DC:
The Obama administration reportedly had the chance to cripple the global heroin trade funding terrorism in war-torn Afghanistan, but it shelved the plan to advance a broader political agenda.
The administration, citing political concerns, shut down a plan to stop the spread of narcotics around the world, prevent Afghanistan’s emergence as a narco-state, and sever the critical revenue streams financing the deadly insurgency American troops are fighting and dying to end, Politico’s John Meyer reported Sunday.
The plan — Operation Reciprocity — was drafted by Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Justice legal advisers, but the high-stakes strategy was strangled in its crib by the Obama administration’s deputy chief of mission in Kabul, Tina Kaidanow, to protect the administration’s strategic ambitions.
Kaidanow told Politico that there were serious concerns the plan would impact the White House’s Afghanistan strategy, including but not limited to the proposed drawdown of America’s military presence in the region. At the time Operation Reciprocity was just starting to gain momentum in the summer of 2013, the conflict in Afghanistan had already cost American taxpayers $686 billion, not to mention the more than 2,000 American lives sacrificed to the war. It appears the administration caved to the political pressure.
The plan’s architects argued that Operation Reciprocity was in line with the administration’s initiatives and crucial to securing a better future for Afghanistan. more here
Now there’s a nose that could do a lot of snorting.
And probably has…..
The so-called “War on Drugs” is just a farce, because too much money is being made
from it. The suppliers, the pushers, the politicians, the Federal Government, your local
law enforcement, etc. are all getting rich from the narcotics trade. Want to stop the drug problem? Make everything legal and take the profit motive out of it. What are the chances
this will happen? Exactly two: slim and none.
@Vietvet – You’ve hit it on the head! Just to add to your etc., Lawyers and the prison system. The supposed Opium crisis is nothing without Opium, or lawyers and politicians. As Saint Hillary’s re-used quote “never waste a good crisis”. The part she left out was “purposely-created for self-profit”!
Not to mention all the money laundered through wall street and major corporations. If most people only knew just how insidious and deep the drug corruption runs.
Follow the $$$
The Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim terror organizations like Hezbollah depended on the revenue from opium sales. Obama ENCOURAGED both in the US. No way he’d stop it at its source.
I guess a little herbicide on the poppy fields is technology we don’t have at our disposal?
well we can’t destroy the only cash crop the Taliban have, that would cut off their money and we might have to spend billions to support them, oh wait, we do. Never mind.
Just part of Obozo’ s fundamentally changing of America. Pay no attention to the tens of thousand of lives that heroin has ruined in our country. A little round up distributed by air could have handled these poppy crops easily.
Or for that matter, have we got any agent orange left?
GW Bush could have napalmed the poppy fields when we first went in. It was all over the news at the time that the Taliban was using that as their income. I expected him to do something and as time when on, I wondered why he wasn’t doing anything about it. He just let it go and it disappeard from the news.