Talk:Afghan opium plantings expected to be up 40% from 2005

would this old source be relevant?

I noticed this 2002 article [1] "The Bush administration has decided not to destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan. President Bush, who previously linked the Afghan drug trade directly to terrorism, has now decided not to destroy the Afghan opium crop. ...a U.S. intelligence official who recently returned from Afghanistan noted that U.S. forces could destroy the crops using aerial spraying techniques, but no such actions are planned."

I've been wondering for years why the US has such an aggressive spraying operation in Columbia but not Afghanistan. Last year Karzai apparently said he didn't want spraying done.. but is that a good enough reason not to do it if the trafficking is financing terrorism as the CIA has said? Just wondering whether to report the "not spraying" issue in this article? Neutralizer 22:29, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd consider previous reasons for not destroying opium crops to be relevant to current reasons, so I'd say "yes". I'd also like more background on the "five pillar" strategy since it's mentioned in the body of the story even before the growth predictions. One source says the rise will be a "threat to Afghanistan's security", while some propose the US is not destroying opium crops because it might "destabilize" the region. The real story is that this statistic reveals a lot of unanswered questions. Karen 23:16, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

<sp_ch>

• Yes; but,imo, the answers to those questions might be in the realm of Jack Nicholson's "You can't HANDLE the truth!". If one employsOccam's Razor and simple deductive logic; one comes to the conclusion that the simplest answer is that the coalition controllers want the opium to be produced and even more disturbing want the "enemy" to be well financed. After all, it does take 2 to make a war. I have to be very careful with this because my own research indicates that the Taliban's ban [2]on Afghan opium production in the year 2001 (and the resulting negative effect on all the middle men profits and black-bag money that had been previously generated from Afghan dope) may have been 1 of the reasons that 9/11 was allowed to happen. The only real dramatic effect the Taliban had on this planet was to crush Afghan opium production all the way down to 185 metric tonnes in 2001...last year it was 4,300 metric tonnes...and guess where the opium lords keep their money according to the AP story? "Most of their(drug lords') money is stashed in banks in the United Arab Emirates", the (US)diplomat said. Who is at the center of the US ports controversy; and getting such powerful unexplainable support from the Bush team? Is a circle starting to appear? It seems so to me; but dare not speak of such sinister things because the label of "conspiracy theory" is waiting to be misapplied as a thought censoring device.
• The alternative line of reasoning is to present esoteric lines of justification for the documented fact that the Taliban were able to subdue opium production almost entirely within a 1 year time period but that the USA military machine has not been able to keep opium production from skyrocketing 3,000% since they took over the place[3]. This might explain why neither Bush's nephews nor Kerry's stepsons and none of the family members of US congressmen are fighting in this war...maybe they already know its all a "five pillar" pile of bullshit. Neutralizer 00:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)