Phillip Smith at the Independent Media Institute’s Drug Reporter writes—America’s Afghanistan anti-drug boondoggle nears the $9 Billion mark:
he amount of money the US government has spent trying to wipe out Afghan opium since 2002 has now reached $8.94 billion, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted in his latest quarterly report to Congress on October 30.
Afghanistan is far and away the world’s largest opium producer and has been for the entire period since the US invaded and occupied the country in late 2001. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) 2018 Afghan Opium Survey, Afghan farmers were cultivating about 60,700 hectares of opium poppies in the late 1990s, but around 121,400 hectares a year in the mid-2000s.
As the US occupation dragged on, opium cultivation generally climbed throughout the 2010s, peaking at more than 323,700 hectares in 2017. That equates to about 9 tons of raw opium produced that year, with the heroin produced from it going into the veins of addicts from Lahore to London.
The SIGAR report also noted that although drought had caused poppy cultivation to drop by 20% last year, “it remained at the second-highest level since the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) began monitoring it in 1994.”
So, despite spending nearly $9 billion, the US war on Afghan opium has not only not succeeded but has seen the poppy foe steadily gain ground. And even though drought struck the crop in 2018, opium still exceeded the value of all of Afghanistan’s licit exports combined and accounted for between 6% and 11% of its gross domestic product.
For Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and a longtime observer of US policies aimed at drug-producing countries – not just Afghanistan – the SIGAR report spoke volumes.
“Over a similar period in Colombia, the US wasted $10 billion,” he said. “I guess we can conclude the drug war failed more efficiently in Afghanistan.” [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Powell: won't seek political office:
While yesterday's Q-poll showed Colin Powell polling decently in hypothetical NY governor and senate races, the integrity-free outgoing secretary of state says he's not interested.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday he won't seek political office, dismissing suggestions that he run for governor or senator in New York.
Asked about a poll that shows him favored in a hypothetical matchup for the governor's race, Powell said, "I'm not going to be running for office even in my beloved home state of New York, as flattering as that poll might be." [...]
"I don't think I've ever said I wouldn't be interested in public life again," Powell said. "I think I've repeatedly said over the course of nine-plus years that I've had no interest in political office."
The GOP bench in NY is exactly one man deep without a Powell candidacy—Giuliani. Expect state Republicans to keep talking up a Powell candidacy over the next two years as they grow increasingly desperate in their efforts to take on HIllary and hold the governorship.