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Fifty drug lords on US target list in Afghanistan
It's an A-Pee story, so here's the teaser. Full story at link.So whatever happened to the "we don't eradicate poppies" idea? Does that mean they've switched from spraying roundup to spraying lead? Does the poppy field get left behind as a magnet for other bad guys and we wipe them out too? If you see those fields start rotting rather than being harvested then that would be a good sign indeed. A U.S. military "kill or capture" list of 367 wanted insurgents in Afghanistan includes 50 major drug traffickers who give money to Taliban militants, U.S. military commanders told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Only 50? U.S. and NATO troops are attacking drug warehouses and militant-linked narco dealers in Afghanistan for the first time this year, a new strategy to counter the country's booming opium poppy and heroin trade. NATO defense ministers approved the targeted drug raids late last year, saying the link between Taliban insurgents and the drug trade was clear. That only took eight years to figure out. According to a report to be issued by the committee this week, U.S. commanders have no restrictions on the use of force against the targets, "which means they can be killed or captured on the battlefield," the report states. I vote captured. Then killed according to how much info they produce. When the nexus between a drug trafficker and the insurgency is clear enough, the drug trafficker is put on a list of insurgent leaders wanted by U.S. forces, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the top U.S. spokesman in Afghanistan. For anything more than personal use: Kill him and let God sort it out. It's probably more humane because after only a few examples they'll figure it out and stop producing poppies. "The list of targets are those that are contributing to the insurgency, so the key leadership, and part of that obviously is the link between the narco industry and the militants," Smith said Monday. To be placed on this target list, formally called the "joint integrated prioritized target list," requires two verifiable human sources and "substantial additional evidence," the report says. How about if a satellite sees your soon-to-be sorry a$$ tending to more than a few square meters of poppies? Posted by: gorb 2009-08-10 |
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