What could they possibly have in common?

How about International Conspiracy to commit War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

Though there are billions in cash and weapons "missing" from Iraq/Afghanistan, trillions missing from the DOD, there never the less remains huge sums Approved by Congress in addition sent to Musharraf's ISI and still no Pipeline...

You still think the Big Boyz have given up on their PNAC?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

How else will we keep pouring money into the war on drugs. Keep the pot stirred and the drugs coming. Its how the CIA kept themselves financed in the early vietman years. A government that is built on lies apon more lies can never rise from the ashes. People of this country are in need of a wake up call. It may take another depression to wake up the american people.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

What was the immediate effect of the military attack on Afghanistan? A massive explosion of opium cultivation. Farmers really had little choice - all the "loyal U.S. allies" against the Taliban were drug warlords.

See for example, DEA covering up flood of Afghani heroin into the United States, 2006.

Just as in Vietnam, there is starting to be a drug problem with U.S. soldiers: It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan, Salon, 2007

You can't really blame the farmers - they have little if any choice in a war-torn region with no cash for fertilizers. Most of the profits, however, are raked in by the middlemen who transport the drugs to Europe and the U.S. See the excellent youtube video at Afghan farmers growing poppies to survive - 27 Aug 07. (note - they're also growing hemp, a far less dangerous drug, which is actually good news)

However, you can blame the rotten elements in the government. Drug-related corruption of government agencies is endemic in the United States. Last week, a California CHP cop was busted for stealing cocaine out of the evidence cage. Huge police drug scandals broke in Virginia and Boston in 2006.

It's not a "few bad apples" - it's endemic and has been going on for decades. It's due to the lure of easy money - it's got a very strong appeal, whether you're trying to subvert Congress and fund Nicaraguan contras, or just trying to pad your police salary. It was the exact same story with Prohibition in the 1920-1933 era.

Until all drugs are legalized, taxed and regulated, expect more of the same.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I need a ceremony for my dispensary. i have been proselytizing there and we need to have a religious ceremony because we need more legal protection. We need to become a church.

I can do a medicine wheel on the side walk outside, burn sage and bless in general, but for a more specific ceremony I will need help. First I need to know what other people would like to get out of or put into this.

We need to make it very strong because it has to hold up against the attack of the Blueman. They got a letter which said he was coming. I know it is to intimidate us, to attack us for our religious belief. We must come out and stand up against it, proactively is better than reactively, IMO. But it also carries risks.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Gary Webb's death occurred years after his "Dark Alliance" series on the CIA/Contra drug connections was published and long after the CIA was forced to disclose that his story was correct, and long after he had been marginalized and forced to leave by his notoriously unsupportive newspaper, The San Jose Mercury News (which even apologized to used car dealers for an article about tricks they play on customers). His career as an inspired investigative reporter ruined, he had become steadily more depressed, his marriage broke up and there was really no reason for the CIA to kill him. I think a careful review of the facts would disclose that, in all probability, it was suicide.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

"Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered that the CIA was responsible for distributing cocaine into poor Los Angeles neighborhoods. Shortly after Webb exposed the CIA, he was killed (the official story is that he committed suicide by shooting himself twice in the head)."

Gary Webb's book, Dark Alliance, did make the connection between the Reagan administrations support for the Contras (some of which were involved in drug running) and the crack explosion that was going on in L.A. at the time. A subsequent John Kerry led congressional investigation into the matter confirmed that CIA operatives knew that some Contras were involved in drug running and they looked the other way (or in some cases helped get them out of trouble) because they thought their anti-communist crusade was more important. That is quite different from saying that the CIA was distributing cocaine in Los Angeles - not even Gary Webb said that. The other commenter who pointed out Gary Webb's fall, family problems and depression was right. If you want a critical, but real journalistic take on what is going on with this story (as well as a touching tribute to Gary by one of the people who worked with him), you should head over to http://www.narconews.com/. They are all over this story. And no I don't work for Narconews. I studied human rights violations related to the drug war in Latin America and am very familiar with Gary Webb and all the other people who work on this issue.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Isn't it time to do something different? Weren't ronnie's, poppy bush and junior bush's regimes enough to wake us up? These guys make the James, the Daltons, and the Capone gangs look like Cub Scouts.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

It's a self-sustaining equation, a perfect loop of profit and secrecy.

Why oh why doesn't the CIA get more heat for their central role in the corruption scandal(s) that support America's imperialistic foreign, as well as domestic, policies?

Is it because of their nice title: Central "Intelligence" Agency? What if we called them what they really are: Central Eavesdropping, Torturing, Drug-running, Gun-smuggling Agency?

Maybe then people would be able to recognize their crimes and demand they be held accountable.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

This story amounts to unsupported innuendo with a few questionable "facts." My first thought on seeing the jet was "4 tons?" So I googled the Gulfstream II and found this site:

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=15080

Although the max payload is 2.7 tons (also supported here: http://www.jetsales.com/comp/types/jets/bgulfstreamII.html), you can apparently replace fuel weight with payload, so maybe you could get to 4 tons. But the plane could well be a private charter plane -- CIA one day, drug runners the next -- with no questions asked.

Hardly any sort of proof of CIA complicity. Of course, an open mind dictates we accept all possibilities...

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

If anyone is brave enough to investigate the secret machinations of the CIA I suggest you go to Youtube and search for:

"Secrets of the CIA"
and
"Tribute to those killed by CIA atrocities"

Then you might see that this covert agency is truly the front line of the USA's criminal activity around the world.

(You might want to keep a barf-bucket handy)

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Look - the CIA was indeed a major player in the heroin trade in Laos during the Vietnam era (they used Hmong groups, Burmese generals, etc.). I know this for a fact, because in the early 90s I dated a girl whose father was involved in the Bay Area airline business, and he told me a fascinating story about being approached by U.S. government people in the late 60s who wanted him to fly in and out of Laos in small planes. He then found out that a whole lot of his fellow pilots had also been approached by the same people. They all sat down and talked it over, and the general conclusion was that they were being recruited to fly unmarked planes into Laos to pick up heroin or opium shipments. Talk about plausible deniability.

The same is true for CIA involvement in the 70s and 80s (Pinochet was a well-known cocaine traffiker, and the Contras got all their funds this way). The banks that launder the drug money, the CIA and the drug traffikers were all more or less in bed together.

However, in the 90s the CIA was downsized and outsourced. Dyncorp, the private security company, started playing the leading role in Columbia.

The point here is that the CIA has been outsourced to private contractors - again, for reasons of "plausible deniability." Dyncorp, Blackwater, Boozer Hamilton, SAIC, and the tech-monkeys at Battelle Memorial Institute - etc. etc. etc. - these are the (mostly) new faces of the lack of intelligence services.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

To get the real skinny on Gary Webb and the Iran-Crack story, October surprise, Moonie-Bush-Falwell connection, Kissinger wqar crimes, Bush war crimes see this site of Consortium for Independent Journalism:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/

Robert Parry was an investigative reporter for the Washington Post and was drummed out of mainstream media after he broke the October surprise story about Bush Sr. and Wm. Casey (then CIA director) meeting with the Ayatollah government in Paris to cut a deal that would transfer arms to Iran in exchange for the Iranian retention of the Embassy hostages until after the Carter re-election race with Reagan in 1980.

Robert Parry is an invaluable source of investigative news.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Two more sites about Gary Webb and CIA Contra cocaine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb

http://www. prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/141204webbmurdered

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Captions or transcripts. I'm through being nice. Provide one or the other. You have plenty of readers with varying levels of hearing impairments. Get. With. The. Program.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

See Terry Reed's book, Compromised - Bush, Clinton and the CIA. Reed was involved with Oliver North, Bill Clinton and Barry Seal in George Bush's guns-for-drugs business known as "the Contras." This was a spin-off of Bush's October Surprise: The Iranians hold on to the hostages until the 1980 election, Israel sells US military spare parts to the Iranians and gives some of the profits to North to import cocaine into Arkansas. Clinton's machine distributed the coke and banked the money for Bush's "Enterprise." Reed says that Seal had a video tape of George W. and Jeb Bush helping offload cocaine from his C-123.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]