Article

2006-12-10 Afghanistan

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Posted by Steve White 2006-12-10 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 President Hamid Karzai has said in the past that herbicides pose too big a risk, contaminating water and killing the produce that grows alongside poppies

I thought roundup was a biodegradable superfertilizer that made plants outgrow their skin or something. Not an issue.

Contaminating the drinking water of people who don't report poppy growers? Not much. Don't care.

They hold the crops hostage with the poppies? Don't care.

Walters said he didn't expect the fight against poppies "to be a one-year success story."

Give people $10 for every acre of poppies they report and it will be.

A recent U.N. report said it would take a generation - 20 years - to defeat the drug trade in Afghanistan

Consider the source: The UN.
And supposing they are right: Better get busy now then.

Posted by gorb 2006-12-10 00:18|| 2006-12-10 00:18|| Front Page Top

#2 It would take 20 years for the UN to defeat the drug trade because it takes that long for them to talk the poppies to death.

Posted by CrazyFool 2006-12-10 00:25|| 2006-12-10 00:25|| Front Page Top

#3 This is asinine. Only aerial spraying can control this. If they shoot at the ag planes, bring in Spectre Gunships and eliminate the rabble. A few encounters with the curtain of steel from the air and I think they'll back off.

Posted by SpecOp35 2006-12-10 00:39|| 2006-12-10 00:39|| Front Page Top

#4 Screw it. Let em grow it. Give em a bonus if it gets sent primarily to Iran and France. Drug laws don't work. Never have, never will.

Posted by Thoth 2006-12-10 02:17|| 2006-12-10 02:17|| Front Page Top

#5 Yep, us apes are hardwired for 2 things. Getting high is one of 'em.

Posted by Shipman 2006-12-10 06:15|| 2006-12-10 06:15|| Front Page Top

#6 We don't even have to buy the crop. Legalize and regulate the sale of heroin and - at 10% its current street value - it can still be sold at a 1000% mark-up. This eliminates much of the street crime and burglary which is currently driven by people attempting to purchase a commodity whose price is grossly distorted by non-market factors. Once dealers can go to small claims court about problems with the re-up we eliminate much of the rest of the violence associated with the trade.

Once we have done this - and occupied the oilfields of western "Iran" and northern "Saudi" Arabia - we have cut off the finances for our enemies. No more international mosque building projects, no more Disneys in the desert and no more cash for jihad. Cheap drugs and cheap oil for everybody! Then come the hookers. Oh yes, the hookers.

Posted by Excalibur 2006-12-10 07:54|| 2006-12-10 07:54|| Front Page Top

#7 It would take 20 years for the UN to defeat the drug trade because it takes that long for them to talk the poppies to death.

The US War on Drugs is 35 years old. If the UN could do it in 20, more power to them. The difficulty is that the problem is in the demand, not the supply. The original big market for opium was China. They solved the demand side of the equation.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-12-10 08:09|| 2006-12-10 08:09|| Front Page Top

#8 Do they realize that growing poppies makes your pee-pee shrink, especially that of moslems?

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2006-12-10 09:17|| http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2006-12-10 09:17|| Front Page Top

#9 #6 Ex - I'm all for legalizing drugs on two conditions:

1. Selling drugs to minors gets you a life sentence.

2. Drug addiction is NOT considered a disability and drug addicts get NO money from ~~my pocket that I do not choose to donate~~ the government. Let 'em live in the gutter. (While I'm dreaming, I'd like that applied to drunks, too.)

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2006-12-10 09:29|| http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/page/15bk1/Home_Page.html]">[http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/page/15bk1/Home_Page.html] 2006-12-10 09:29|| Front Page Top

#10 Whatever happened to the research on fungi that attack the poppy plant?

Posted by john 2006-12-10 10:41|| 2006-12-10 10:41|| Front Page Top

#11 If I recall correctly, residual Round-up (that which is not absorbed by the plants on which it is sprayed) breaks down to salt and water within days. (I'm not certain whether NaCl is meant, or another salt, perhaps one of Rantburg's chemists could chime in?) My co-chair for the elementary school's Nature Preserve, a charmingly classic tree hugger, used Round-up liberally whenever she was ready to turn the next patch of lawn into native prairie.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-12-10 10:53|| 2006-12-10 10:53|| Front Page Top

#12 Rodeo, which, IIRC, is also a Monsanto product, is the water/enviro safe alternative to Roundup. We use it to kill invasive non-native plants (Arundo Donax, Castor Bean, especially) as mitigation for our construction projects.

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-12-10 11:57|| 2006-12-10 11:57|| Front Page Top

#13 Glyphosate is the active agent in Roundup, which is structurally similar to amino acids.

It acts by inhibiting an enzyme in the pathway leading to biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids. Because this enzyme and pathway is unique to plants and microbes, glyphosate is not toxic to animals.

Lots of GM crops are engineered with enzymes that aren't affected by it, or with an extra enzyme that degrades it. But it should work just fine on Afghan poppies.

Respectfully, the drug legalization debate fades to irrelevance in this context. The Afghan heroin trade finances the enemy's capability to keep killing our soldiers, and that's all I care about. The Brits have been riding our asses for years to lay waste to the poppy fields, but we've dragged our feet, on the grounds that depriving the farmers of the income could drive them into the arms of the Taliban.

If we're damned if we do and damned if we don't, then it's about time we get our thumb out. I'm all for going Ye Olde British Empyre on their asses.

Posted by exJAG 2006-12-10 12:08|| 2006-12-10 12:08|| Front Page Top

#14 From 1998

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/121735.stm

Scientists are developing a virulent fungus in an effort to combat the worldwide trade in heroin.

The fungus kills opium poppies, the raw material for the drug.
The UK Foreign Office has confirmed a report in The Sunday Times newspaper that Britain is helping to fund the biological research.

The programme is based in Uzbekistan, in central Asia, which borders the so-called "Gold Crescent" of countries that supply up to 90% of Britain's heroin.

The action comes after bumper harvests have seen the UK and much of western Europe flooded with cheap heroin. The street price has halved and seizures at ports and airports have risen sharply.

The Foreign Office was unable to confirm details of the report, but a spokeswoman stressed that work was "in its very early stages at the moment."

Spending so far was to "find out whether the project is viable," she added.

She could not confirm the report's claim that Britain had contributed $500,000 to the programme, a figure matched by the US.

But she did say the UK's share was part of its total contribution to the United Nations' Drug Control Programme, based in Vienna.

Britain would hope to unleash enough fungus to infect thousands of acres of poppies in grown in the central Asia region.

America would be expected to deploy it in the "Golden Triangle" regions of south-east Asia, and South America, where most of its heroin originates, says the newspaper report.

It goes on to say that about 30 researchers - "some veterans of the secret Soviet biological weapons programme" - are working to refine new strains of the fungus and test them locally.

Posted by john 2006-12-10 15:11|| 2006-12-10 15:11|| Front Page Top

#15 Wait until the poppies have almost reached the maturity level needed to produce heroin, and then plow the fields with B-52s. I doubt many farmers are going to risk planting a second crop. Only have to do it once - even the remote POSSIBILITY of a second round would be enough to deter most people with an IQ above ambient temperatures in Greenland. In winter.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2006-12-10 15:26|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2006-12-10 15:26|| Front Page Top

#16 NO. NO. NO. Didn't we learn anything from Agent Orange and paraquat? Do the obvious things instead. Bomb Wazoo. Then send in some combines so we can harvest ~~steal~~ the crop for ourselves.

DO NOT SPRAY.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2006-12-10 17:37|| 2006-12-10 17:37|| Front Page Top

#17 I am for genetically engineering virus and fungus to attack opium poppies and coca. Only they can have the selectivity and persistence so, once an area is inoculated, drug production will be ruined for many years.

Posted by ed 2006-12-10 17:45|| 2006-12-10 17:45|| Front Page Top

#18 Working - taking a break to get scores.

Solution: Finely powerdered plutonium/cesium/radoioactive-waste (or whatver glowy stuff) over the fields.

Spray once, dont have to worry about the drug trade nor the growers for hundreds of years. And we solve our nuclear waste problems.

/snark

Posted by OldSpook 2006-12-10 18:37|| 2006-12-10 18:37|| Front Page Top

#19 depriving the farmers of the income could drive them into the arms of the Taliban

OMFG. This has got to be one of the all-time most stupid arguments ever used on planet earth. What do you call these farmers anyway? In my opinion, they are Taliban. They raise money instead of carry a gun. What's so hard? Anybody throwing up this kind of argument is siding with the Taliban, they just haven't figured it out yet.

Duh. Clueless liberal-minded argument.

Here's a picture for the RB archives that we will probably be needing a lot soon.

Posted by gorb 2006-12-10 19:03|| 2006-12-10 19:03|| Front Page Top

#20 We can file it under "We'll kill you last" maybe.

Posted by gorb 2006-12-10 19:05|| 2006-12-10 19:05|| Front Page Top

#21 It is a stupid argument, gorb. But, as far as I understand from the 10th MTN folks who strongly favored the Brit approach, it's why we've been there for five years and are just now doing something about it.

I don't know who made the policy, but it sure as hell wasn't the US military. Typically, when we're forced to do something stupid, or restrained from doing something wise, I assume it came from State Dept. weenies. It would be interesting to know how they got overridden on this.

Posted by exJAG 2006-12-10 19:31|| 2006-12-10 19:31|| Front Page Top

#22 Michael Yon's 3-pary series, The Perfect Evil is an excellent on-the-ground take. Worthy, IMHO.

Posted by .com 2006-12-10 19:40|| 2006-12-10 19:40|| Front Page Top

#23 pary = part

Posted by .com 2006-12-10 19:40|| 2006-12-10 19:40|| Front Page Top

#24 Maybe the State Dep't has to go. Personally, I have never crossed paths with them and had anything go well.

I thought Bush has been saying that the military would get what it needs. It would be interesting what would happen if word of this kind of crap got out in a big way. It seems to me it wouldn't be too long before you'd have a supermajority clamoring for things like KC-10s full of Roundup or whatever to be headed for the gulf. Decisions like this do not reflect the way I think wars should be fought, and the military seems to meekly accept these lame decisions made by some PC pinhead somewhere who isn't connected to reality and grumble amongst themselves where it does no good. The pinhead probably forgets he put the policy in place and wonders why we aren't winning.

The terrorists' leaders probably look for weak points like this and shore them up with shields of some kind knowing those pinheads will take the bait every time. We have got to stop succumbing to this crap, and the MSM ain't helping so it must be part of the problem. We need more blogs until these boneheads are beaten into doing their job.

Posted by gorb 2006-12-10 19:50|| 2006-12-10 19:50|| Front Page Top

#25 Respectfully, the drug legalization debate fades to irrelevance in this context.

Respectfully disagree. Drug distribution is supporting too many terrorists around the world, Mexico, Columbia, probably Venezuela, North Africa. If we started effectively spraying the Afghan crop, Iran would probably begin cultivation.

Demand is the problem, not supply. We can't even keep drugs out of our highest security jails. Until we are willing to execute users, demand will be met in the richest country in the world.

Now as for going British on them, I'm not quite sure what that means. Frankly, I don't want to colonize them. I don't want to bring civilization to them. I don't want to convert them to Christianity. I'm perfectly happy to let nature take its course after our troops have swept through. If they can survive the brutal Afghan winter, more power to them. If not, too bad. And if they try to cross us again, we'll be back.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-12-10 20:35|| 2006-12-10 20:35|| Front Page Top

23:47 Rafael
23:43 rammer
23:40 .com
23:34 Rafael
23:32 gorb
23:32 Rafael
23:16 .com
23:15 ed
23:11 Rafael
23:06 JosephMendiola
22:59 Zenster
22:54 Zenster
22:52 JosephMendiola
22:51 JosephMendiola
22:49 Zenster
22:49 JosephMendiola
22:42 Atomic Conspiracy
22:40 SpecOp35
22:38 JosephMendiola
22:33 .com
22:30 .com
22:23 Zenster
22:19 Rafael
22:12 Zenster