"Billy" <nevermind@cox.net> wrote in message
news:wKTSg.380$rS.24@fed1read05...

"Clinton the Patriot" <Edwards@bush.net> wrote in message
news:zGTSg.11179$7I1.9798@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net...

"Billy" <nevermind@cox.net> wrote in message
news:LzTSg.375$rS.187@fed1read05...

"Larry Hewitt" <larryhewi@comporium.net> wrote in message
news:efgtv4$mat$1@news04.infoave.net...

Billy cannot accept the truth.

You know Harry lies, you lie also, that is the truth.

You need therapy.

Is that what your mother told you?

Poor Billy. Tell us now that grass is orange and the sun rises in the
south. lol

"Larry Hewitt" <larryhewi@comporium.net> wrote in message
news:efgtv4$mat$1@news04.infoave.net...

Billy cannot accept the truth.

You know Harry lies, you lie also, that is the truth.

http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm

Published May 22, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times Bush's Faustian Deal
With the Taliban
By Robert Scheer


Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy
every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush
administration will embrace you.
All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the
only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.
That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the
Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American
violators of human rights in the world today.
The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell,
in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of
the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium
growing is against the will of God.
So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but
it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading
anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from
which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American
embassies in Africa in 1998.
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at
a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions
on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin
Laden.
The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily
trumps all other concerns.
How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the
female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in
a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women?
At no point in modern history have women and girls been more
systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of
madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates
their fundamental human rights.
Women may not appear in public without being covered from head to toe
with the oppressive shroud called the burkha , and they may not leave
the house without being accompanied by a male family member.
They've not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male
doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any
profession for that matter.
The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an
extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all
behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown.
It is this last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush
White House.
The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at
the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and
cash from the Bush administration, they have been willing to appear to
reverse themselves on the growing of opium.
That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers
is not surprising.
But it is grotesque for a U.S. official, James P. Callahan, director
of the State Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the
Taliban's special methods in the language of representative democracy:

"The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan said after
a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on
drugs "in very religious terms."
Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the
theocratic edict would be sent to prison.
In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on
the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it's
understandable that the government's "religious" argument might be
compelling.
Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who
grew the poppies will now confront starvation.
That's because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious
extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a
previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming.
For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the U.S. is
willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the
Afghan economy.
As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, "The
bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country--or certain
regions of their country--to economic ruin."
Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops
such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and
fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country.
There's little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the
easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power.
The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war
zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure.
Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs
demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic
obsession.
_____________________________________________________

Did ya know that? Bet ya didn't.

Harry