AFGHAN POPPIES UPDATE

Two years ago, in Afghan Poppies: What The Bush White House Should Really Be Afraid Of, I told you about CIA collusion and incompetence regarding opium production in Afghanistan.

That was in 2003. Since then, Afghanistan’s poppy crop has exploded. According to Robert Charles, in his capacity as chief counternarcotics official at the State Department, the poppy crop went from 152,000 acres in 2003 to 515,000 acres in 2004 – producing $7 billion in opium and heroin money.

This money is financing Al Qaeda, Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq, and international Moslem terrorism – yet the CIA is too impossibly incompetent to stop it, and the Pentagon simply refuses to.

Without identifying which intelligence agency disclosed this to me, we have produced in quantity a genetically-engineered chemical that can be released at high altitude over Afghan poppy growing regions and cause the poppy plant not to flower and render the poppy seeds infertile. It is harmless to other plants, to animals and people.

We have the capacity to wipe out Afghan poppy production and thus the principal financing source of Jihadism. We won’t do it. The White House will not give the order. The scandal I told you about two years ago continues, it continues to grow, and it continues to be ignored.