home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq

Special Report Only for CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! Early 21st Century Holocausts No Death Squads, No Torture, No Milton Friedman, No "Shock and Awe" Bombing; just Mild-Mannered Liberals from the World Bank and Harvard driving hundreds of thousands of poor people around the world to starvation and suicide. Read P. Sainath's searing special report. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Alexander Cockburn's East Coast Tour: "Is There a Left Left?" Newsflash! Daniel Cassidy's How the Irish Invented Slang Wins American Book Award for Nonfiction!

Today's Stories October 13 / 14, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Al Gore's Peace Prize Wajahat Ali Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy: an Interview with P. W. Singer October 12, 2007 Cindy Sheehan Leadership Void Brendan Cooney Washington's Holocaust Deniers Alan Farago Gore Still Lost Florida Jan Oberg Gore's Peace Prize, a Grand Misjudgment M. Shahid Alam The Mercenary State: Pakistan's Killer Elites David Macaray Lies About Teachers and Unions Julia Kendlbacher Urban Legend, We Love Our Forest People Peter Rost, MD Drug Money and the Clinton Campaign Website of the Day Nader Live: "Things are a Lot Worse Than We Thought" October 11, 2007 Al Giordano Bill Clinton as Ambassador to the World? Saul Landau Killing for Profit: Blackwater in Iraq Jacob G. Hornberger The Failed Legacy of Interventionism William S. Lind The Iraq Mirage Joshua Frank Big Sky Rebels Josh Mahan Colorado River Blues Pat Williams Where Are You, Paul Wellstone?     October 10, 2007 Michael Yates Travels Across Greenspan's America Gary Leupp Spreading Awareness or Smearing a Religion? David Macaray How Wal-Mart Can be Beaten Alan Farago Corruption and the Law of Intended Consequences Tom Clifford Homeless in Their Own Land: Iraq's Deepening Refugee Crisis Col. Douglas MacGregor Washington's War Sunsara Taylor Nooses at Columbia George Wuerthner Behind the Bovine Curtain Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Indigenous Peoples' Day Michael Dickinson Forgetting Lennon's Birthday Website of the Day Paying for War   October 9, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Blinded by Ideology: Cato, Trade and Outsourcing Andy Worthington Fourth Whistleblower Rocks Guantánamo Alan Farago The Fall of Florida's Largest Land Developer Brian Eno Exporting Democracy with Missiles David Rovics The RIAA vs. the World Farzana Versey Two Lovers and the Funeral of Secularism Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich Musharraf's Landslide Website of the Day Romney and the Wheelchair Bound Medical Marijuana Patient   October 8, 2007 David Macaray Lesbians for Hillary? or Teamsters for Hillary? Jeff Ballinger Nike, Steroids and Marion Jones Brian Eno This Ban Won't Stop Us Christopher Brauchli Translating Bush Louay Safi End the Disgrace of Guantánamo Matt Reichel Homocide by Cops at the Phoenix Airport Dave Lindorff Finally, A Good Day for the Constitution Thomas P. Healy The Politics of Mercury Pollution Martha Rosenberg E. Coli Spreading Slaughter Allowed to Stay Open Richard Rhames A Democrat's Lament Website of the Day Not All Italians Love Columbus   October 6 / 7, 2007 Alexander Cockburn A Rainbow Over a Graveyard Norman Finkelstein Jeffrey Goldberg's Prison James Bovard Are Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners? Patrick Cockburn The Invasion of Afghanistan, Six Years Later Jeffrey St. Clair At Disaster Falls Ralph Nader Where Are the Lawyers of America? Ray McGovern So Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Saul Landau A River Runs Through It Ben Tripp Bring on the Next War! Terry Lodge The Grateful Dead Body Parts Delivered to Your Door Reform Act Seth Sandronsky Market Mystification and the Liberal Virus Kevin Funk / Steve Fake Divestment and Darfur Missy Beattie In the Custody of Bush and Cheney Website of the Weekend Snoop Dogg vs. Bill O'Reilly   October 5, 2007 Andy Worthington The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo David Macaray De-Skilling America's Labor Force Lee Sustar The Democrats and Iran: Can They Sink Any Lower? Dan La Botz Cincinnati Six Years After the Killings and the Riots Aaron Hess Hate Week Comes to Campus William A. Cook Unmasking AIPAC Website of the Day Range of Memory   October 4, 2007 Uri Avnery The Power of the Israel Lobby Dave Marsh Dick Cheney, a Eulogy Valerio Volpi How Italy Became a Launching Pad for the US Military Cecilie Surasky Dissenting at Your Own Risk Dave Lindorff Remaking Iraq, as Vietnam Norman Solomon Sputnik, 50 Years Later Laura Carlsen Costa Rica and CAFTA: Memo Reveals Manipulation Scheme Walter Brasch When Compassion Fails: Bush and the Children's Health Act Ben Terrall Haitian Human Rights Advocate Kidnapped William S. Lind Beyond the OODA Loop Website of the Day Musicians in Handcuffs   October 3, 2007 Vijay Prashad Gang of Four Anita Sinha Black Ties and Bulldozers in New Orleans Winslow T. Wheeler Posturing at the Petraeus Hearings: Where was the Oversight? Sharon Smith The Kucinich Quandary Jeff Leys Our Bonhoeffer Moment Sen. Russ Feingold We Must End This Tragedy Mohamad Bazzi Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad Brenda Norrell A Cry from the Top of the World Robert Weissman No Sex, Still a Scandal at the IMF Website of the Day Jena by Mellencamp   October 2, 2007 Ibrahim Warde Logical Lies About Bin Laden's Wealth Gary Leupp "I Hate All Iranians": Frank Talk from a Defense Dept. Official David Macaray The Hunt for a Blue November: In Pursuit of the Labor Vote Conn Hallinan Religion and Foreign Policy John Ross The Great American Chess Match Alan Farago Ripping Off Miami's Poor Sonja Karkar The Right to Exist: States or People? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Meteor and the Mahatma Website of the Day Grandin on Che's Legacy   October 1, 2007 Al Giordano The Clinton Campaign's Reckless Race for Big Money Donors Paul Craig Roberts From Burma to Iraq: Hypocrisy Rules the West Moshe Adler The Crimes of Microsoft Ingmar Lee My Kayak Journey Down the Wild Pacific Coast John V. Walsh Ahmadinejad is Not My Enemy Norman Solomon Political Science and Truth of Consequences Roger Burbach Historic Victory in Ecuador for the Left Ramzy Baroud The Politics of Assassination Stephen Lendman The Maestro of Misery: Greenspan's Dark Legacy Susie Day Honey, I Shrank the Military! Website of the Day Letters from Fort Lewis Brig   September 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back? Uri Avnery So What About Iran? Andrew Cockburn Iraq's WMD Myth: Why Clinton is Culpable Jeffrey St. Clair Through the Gates of Lodore Wajahat Ali The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi Andy Worthington The Curse of the Military Commissions Don Santina Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco Ralph Nader Free Lunches, for Corporations! Fred Gardner The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad Seth Sandronsky The US Economy Since 1980 Gideon Levy The Children of 5767 William S. Lind A Ticking Bomb Reza Fiyouzat An Anti-Imperialist Case Against a Nuclear Iran Richard Rhames Wag the Tail, Frag the Dog David Michael Green Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret Zach Mason Hate and Hope in Herndon Poets' Basement Gibbons, Ali, Davies and Suss Website of the Weekend Domestic Crusaders     September 28, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison The Teflon Alliance with Israel Roberto J. González / David H. Price When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents Saul Landau September, the Cruelest Month in Chile Tom Clifford Burma by the Numbers Christopher Brauchli Of Toxic Almonds and Bad Beef Martha Rosenberg Spinning Suicide Statistics Dave Zirin Soldier in Winter: John Carlos Speaks Out on the Jena 6 Laray Polk Bush Library or Lockbox? Binoy Kampmark When Reagan Turned Brown James McEnteer Hell, Columbia: an Academic Hotshot Introduces a Petty Tyrant Website of the Day Concerned Anthropologists   September 27, 2007 Alan Farago Housing Market Crashes and Burns Andy Worthington A Bad Week at Guantánamo Jonathan Cook Why Did Israel Attack Syria? William Hughes Billy Graham, a Prince of War Exposed Ray McGovern Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy Ron Jacobs Joe Biden's Plan to Chop Up Iraq Dave Lindorff Quit the Party! Join the Mass Resignation Movement! Joshua Frank Pruning the Green Party Anne Dachel The CDC, Vaccines and Autism Website of the Day The God-O-Meter   September 26, 2007 Bill Quigley HUD's Home Wreckers Paul Craig Roberts A Pandemic of Police Brutality Jeff Kisseloff Still Smearing Alger Hiss China Hand Is China the True Target of Financial Sanctions Against Iran? Behzad Yaghmaian At the Gates of Paradise Sonja Karkar The Quality of Mercy in Gaza Mike Ferner Interrupting the Empire, 30 Seconds at a Time Col. Dan Smith Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Learn Clifton Ross Bollinger's Barbarous and Ignorant Speech Brenda Norrell A Meeting of Indigenous Peoples in Caracas Website of the Day The Smearing of Jean Maria Arrigo, a Psychologist Opposed to Torture   September 25, 2007 Nicole Colson On the March Against Racism Uri Avnery Foam on the Water Brendan Cooney Ahmadinejad on Broadway: Free Speech? Arrest Him! Harry Browne Bruce Springsteen Comes Home ... to Hell Marjorie Cohn The Drift Toward War with Iran David Macaray The UAW-GM Strike: the Long Knives are Already Out Ralph Nader Hypocrisy and Inverted Priorities in Congress Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger, the Climate Change Hypocrite Anthony Papa Perverted Justice & America's Drug Laws Christopher Ketcham All Politicos Now Classed as Sexual Deviants Website of the Day John Waters on Free Speech   September 24, 2007 George Ciccariello-Maher Racist Violence from Jena to Oakland Saree Makdisi The War on Gaza's Children David Keen Action-as-Propaganda: Learning About the Iraq War from Hannah Arendt Sherwood Ross Just How Powerful is the Israel Lobby? Only Cheney Knows for Sure Ron Jacobs Greenspan's Open Secret Donna Saggia The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values Mike Ferner Free Speech Takes a Capitol Beating Malini Johar Schueller Norman Hsu is a Model Minority Monique Dols and Dylan Stillwood Ahmadinejad and Columbia Website of the Day The Promotion September 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Jennifer Loewenstein Beneath the Hideous Veneer of Security Linn Washington, Jr. The Injustice in Jena: Prosecutorial Misconduct More Dangerous Than Racism Jeffrey St. Clair Going Down in Dinosaur: Oil, Dams and Whitewater (Part One) Alan Farago Genuflecting to China Brian Cloughley Of Hate, Hubris and Atrocities Robert Fantina The Deadly Pattern of US Imperialism Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Land Tenure and Resistance in New Mexico Jason Hribal Fear of an Animal Planet David Rosen Slugger Sex: Athletes, Violence and Male Sexuality Mike Whitney The Era of Global Financial Instability John V. Walsh Who Will Lead a Filibuster of the Iraq War Spending Bill? Dave Lindorff Why Aren't We Banning Blackwater Here? David Michael Green Hiding Behind a Camouflage Skirt Fred Gardner Claudia Jensen (Look Back in Anger) Cassandra Jones Support Our Mercenaries Roger van Zwanenberg Pluto Press Under Attack by Israel Lobby Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend "For the Bible Tells Me So"   September 21, 2007 Karim Makdisi Letter from Lebanon M. Shahid Alam A History of Violence Alan Farago Who Will Buy My House? Joshua Frank The Demise of the Congressional Black Caucus Dave Zirin Notre Dame and the Economy of Sports Kenneth Couesbouc A Short History of Lending and Borrowing Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein Mass Health Care Failure Ben Terrall The Streets of San Francisco: Where Impeachment is Taken Seriously--By Everyone But Pelosi Steve Fournier Ex-Dems, Sign Up Here Frederico Fuentes, et al Voices in Defense of Bolivia Website of the Day Sabra and Shatila, Remembered   September 20, 2007 Kathleen Christison Whatever Happened to Palestine? Zoltan Grossman An Endless Occupation? Paul Craig Roberts As the Empire Slips: Greenspan and the Economy of Greed Stan Cox and Wes Jackson Carbon-Free and Still Wrecking the Planet Russell Mokhiber AARP to Kucinich: Drop Dead Charles Modiano Jim Crow's Children: the Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton and Blog Power Raymond J. Lawrence Bush's Worrisome Use of Religion Brendan Cooney Body-Snatched Nation Website of the Day Mind Control for Breakfast   September 19, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By? Paul Krassner The Power of Laughter Sgt. Martin Smith The New Private Warriors: Blackwater in Iraq Seth Sandronsky Living in a Dilapidated Market: To Rent or Own? Claud Cockburn Looking back at the Great Crash Victoria Buch Israel's Agenda for Ethnic Cleansing and Transfer Robert Weissman Oil Warriors: From Greenspan to Kissinger Mike Ferner Can We Talk? Dan Bacher Schwarzenegger's $9 Billion Boondoggle for Big Water Website of the Day Housing Cost Calculator   September 18, 2007 Mike Whitney U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel Alan Farago Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It John Ross America's Great Wall: Where Will the Workers Go When They Finish It? Ron Jacobs Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md. Alex Doherty Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible? September 17, 2007 Marjorie Cohn Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom Paul Craig Roberts Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be Ricardo Alarcón The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era Marc Levy Fake Vets Chasing Fame Eva Liddell In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like Website of the Day Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel Sept. 15-16, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The General Came to Washington Vicente Navarro How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Mike Whitney Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch Herman Mindshaftgap Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future? Ellen Cantarow Girls! Music! Palestine! Jordan Flaherty K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D. Zachary Hurwitz Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny ... Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time               Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition October 13 / 14, 2007 Loren Stoddard and the Poppies of Afghanistan The Flat Drug World By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY Ever heard of Mr Loren Stoddard? I'm tempted to advise you to Stay That Way, but to give an illustration of how absurd and disastrous are Washington's policies in Afghanistan it is of interest to consider his performance. Bush of Washington sets an example by being ignorant of many things, and Stoddard of Kabul follows him by being magnificently uninformed about Afghanistan. In spite of his lack of knowledge of the country and its customs and culture Mr Stoddard has been made Director of USAID's Afghanistan program. Before this he "helped Wal-Mart move into Central America" when he was USAID Supremo in that unfortunate region. So of course he is superbly qualified to direct American aid projects in a country of which he is profoundly ignorant. Stand by, Wal-Mart, for a leg-up from your devoted admirer. With tongue firmly in cheek, David Rohde of the New York Times reported that "On Wednesday [August 21], Mr. Stoddard and Rory Donohoe, the director of the American development agency's Alternative Livelihoods program in southern Afghanistan, attended the first 'Helmand Agricultural Festival.' The $300,000 American-financed gathering in Lashkar Gah [population 45,000] was an odd cross between a Midwestern county fair and a Central Asian bazaar, devised to show Afghans an alternative to [growing] poppies." Helmand is a disaster area in which British soldiers are sacrificing their lives for nothing. And I feel strongly about this because soldiers and officers of my old Regiment have died for no reason. If they had been killed destroying poppy fields that produce heroin which then kills thousands of young British drug addicts, perhaps I might be able to understand and even support the British presence in Afghanistan. But these soldiers aren't there to stop drug production. In fact nobody's quite sure why they are there at all, least of all the soldiers, one of whom emailed recently to say exactly that. So we must remember that Mr Stoddard is not alone, because London declares that "The UK assumed control of the Province Reconstruction Team in Lashkar Gah in May 2006. Despite difficult working conditions in the toughest of environments Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development in Helmand province to provide a seamless package of reconstruction assistance. The UK is delivering reconstruction, recovery and development activity to a part of Afghanistan that the Afghan Government and the international community is committed to helping succeed." I won't describe the rest of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office's ungrammatical PR pomposity about Helmand, save to say that rarely have I read such piddling tripe. A "seamless package" ? . . . "delivering recovery activity" ? - you couldn't parody this twaddle without being accused of overkill. But if Mr Stoddard is in charge in Helmand, can it be presumed that Britain has not "assumed control"? After all, the UK was supposed to take the lead in combating drug production in Afghanistan. The head of the UN's anti-drugs office, Mr Antonio Maria Costa, said recently that "Helmand province is on the verge of becoming the world's biggest drug supplier, with the dubious distinction of cultivating more drugs than entire countries such as Myanmar, Morocco or even Colombia." But never fear, Mr Antonio Maria Costa : the USAID Batman has arrived, cape flying, eyes agleam, with Robin Donohoe in tow, to bring Washington's anti-poppy culture to the admiring citizens of Lashkar Gah. He might even have a seamless package to deliver recovery activity. The fatuous duo of Stoddard and Donohoe "arrived [and] walked through the festival surrounded by a three-man British and Australian security team armed with assault rifles. 'Who won the cow? Who won the cow?' shouted Mr. Stoddard, 38, a burly former food broker from Provo, Utah. 'Was it a girl or a guy?' After Afghans began dancing to traditional drum and flute music, Mr. Donohoe, 29, from San Francisco, briefly joined them." (Knowing a little bit about the tribes in the region I can just imagine their reaction to that little bit of cross-cultural activity. The phrase "was it a girl or a guy" used by the sophisticated Mr Stoddard is only one indication of his profound ignorance of the country in which he heads an agency responsible for billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money, of which he wasted 300,000 on a futile jamboree. If Mr Stoddard imagines for one second that women in Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province (or anywhere else in Afghanistan) can own cows, he is a fool. If he thinks that a woman could enter a raffle to win a cow ("a generator, cow and goat were raffled off") he is demonstrating a staggering lack of knowledge of regional custom for which he can be offered only deep sympathy. There were no women at Mr Stoddard's absurd 'Festival'. Women don't go to social gatherings in Afghanistan. Mr Stoddard obviously doesn't know that even the wife of the President of Afghanistan, a medical doctor, does not appear in public. And it isn't just Mr Stoddard's ignorance of national customs that is so laughable. He "cited American-financed agricultural fairs, the introduction of high-paying legal crops and the planned construction of a new industrial park and airport as evidence that alternatives [to poppy growing] were being created." The man is in cloud-cuckoo land. An industrial park? - In a province where electricity is a rarity and there is no commercial infrastructure of any description? One could be forgiven for imagining that Mr Stoddard might have been inhaling products inducing a high credibility threshold. There are no "high-paying" legal crops in Helmand province. Some nuts are exported to the Gulf, but generally people grow enough plants (wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables) for their own sustenance and to sell a bit to their neighbors ­ and use most of their fields to grow poppy because the warlords and the criminals ­ many of both being government ministers ­ pay reasonably well. Sure, some cash ends up in the hands of the evil and disgusting Taliban religious fanatics who move between Pakistan and Afghanistan, killing at whim the while and blowing themselves up in murderous futility; but drug money isn't nearly the insurrectionist problem the would-be mind-benders would have us believe. The billions of dollars (not just millions; we're talking real money here) created from Afghanistan's poppies go to thuggish Afghan warlords and Afghan army generals; to many members of President Karzai's own government (some of whom are thuggish warlords and generals) ; to Uzbek, Pakistani, Iranian, Tajik, Turkmen and, increasingly, Han Chinese middle-men in the west of the PRC (big problem on the rise there for China); to Pakistani tribals who have been smuggling drugs since time was invented; to freelance ruffians of all descriptions, and, above all and most lucratively, to Western criminals who appear immune to the efforts of US and British law-enforcement agencies to put them behind bars. Within Afghanistan the stink of drug corruption is as obvious and calamitous as it is in London or New York. Here's Declan Walsh of the UK's Guardian newspaper, a fine reporter from one of the two British newspapers having an objective view on world events. He is " . . . a few streets from Mr Karzai's presidential palace in Sherpur, a gleaming new neighborhood in central Kabul [where] dozens of giant gaudy mansions squeeze into small plots. Pink or green windows, towering Roman columns and mirrored cupolas peek over high walls and concrete blast barriers. A giant stone eagle perches on one roof. The British embassy stands across the road. A property agent stood on the roof of one glass-walled mansion, pointing at the neighbors and naming the owners. 'General in the army. General. Minister. Warlord,' he said." You would think that such a report might raise an eyebrow among the hundreds of diplomats, anti-drug experts, spooks and international advisers who sit in well-guarded compounds in Kabul and a few other places in Afghanistan. Not a hope. All these people know very well that Afghan army generals are paid only a few hundred dollars a month - a generous salary in Afghanistan, to be sure (their soldiers get $80 a month), but they also know that such an amount isn't enough to live in luxury. Government ministers earn even less, but have even more opulent lifestyles. It would take only a few days to present evidence of corruption that would convict the known criminals. But nobody is going to rock the sleaze boat in Afghanistan. The anti-drug effort in Afghanistan is a farce. There is talk at the moment of aerial spraying to eradicate the crop in Spring next year. Of course that would play right into the hands of the insurgents who have already convinced much of Afghanistan's population that occupation by foreign forces is simply a rerun of the years when troops of the former Soviet Union went round blitzing villages. If the nations with troops in Afghanistan are serious about eradicating the drug trade they would combine their best brains (which automatically excludes Mr Stoddard) and produce a workable plan (not a fatuous "seamless package") to wipe out poppy, jail the drug thugs and introduce controlled compensation. Mind you, it's all very well to blame the Afghans for producing poppies, opium and heroin. What they are doing is meeting market demand. After all, there would be no drug production in Afghanistan if there wasn't a welcoming market in the drug-loving prosperous West. The drug world is very flat indeed. Brian Cloughley is a former army officer who writes on political and military affairs. His website is www.briancloughley.com

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"