, the first vice president of Afghanistan, Ahmad Zia Massoud, wrote a scathing op-ed article in The Sunday Telegraph in London: "Millions of pounds have been committed in provinces including Helmand Province for irrigation projects and road building to help farmers get their produce to market. But for now this has simply made it easier for them to grow and transport opium.... Deep-rooted corruption ... exists in our state institutions." The Afghan vice president concluded, "We must switch from ground-based eradication to aerial spraying."

The trouble is, the corruption isn't just in Kabul -- nor is the rest of it found in Washington. It goes to London, Islamabad, Dubai and many other places in the world, as well.

(Of course, in some of these places, it isn't really "corruption" -- it's just how they do business.)

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!

The Sword of Allah, Part 4

We continue from Part 3 reviewing Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

In July 2007, I briefed President Karzai on the drive for a new strategy. He was interested in the new incentives that we were developing, but became sullen and unresponsive when I discussed the need to balance those incentives with new disincentives — including arrests of high-level traffickers and eradication of poppy fields in the wealthier areas of the Pashtun south, where Karzai had his roots and power base.

Karzai himself may or may not be a narcotrafficker.

But, if there is pressure to end narcotics production and trafficking, that will impact immediately and severely on Karzai's powerbase -- and might that spark a new Afghan civil war, a free-for-all as various factions square off to preserve their slices of the heroin pie?

The opiate trade isn't the only pie up for grabs, either.

We also tried to let the public know about the changing dynamics of the trade. Unfortunately, most media outlets clung to the myth that the problem was out of control all over the country, that only desperate farmers grew poppies and that any serious law-enforcement effort would drive them into the hands of the Taliban. The "starving farmer" was a convenient myth. It allowed some European governments to avoid involvement with the antidrug effort. Many of these countries had only one- or two-year legislative mandates to be in Afghanistan, so they wanted to avoid any uptick in violence that would most likely result from an aggressive strategy, even if the strategy would result in long-term success. The myth gave military officers a reason to stay out of the drug war, while prominent Democrats used the myth to attack Bush administration policies. And the Taliban loved it because their propaganda campaign consisted of trotting out farmers whose fields had been eradicated and having them say that they were going to starve.

An odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban were preventing the implementation of an effective counterdrug program. And the rest of us could not turn them around.

Not committed to victory, committed to doing their time and getting out -- doesn't that remind me of another counterinsurgency we fought?

Nonetheless, we stayed hopeful as we worked on what became the U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan. The Defense Department was initially cooperative (as I testified to Congress). We agreed to expand the local meetings and education campaign that worked well in the north. Afghan religious leaders would issue anti-poppy statements, focusing on the anti-Islamic nature of drugs and the increasing addiction rate in Afghanistan. In the area of agricultural incentives, since most farmers already had an alternative crop, we agreed to improve access to markets not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and the wider region. USAid would establish more cold-storage facilities, build roads and establish buying cooperatives that could guarantee prices for legal crops. With the British, we developed an initiative to reward provinces that became poppy-free or reduced their poppy crop by a specified amount. Governors who performed well would get development projects: schools, bridges and hospitals.

But there had to be disincentives too. We agreed to provide security for manual poppy eradication, so that we could show the Afghan people that the more-powerful farmers were vulnerable. We focused on achieving better ground-based eradication, but reintroduced the possibility of aerial eradication. We agreed to increase D.E.A. training of counternarcotics police and establish special investigative units to gather physical and documentary evidence against corrupt Afghan officials. And we developed policies that would increase the Afghan capacity to prosecute traffickers.

We might try some of that in D.C.

Adding to the wave of optimism was the arrival of William Wood as the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. He had been ambassador in Colombia, so he understood drugs and insurgency well. His view was that poppy cultivation was illegal in Afghanistan, so he didn't really care whether the farmers were poor or rich. "We have a lot of poor people in the drug trade in the U.S.A. — people mixing meth in their trailers in rural areas and people selling crack in the inner cities — and we put them in jail," he said.

What an unenlightened viewpoint! (Gasp!)

At first Wood advocated — in an unclassified e-mail message, surprisingly — a massive aerial-eradication program that would wipe out 80,000 hectares of poppies in Helmand Province, delivering a fatal blow to the root of the narcotics problem. "If there is no poppy, there is nothing to traffic," Wood said. The plan looked good on paper, but we knew it would be impossible to sell to Karzai and the Pentagon. Wood eventually agreed to language advocating, at a minimum, force-protected ground-based eradication with the possibility of limited aerial eradication.

Another ally for a more aggressive approach to the problem was David Kilcullen, a blunt counterterrorism expert. He became increasingly concerned about the drug money flowing to the Taliban. He noted that, while Afghans often shift alliances, what remains constant is their respect for strength and consistency. He recommended mobile courts that had the authority to execute drug kingpins in their own provinces. (You could have heard a pin drop when he first made that suggestion at a large meeting of diplomats.) In support of aerial eradication, Kilcullen pointed out that, with manual eradication you have to "fight your way in and fight your way out" of the poppy fields, making it deadly, inefficient and subject to corrupt bargaining. Aerial eradication, by contrast, is quick, fair and efficient. "If we are already bombing Taliban positions, why won't we spray their fields with a harmless herbicide and cut off their money?" Kilcullen asked.

The problem is, it isn't just the Taliban's money that would be cut off. From Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SH: And as you pointed [out], some of this information has been confirmed in the public. I know when you speak about the Iranian informant...

SE: Correct.

SH: ...who warned in April of 2001 -- that was even confirmed by Mueller, the director of the FBI.

SE: Absolutely there was actually an article in the Chicago Tribune in July 2004 saying that even Mueller expressed surprise that during the hearings, the commissioners didn't ask about this. And guess what, nobody reported all these omissions. What would happen if you hit them with 20 cases? And I'm talking about 20 affidavits from experts and veteran agents.

SH: This is all about the question of prior knowledge and who knew what, when before the attack.

SE: And also what happened afterward. I started working three days after Sept. 11 with a lot of documents and wiretaps that I was translating. Some of them dated back to 1997, 1998. Even after Sept. 11, covering up these investigations and not pursuing some of these investigations because the Department of State says, "You know what, you can't pursue this because that may deal with this particular country. If this country that the investigation deals with are not one of the Axis of Evil, we don't want to pursue them." The American people have the right to know this. They are giving this grand illusion that there are some investigations, but there are none. You know, they are coming down on these charities as the finance of al-Qaeda. Well, if you were to talk about the financing of al-Qaeda, a very small percentage comes from these charity foundations. The vast majority of their financing comes from narcotics. Look, we had 4 to 6 percent of the narcotics coming from the East, coming from Pakistan, coming from Afghanistan via the Balkans to the United States. Today, three or four years after Sept. 11, that has reached over 15 percent. How is it getting here? Who are getting the proceedings from those big narcotics?

Who, indeed? It isn't all going back to these farmers, or even to the Taliban, or even to people in some part of Asia.

Once again quoting a key passage from Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 07, 2004:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.

Eradicate poppies in Afghanistan, and bigwigs in America lose money, elections and power.

Returning to Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

So it appeared that things were moving nicely. We were going to increase incentives to farmers and politicians while also increasing the disincentives with aggressive eradication and arrest of criminal officials and leading traffickers. The Pentagon seemed on board.

Of course, you know that wasn't going to last.

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!

The Sword of Allah, Part 3

We continue from Part 2 reviewing Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?:

Around the same time, the United States released photos of industrial-size poppy farms — many owned by pro-government opportunists, others owned by Taliban sympathizers. Most of these narco-farms were near major southern cities. Farmers were digging wells, surveying new land for poppy cultivation, diverting U.S.-built irrigation canals to poppy fields and starting expensive reclamation projects.

They should put a sign in the poppy fields: "Your Tax Dollars At Work!"

Yet Afghan officials continued to say that poppy cultivation was the only choice for its poor farmers. My first indication of the insincerity of this position came at a lunch in Brussels in September 2006 attended by Habibullah Qaderi, who was then Afghanistan's minister for counternarcotics. He gave a speech in which he said that poor Afghan farmers have no choice but to grow poppies, and asked for more money. A top European diplomat challenged him, holding up a U.N. map showing the recent trend: poppy growth decreasing in the poorest areas and growing in the wealthier areas. The minister, taken aback, simply reiterated his earlier point that Afghanistan needed more money for its destitute farmers. After the lunch, however, Qaderi approached me and whispered: "I know what you say is right. Poverty is not the main reason people are growing poppy. But this is what the president of Afghanistan tells me to tell others."

From Kabul to Washington, D.C., the battlefield efforts of our troops are being subverted by lies. The result is that people die in an endless "War on Terror", while well-positioned people on both sides make money dealing in everything from arms for fighting the war to heroin that is produced and trafficked taking advantage of the instability and politics.

Recall what Sibel Edmonds said in her May 7, 2004, interview with Jim Hogue, Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.

As I'm writing this post, I am reviewing some of my old material. As familiar as I am with it, it is still quite eye-opening.

Here are some passages from news articles, which I quoted in Bushfire, Part 4:

1. From Taliban rejects Bush's 'second chance' offer October 13, 2001:

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban has rejected President George W. Bush's "second chance" offer to surrender terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, the Afghan embassy in Islamabad said today.

President Bush told a news conference on Thursday that if the Taliban "cough him up and his people today" then the United States will "reconsider what we're doing to your country. You still have a second chance," Bush said. "Just bring him in, and bring his leaders and lieutenants and other thugs and criminals with him."

2. Then, from Bush pledges to get bin Laden, dead or alive December 14, 2001:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush pledged anew Friday that Osama bin Laden will be taken "dead or alive," no matter how long it takes, amid indications that the suspected terrorist may be bottled up in a rugged Afghan canyon. The president, in an Oval Office meeting with Thailand's prime minister, would not predict the timing of bin Laden's capture but said he doesn't care how the suspect is brought to justice. "I don't care, dead or alive -- either way," Bush said. "It doesn't matter to me."

3. Finally, from CNN EVANS, NOVAK, HUNT & SHIELDS: Interview With General Richard Myers April 6, 2002:

HUNT: The Big Question for General Myers: One embarrassment for the U.S. has been that, in almost seven months after 9/11, we still haven't captured Osama bin Laden. With the apprehension this week of one of his top lieutenants, have we gotten enough information to be any closer to maybe finally getting bin Laden?

MYERS: Well, if you remember, if we go back to the beginning of this segment, the goal has never been to get bin Laden. Obviously, that's desirable.

So, was this about getting Osama bin Laden, or wasn't it?

From General Dostum and the Heroin Trade:

The events that have transpired as a result of 9/11 have been of enormous benefit to the South Asian heroin industry -- and I have blogged about this a great deal.

It is interesting in view of all the other evidence -- how a Turkish translator at the FBI was aware of evidence that the blueprints for U.S. skyscrapers had gone to the Middle East prior to the attacks, how the same translator saw papers that show the U.S. knew Al Qaeda was going to attack cities with airplanes... I'm writing about Sibel Edmonds, of course, but there's much, much more.

In another passage from General Dostum and the Heroin Trade, I quote Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time by CRAIG MURRAY, July 21, 2007, then continue with my own comments:

Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.

Remember that the Sibel Edmonds case is about U.S. officials, elected and appointed, from both parties, in Congress and the State and Defense Departments, as well as elsewhere, who are on the payroll of organized crime. The organized crime group is connected to the nuclear blackmarket, the arms trade, and narcotics trafficking in Central and Southwest Asia.

Reportedly, these corrupt officials do, while on the U.S. government payroll, favors to help organized crime -- and are rewarded with bribes and promises of a soft, cushy future.

Uh-huh.

It was in No Smoke Without Fire, Part 1 that I first showed this:



And, from Selling Out America, Part 1:

The Turkish Deep State is a modern mafia that includes Turkish government figures (political leaders and military officers), business moguls and cartels that smuggle heroin, sex slaves, weapons and nuclear secrets. Where the interests of these groups converge, might makes right and the purpose of the law is to further business.

Working as a translator in the FBI's Washington Field Office, Sibel Edmonds was assigned to translate a backlog of documents and tapes. Among the information that Edmonds came across was powerful evidence that strategically-placed US officials in Congress and the Executive Branch were on the take, receiving bribes from lobby groups that front for Turkish heroin traffickers.

While these lobby groups do have "legitimate" functions that they perform, and not everyone associated with them knows what they are about, their main purpose is to ensure that US foreign and economic policy gets steered in a way that favors the business interests of the Turkish Deep State. US Congressmen and Senators and officials in the State and Defense Departments perform services, while on the US government payroll, for their foreign masters; protection is provided against prosecution by strategically-placed employees of the FBI, who bury evidence and derail investigations. In return for their services, these people receive bribes, campaign contributions, and a variety of compensation, and are guaranteed a cushy retirement later.

Sibel Edmonds told her story at the FBI and was fired. She then went to the Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General; to the US Senate; and, finally, to the US media. All investigated at least some of her claims, and substantiated what they investigated -- 60 Minutes even did a segment on Edmonds. But, nothing happened, and, ultimately, Sibel Edmonds was gagged by the Bush Administration's Justice Department.

Congressman Henry Waxman, D-CA, was briefed on all of this, and promised in 2006 that should the Democrats win Congress, he would hold public hearings into the Sibel Edmonds case. The Democrats won, but one month after the Democrat-controlled Congress was convened in January of 2007, the Turkish Coalition of America came into existence, a key official of which had been a major player in the American Turkish Council -- the organization most associated in the obstructed FBI investigations with espionage and bribery of US government officials.

Its Congressional Caucus membership list includes Congressman Henry Waxman.



Needless to say, Congressman Waxman has yet to hold those hearings.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) was bought out by the Turkish Coalition of America; he is on the payroll of Turkish organized crime.

Again quoting Sibel Edmonds, this time from State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade -- FBI Whistleblower by Fintan Dunne, June 7, 2004:

"There are certain points..., where you have your drug related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities," Ms. Edmonds told BreakForNews.com.

And, as I quoted in Part 1, from 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

CD: Can you elaborate here on what countries you mean?

SE: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, "OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?"

CD: But of course, you're not implying...

SE: And then to compare that little survey with what countries we've been putting military bases in --

From No Smoke Without Fire, Part 1, where I quote excerpts from Narco aggression, with a comment of my own interspersed.

When Russia backed the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the post-9/11 scenario, the last thing it expected to happen was that drug trafficking from Afghanistan would assume gargantuan proportions under the U.S. military. Since 2001, poppy fields, once banned by the Taliban, have mushroomed again. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world's heroin supply.

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] forces in the country have not only failed to eliminate the terrorist threat from the Taliban, but also presided over a spectacular rise in opium production. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Afghanistan was on the brink of becoming a "narco state".

Not "becoming" -- it already is a "narco state".

Narco business has emerged as virtually the only economy of Afghanistan and is valued at some $10 billion a year. Opium trade is estimated by the U.N. to be equivalent to 53 per cent of the country's official economy and is helping to finance the Taliban.

"Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit," Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of "sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe." As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.

"The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries," says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. "They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking."

Is there any truth to this? The answer I keep coming up with is that there is.

The Russians blame the CIA, and that is the only part I question; from the Sibel Edmonds case, it would seem that if the CIA is involved, they are to some extent acting on orders of corrupt Washington insiders.

Of course, the connections between the CIA and heroin trafficking seem to go back decades, and, in particular, the CIA helped set up heroin traffickers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with full and enthusiastic cooperation of Pakistan's ISI. The heroin trafficking was seen as a way of funding the jihad against the Soviet Union during the 1980's, while destroying the Soviet Army and the Soviet people through heroin addiction -- generating money for jihad, money that was out of reach of the American Congress.

And we seem to think corruption in Kabul is the problem? We will never be able to deal with corruption in Kabul if we can't deal with it in Washington.

From An Interview with Sibel Edmonds, Page Three by Chris Deliso, July 1, 2004:

CD: If your full testimony is heard by the public, who or what agencies are going to be in the biggest trouble?

SE: Well, as for agencies I guess the DOJ, FBI, State Department. But in a way these agencies get some kind of immunity when you charge them like this ... I hate to see how a lot of agents get stigmatized in this. Most of the field agents I met in the FBI were good, honest and hardworking individuals. They were trying to do their best, but up against this ingrown bureaucracy – this is where you have the problem, as will as with certain elected officials.

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability -- the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.

Including a Congressman who was fully briefed on the Sibel Edmonds case, who promised to hold hearings if his party gained power in Congress -- and who then joined an organization established by a frontman for Turkish organized Crime, and who has since been conspicuously silent.



Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest as The Sword of Allah continues!