Over Half of Afghanistan under Taliban Control

Six years ago coalition forces headed into Afghanistan to eradicate the Taliban. Now an international think tank says more than half of the country is under the Taliban's thumb.

With very few exceptions our media has failed to inform us about the Bush policy in Iraq creating a catastrophe for us in Afghanistan. 4 years ago the European press had been warning it's people about possibly losing the war in Afghanistan due to Bush neglecting it by putting most of our military in Iraq. Today the situation in Afghanistan is such a disaster that just a few days ago the former leader of the United Kingdoms Liberal Democratic Party (1988-1999) Lord Paddy Ashdown and Britain's most senior armed forces leader Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup have declared Afghanistan a lost cause.

Afghanistan is lost, says Lord Ashdown

Nato has "lost in Afghanistan" and its failure to bring stability there could provoke a regional sectarian war "on a grand scale", according to Lord Ashdown.

Lord Ashdown said: "We have lost, I think, and success is now unlikely."

Lord Ashdown added: "I believe losing in Afghanistan is worse than losing in Iraq. It will mean that Pakistan will fall and it will have serious implications internally for the security of our own countries and will instigate a wider Shiite [Shia], Sunni regional war on a grand scale.

(before entering the British Foreign Office & later politics LORD ASHDOWN served as a Special Forces Commander in the British Royal Marines from 1959-1972 unlike our current Pigeon Hawk President George W. Bush during the 1960's LORD ASHDOWN actually participated in the fighting of a war seeing combat in both Borneo & the Persian Gulf. He also led a Royal Marines Commando unit that fought IRA Terrorists in Belfast , Northern Ireland.Lord Paddy Ashdown was knighted in 2000.

  British Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup

Stirrup: 'No military solution in Afghanistan'

There is no military solution to the struggle against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, according to Britain's most senior armed forces leader.

Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup said: "There is a common misperception that the issues in Afghanistan, and indeed elsewhere around the world, can be dealt with by military means. That's a false perception."

According to this clip below that I cut out of page 8 from the November 1999 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Iraq had the worlds cheapest gasoline at only 10 cents a gallon now we pay nearly $4.00 a gallon.

It was over six years ago that 3000 people were diabolically slaughtered by Al-Qaeda yet Bush has allowed the situation in Afghanistan to be at its worst since 9/11. Once again, Afghanistan is in the grip of the Taliban , Al Qaeda , the warlords, and a land of opium, arms, and endless warfare. Trying to take out the heroin trade in Afghanistan would be like trying to make Saudi Arabia give up it's oil trade which is the only business there is and makes it impossible so drug warrior politics along with the corruption it always creates is playing a large role in causing us to lose the war in Afghanistan. The opium or poppy flower business employs 70% of the Afghan people so removing it which can't be done anyway would cause a revolution. Afghanistan and Opium are inseparable they can't exist without it they would starve to death and many are already dying from hunger due to Bush's policy of broken promises and spraying the poppy fileds of only the dirt poorest of Afghanistans opium farmers just to give the appearance that we are doing something about the Heroin Trade. This Poppy spraying policy which the other NATO members object to only creates a never ending flow of new recruits for the Taliban. The Europeans don't want endless wars and occupations but I bet Bush and his loyal followers sure do they love war as long as they don't have to fight in it.

The corruption is so widespread from top to bottom that our own USA military computer documents stolen from a base in Afghanistan and then sold on the black market implicate Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai  and other leading government officials including their nations Drug Czar as being the top heroin warlords in Afghanistan.

VIDEO ON KARZAI DRUG SCANDAL

While the elite rulers become wealthy in the worlds drug trade others are not so fortunate since now after 6 years and a half years of intensive international involvement in Afghanistan, the country remains ravaged by severe poverty & the spreading starvation of the rural & urban poor. Despite promises from the USA guaranteeing to provide the resources & assistance necessary for its reconstruction & development needs, Afghanistan's people are starving to death. Afghanistan continues to rank at the bottom of most poverty indicators, & the situation of women & children is particularly grave. 1 in 4 children born in Afghanistan cannot expect to live beyond the age of 5 & certain provinces of the country lay claim to the worst maternal mortality rates ever recorded.

Urgent action needed to avoid humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, says Oxfam

The Associated Press

November 20, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan: Urgent action is needed to avert humanitarian disaster in Aghanistan where millions face "severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa," the international aid agency Oxfam said.

A report by the Britain-based agency said U.S. spending on aid in the country was only a fraction of its military expenditure there, and too much of the aid money goes on high salaries.

Although the U.S. Agency for International Development has spent more than US $4.4 billion in Afghanistan since 2002, Oxfam said that figure is dwarfed by U.S. military spending here -- US $35 billion in 2007 alone.

"As in Iraq, too much aid is absorbed by profits of companies and subcontractors, on non-Afghan resources and on high expatriate salaries and living costs," said the report Tuesday prepared for a British parliament committee. "Each full-time expatriate consultant costs up to half a million dollars a year."

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it could not immediately comment.

It's not just bad journalism but it's also dishonest for anybody to declare the surge a success. Sure it's probably true that Iraq has been somewhat stabilized however the overall cost of containing Iraq has enabled the Taliban to beat us in Afghanistan. Our other war the forgotten one in Afghanistan is now a total failure due to Bush leading our nation into Iraq. The US media is so preoccupied about Iraq that they kind of remind me of the Religious Right being so damned obsessed about Abortion.

Everyone profits at Helmand's drug bazaar

The poppy harvest is in and everyone from the Taliban to local government officials is cooperating to get the opium crop to market. .

"If NATO or anyone else is coming to destroy the bazaar, the police will tell us in time so that we can move our paste to a safe location," he said. "The drug dealers and smugglers cooperate with the local authorities," he added. "Without them, we wouldn't be able to do our work properly."

Farmers also pay informal "taxes" to police and local officials from the beginning of the process all the way up to the harvest. "The government makes a lot of money at harvest time," said Shah Mahmud, 40, a landowner in Nadali.

"It is not beneficial to have fighting during the harvest," said Shah Mahmud. "The Taliban and the government both receive money from poppy - they lose out if the crop is destroyed by bombing or fighting."

During World War I Germany actually won that War on the Eastern Front yet that meant nothing because the loss on the Western Front a year later caused them to lose the First World War. This is clearly the situation we are definitely losing Afghanistan because the Taliban controls over half of Afghanistan. When a nation goes to war there are sometimes several geographic locations called theatres of war where military battles are being fought simultaneously. This so called "War on Terror" has two major theatres of war one is Iraq the other is Afghanistan. Worse than our even battlefield losses we are also losing the Hearts and Minds of the Afghan people. (GRAPHIC WARNING) This Dutch newspaper also says the that NATO is killing more innocent Afghans than the Taliban does.

British Criticize Air Attacks in Afghan Region

SANGIN, Afghanistan -- A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.

Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area.

This stupid ass George Bush NEOCON regime totally squandered the chance to enter into a beneficial relationship with a Muslim Country by abandoning Afghanistan for his Foolish Crusade in Iraq. So now Afghanistan is ruin and if it once again falls into the hands of Islamic extremists then neighboring Pakistan a Nuclear power may fall as well. Our Press mainstream has also neglected to inform us that not do the other Nato countries find Bush's America bossy and inconsiderate but some nations are talking about leaving NATO.  

"Our research on the ground in Afghanistan clearly shows that chemical spraying would trigger a dramatic increase in hostility against the NATO troops and the Karzai government in Afghanistan. Chemical spraying would light a political fire under the Karzai government and the British troops operating in Helmand," he warned.

WATERBOARDING NEOCONS

In a 2002 speech at General George Marshall's alma mater, Virginia Military Institute, our Gimpish President George W. Bush invoked the Marshall Plan in describing American efforts in re-building post-Taliban Afghanistan and more broadly for securing peace in the aftermath of a more geographically generalized war on terror yet he failed to keep his promise to Afghanistan.

IRAQ

But when the new war in Iraq took all the focus away those pledges Bush made were unfulfilled. In February 2003, Sen. Joseph Biden (D) says, "I think the Bush administration has already given up the ghost in Afghanistan. They've basically turned it over to the warlords."  A year later after being pressured by congress Bush finally authorized $300 million, but Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) noted that this amount "does not come near the promise President Bush made a short time before."

Afghanistan and Iraq may cost US $2.4 trillion

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost the United States $1 trillion by the time President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009, making the conflicts more expensive than the Vietnam and Korean wars combined.

Over the next decade, according to the US Congressional Budget Office, the wars could cost $2.4 trillion.

The new estimate includes a request to Congress from Mr Bush for an additional $46 billion in war funding.

I posted a diary similar to this 3 months ago this update reveals just how dire the situation has become since then sadly it is far worse but the American people still think of Afghanistan as a victory when it's the complete polar opposite. Currently we are losing the war in Afghanistan in a big way because of the Bush administrations precious little surge in Iraq. Yet this is only a temporary situation in Iraq which in reality is a lost cause but the surge serves two purposes it allows Bush to save some face but more importantly it gives the American public the perception that we are winning in Iraq but this is merely an illusion in truth the GOP is only sticking a finger in a dike until the 2008 the election is over. Hopefully we beat the Republicans in the next elections but no matter who wins the American people must demand these wars be brought to a quick end & that includes the trillion dollar failed War on Drugs , Afghanistan & especially the war in Iraq we just can't afford this insanity anymore. We are also 9 Trillion dollars in debt our economy is only growing 1% per year in comparison Chinas is growing 12%  , European Union 5% , and India is growing 8% per year. However due to relocating offshore USA Corporations have never had it better.

NATO to Legalize Afghanistan's Opium?

Despite efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's opium production, the problem keeps getting worse. And the Taliban insurgency is the primary beneficiary. Now, some European governments are weighing a legalization of the drug trade.

Afghanistan's poppy problem continues to grow.

Corruption. Crime. Addiction. And money for the Islamist Taliban insurgency. The list of ills engendered by opium and heroin production in Afghanistan is long. So too is the list of buyers -- the country accounts for over 90 percent of all opium produced on the planet. And international efforts to cut that output have proven fruitless.

But a change of strategy may be on the horizon. Governments in Berlin, Paris and Rome, along with NATO leadership are discussing a potentially explosive new idea: the legalization of Afghanistan's opium production. The plan envisages farmers being able to sell their poppies to officially licensed buyers for the same price they currently get from the drug barons. The product could then be sold to the pharmaceutical industry for pain medication and other products.
"We are not bringing drug cultivation under control with the concepts we have had up to now," a NATO general responsible for Afghanistan told SPIEGEL.

Retired Army Colonel & worlds leading Military Non-Lethal weapons expert Dr. John B. Alexander says in the video that the War on Terror can never be won as long as we have a War on Drugs he states that since Bush has been in office we have spent a half a Trillion dollars on the failed War on Drugs and that we should legalize drugs instead of wasting anymore cash on that 100 + year failed bottomless money pit that sucks up 69 Billion a year federal funds only

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The 69 billion isn't including the billions the 50 states spend on it each year nor does it count what it costs to house both state and federal inmates serving prison time on these drug charges. Just think about it because it's our taxpayers money being used to finance the enslavement of over a million of these non-violent kids 85 percent of which are either African American or Hispanic while at the very same time George W. Bush's Heroin Warlord Puppet government ruling at least part of Afghanistan are becoming Billionaires sending the same drugs over that these minority kids go to prison for sometimes for several decades for basically very small amounts. Every American citizen should be outraged by this something just isn't right with that picture and it makes me boiling mad.

AFGHANISTAN'S POPPY PROBLEM

Karzai's Brother Under Drug Suspicion

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai is facing hard times. As his brother fights accusations that he's involved in the country's rampant drug trade, an increasing number of Afghans are disappointed by their government.

Afghan Drug War Follies

Regional warlords who originally backed the Taliban and Al Qaeda but switched their allegiance to the Karzai government derive much of their revenue from the opium trade. Even more important, hundreds of thousands of Afghan farmers base their livelihood on drug crops. They will not look kindly on the Karzai government if it tries to drive their families into destitution.

U.S. policymakers need to keep their priorities straight. Our overriding objective in Afghanistan should be to eliminate the remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. The drug war undermines that objective and may drive otherwise friendly Afghans into the arms of our enemies. There is a troubling correlation between the upsurge of violence in Afghanistan in recent months and the intensification of drug-eradication efforts during that same period. Indeed, the upsurge has been greatest in the main drug-producing provinces.

Even those Americans who remain wedded to a prohibitionist policy as a general principle ought to realize that an exception needs to be made in Afghanistan.

Democrats, Independents, Greens , Libertarians , & any other American including Republicans who are sick & tired of this insane NEO-CON empire building crap need to demand straight answers from our elected officials about the conduct & all around total incompetence of the Bush/Cheney regime.