Article

2013-08-05 -Land of the Free

U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

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Posted by Steve White 2013-08-05 08:50|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA,

SOD ? Please gag me.

And the "partners"....never vector taskings on US Persons right ?

Posted by Besoeker 2013-08-05 09:29|| 2013-08-05 09:29|| Front Page Top

#2 Who is the enemy?

Posted by Iblis 2013-08-05 10:53|| 2013-08-05 10:53|| Front Page Top

#3 Given how Hizb'allah, al Qaeda in North Africa, in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and various other incarnations are entwined with the drug trade -- both as cover and as one of many criminal fundraising efforts for jihad -- I'm not sure this is unjustified. Here at Rantburg Chris Covert's series on the drug war in Mexico is posted on page 1 (War on Terror) for exactly that reason. And, while I am not at all keen on this level of observation and intrusion into the doings of the innocent (anybody watching me is going to be bored to tears -- "Oh Gawd, not another nap! Does that woman actually ever do anything?!" Sorry guys -- not really, no.)

Choke off the drug trade, and remove a significant funding source for the jihadis -- I'm all for that. Let them fight with the Russian and Romanian mafiyas for the theft of credit card numbers, and see how far that gets them, now that the Gulf oil money looks like it will soon start drying up.

Posted by trailing wife 2013-08-05 14:02|| 2013-08-05 14:02|| Front Page Top

#4 I have no qualms going after narco-terrorists. I have no qualms going after Americans who engage in the drug trade.

I have substantial qualms about prosecutors and investigators hiding evidence from judges and juries. That sort of thing gets to be contagious.

Posted by Steve White 2013-08-05 14:04|| 2013-08-05 14:04|| Front Page Top

#5 I have substantial qualms about prosecutors and investigators hiding evidence from judges and juries. That sort of thing gets to be contagious.

Fair enough. Now we're discussing the nub of the thing, Dr. Steve, and I quite agree.

Posted by trailing wife 2013-08-05 14:13|| 2013-08-05 14:13|| Front Page Top

#6 Ending drug prohibition would cut-off 95% of funds AND cut the amount you need to spend on police.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2013-08-05 17:24|| 2013-08-05 17:24|| Front Page Top

#7 Then you're gonna have kids in junior high school shooting smack before they go to school.

Wouldn't it be better to just secure the border? Oh, right. That would impede the flow of new Democrat votes and cheap labor into the country.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2013-08-05 18:57|| 2013-08-05 18:57|| Front Page Top

#8 Might also impact all those selective enforcement options.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2013-08-05 18:58|| 2013-08-05 18:58|| Front Page Top

#9 What's the German for "it's for the children"?

How about bringing back alcohol prohibition too? that worked a treat..

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2013-08-05 19:07|| 2013-08-05 19:07|| Front Page Top

#10 How about bringing back alcohol prohibition too? that worked a treat..

You know, Bright Pebbles, England's own Anthony Trollope commented on the drinking habits of Americans of all ages and stations... not to mention the common practice of paying Irish immigrant workers in alcoholic beverages rather than actual money. As a result of Prohibition, consumption of alcohol was down significantly across all segments of the population. And, given that there had been a trend of criminal gangs being concentrated in whatever was the latest population of immigrants throughout the nineteenth century, that this trend continued into the early twentieth is not really a revelation.

In summary, Prohibition did not significantly change the behaviour of criminal gangs, but did significantly impact per capita alcohol consumption, and radically decreased -- post-Prohibition, at least -- the availability of distilled alcohols cut with methanol , etc, a standard problem in the drinking establishments of working men and the poor in both Britain and America until purity laws came into vogue on both sides of the Atlantic.

Posted by trailing wife 2013-08-05 19:36|| 2013-08-05 19:36|| Front Page Top

#11 In all honesty, I used to be extremely anti-drug. But the war on (some) drugs has taken far too large atoll on fundamental liberty, expansion of government, and entrenchment of power with bureaucrats and police.

Time to declare victory and end it, and dismantle the DEA back to a small core force that assists local law enforcement and a proper border security agency.

Posted by OldSpook 2013-08-05 19:53|| 2013-08-05 19:53|| Front Page Top

#12 The War on drugs, is an extension on the war on your liberty to choose what to consume.

It's a Bigger Big gulp ban.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2013-08-05 19:55|| 2013-08-05 19:55|| Front Page Top

#13 Yes, it is a war on your choice to consume, Bright Pebbles. But so are product purity laws. I have in my possession a reprint of Things A Lady Would Like To Know Concerning Domestic Management, the second printing of which is dated 1875 by the publishing house Hutchinson of London. The very first section is titled "Adulterations", and contains standard tests by which the housewife can learn whether her ingredients have been adulterated, though the Parliamentary "Sale of Food and Drugs Act" had been passed some years before: bread by alum; cayenne pepper by brick dust, red wood dust, and red lead, among other possibilities, requiring a good microscope to detect; sausages with things too disgusting to mention, though we all have read about the crusade to clean up the meat packing industry in school, and needn't go further into it here; and so forth. There are things that are not good to ingest, though an individual might want to ever so badly, and sometimes it is a good thing for government to intervene.

It is not, after all, that government is itself bad, but that too much government is as bad as too little.

And separately, do remember that the opium trade is controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda/Afghanistan jihadis, and Hizb'allah and Al Qaeda/North Africa are entwined in the Hispano-American drug tradethat badanov has been chronicling in these pages. So every time you exercise your freedom to imbibe, you are funding the jihad against your country and mine. And every time you agitate for the cartels' freedom to sell you that which you desire to buy, you are surrendering more deeply to the expansion of the caliphate.

Nowadays it is opium, etc. that is the opiate of the people.

Posted by trailing wife 2013-08-05 22:39|| 2013-08-05 22:39|| Front Page Top

22:51 JosephMendiola
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