Lawless Iraq is 'key drug route'

May 12, 2005 10:58 AM

Lawless Iraq is 'key drug route' Drug smugglers exploiting internal chaos in Iraq have turned the country into a transit route for Afghan heroin, an influential drug agency says.
posted by Postroad (32 comments total)

You know, in Chinese, the same word means both "crisis" and "opportunity."
posted by iron chef morimoto at 11:03 AM on May 12, 2005

And the recent violence in Afghanistan is making me wonder if any of W's wars will be "Mission Accomplished!"
posted by Doohickie at 11:06 AM on May 12, 2005

Doohickie, I'm not a military specialist, but isn't a mission a subset of a war? That is, could one accomplish many missions without resolving the war in perpetuity?
posted by dios at 11:19 AM on May 12, 2005

as dios pretends to completely miss the irony in Doohickies reference to the banner.
posted by quonsar at 11:21 AM on May 12, 2005

Now we can combine the War on Terror with the War on Drugs and maximize efficiencies.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:28 AM on May 12, 2005

See, the Iraq war did have some benifits.
posted by delmoi at 11:31 AM on May 12, 2005

Excuse me, but if you'll go back to the start, you'll find the War on Terror is explicitly modeled on the War on Drugs. They really said that. Out loud and in public.

That was when I knew we were definitely in deep yogurt.

Of course, when W started charging around like Rufus T. Firefly in the day's immediately after 9/11, yelling "This means war" it was a pretty strong hint.
posted by warbaby at 11:32 AM on May 12, 2005

In Chinese, the word for danger is wei xian and opportunity is ji huay. These are obviously two different words, native Chinese speakers note, so it's not literally true that crisis in Chinese is a combination of danger and opportunity. The fact that wei ji (crisis) contains elements of both terms is happenstance, they say, just as in English multiply and multifunctional aren't synonymous even though they share a prefix. (This example provided by Alison, who has been doing some more research on her own.)

The chinese ideograms are composed of a few atomic idiograms and other compound idiograms.

word for "cup" is composed of the sub-idiograms for "not" and "wood". Does that mean all cups are not made from wood? no, it dosn't mean anything.
posted by delmoi at 11:37 AM on May 12, 2005

In Chinese, the words `mission accomplished' also mean `colossal failure' and interestingly enough also could be interpreted as `worst administration ever.'
posted by NewBornHippy at 11:55 AM on May 12, 2005

I'm sure that this is all part of the "flypaper strategy."

"See, kids... we give the drug runners free reign in Iraq, and they won't cause us trouble in Indiana!"
posted by deanc at 11:56 AM on May 12, 2005

"Mission Accomplished"-filter?
posted by clevershark at 12:01 PM on May 12, 2005

Kind of off topic, but watch the BBC miniseries 'Traffic' for how this all turns out . . . In short, it doesn't . . .

The more we pursue the war on drugs, the worse the problem becomes. Same with the war on terror.

And on and on and on.
posted by mk1gti at 12:09 PM on May 12, 2005

and the difference is, if you legalize drugs, you can invest in treatment the billions you now spend for enforcement. legalizing terrah looks a bit more complicated. but I agree that drugs/terror, they're using the same strategy and getting the same result -- a perpetual war that is by definition unwinnable
posted by matteo at 12:14 PM on May 12, 2005

You'd be surprised at the extent to which the US economy and society depends on large numbers of people being kept behind bars.
posted by clevershark at 12:17 PM on May 12, 2005

My favorite part is that it's Afghan heroin. So it's like hitting two birds with one stone, and having them team up to peck your eyes out.

How anybody can pretend this two-front, unwinnable mess is going well is beyond me.
posted by lumpenprole at 12:17 PM on May 12, 2005

Has anyone else read The Cold Six Thousand?
posted by pwedza at 12:20 PM on May 12, 2005

MAL: "Our" cut? You're in the gang now?
INARA: Well, since I can't seem to find work as companion, I might as well become a petty thief like you!
MAL: Petty?
INARA: I-I didn't mean petty.
MAL: What did you mean?
INARA: Suo-SHEE?
MAL: That's chinese for petty.
INARA: No, that's a narrow... there's nuances of meaning that...
MAL: Maybe you shoulda stuck with your feminine wiles.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:31 PM on May 12, 2005

How else we gonna fund the WOT? We can't plunder that sweet Iraqi crude we might as well deal drugs instead.

PS. I love Ellroy!
posted by tkchrist at 12:31 PM on May 12, 2005

It's not just the nod of acceptance of herion, it's cocaine traficking by the troups, too
Is 16 people a lot? who are they accountable to?
posted by Balisong at 1:13 PM on May 12, 2005

Balisong
Funny they didn't get the real drug traffickers

posted by mk1gti at 2:13 PM on May 12, 2005

Wait, so we kick out the Taliban which results in increased production. Then this heroin passes through Iraq, a region supposedly controlled by us. Does this sound vaguely suspicious to anyone else?
posted by nTeleKy at 2:36 PM on May 12, 2005

" Funny they didn't get the real drug traffickers"

Maybe there's a history of the US government not delving too far into some drug-trafficking allegations..
posted by clevershark at 2:40 PM on May 12, 2005

The thing that interests me about this is, if it's easy to smuggle drugs through Iraq, how much harder is it to smuggle weapons?
posted by drezdn at 2:48 PM on May 12, 2005

mk1gti : " Kind of off topic, but watch the BBC miniseries 'Traffic' for how this all turns out"

Traffik is good. So is The Wire.
posted by Gyan at 3:00 PM on May 12, 2005

You'd be surprised at the extent to which the US economy and society depends on large numbers of people being kept behind bars.

Too true. And having enough people behind bars depends on having insanely punitive drug laws and plenty of drugs around. So... it's all good!
posted by languagehat at 3:58 PM on May 12, 2005

Dios: Doohickie, I'm not a military specialist, but isn't a mission a subset of a war? That is, could one accomplish many missions without resolving the war in perpetuity?

Unless you mean the mission called, "Pad crotch and look tough while protected by the entire stinking fleet," I'm not sure what mission was accomplished when the infamous banner was posted.

Capture Ossama?
Capture Saddam?
Find weapons of mass destruction?
Bring security to the people of Iraq?
Stop terrorism?
Keep the price of foriegn crude manageable?

Maybe you could elaborate on this 'mission'... 'accomplished'?
posted by cedar at 4:02 PM on May 12, 2005

Zach's Mind: thank you for the firefly quote.

topic at hand: Whew! Thank God! After the war in Afghanistan, dope around here just dried up. It was getting really annoying, actually. It's good to hear that things will soon be back to normal.
posted by shmegegge at 4:37 PM on May 12, 2005

Ya know guys, even if not one gram of drugs was going through Iraq, propaganda would insist that it was anyway, just to bolster support for the drug-war agencies.

I mean look at this grandstanding for funding:

"You cannot have peace, security and development without attending to drug control," Mr Ghodse said.

"Whether it is due to war or disaster, weakening of border controls and security infrastructure make countries into convenient logistic and transit points, not only for international terrorists and militants, but also for traffickers."

Translation: "my funding hearing is coming up. The world is a dangerous place without my activities."
posted by telstar at 4:43 PM on May 12, 2005

They had a story on the news the other night about the war on the most dangerous drug around here: It's 'The Pot' ! ! !

The local TV news was stating the The Pot causes mental illness, as evidence by the movie 'Reefer Madness' and used as evidence the death by suicide of *one* individual! ! ! Oh My ! ! !
They also stated that dealer arrests were up by 99% and possesion arrests up by 50%. This was all televised from the hotbed of conservatism, Seattle WA . . .

God save us from your dent-headed followers . . . .
posted by mk1gti at 5:43 PM on May 12, 2005

Dent-headed? Maybe that's where I put my stash.
posted by trondant at 6:39 PM on May 12, 2005

Cold Six Thousand is tremendous, must be read *after* American Tabloid -- very important. And another vote for The Wire.

Oh, and while we're at it, can we roll the War On Cancer with the War on Drugs/Terror.
posted by gsb at 7:11 AM on May 13, 2005

I was reading a book about japanese lowlifes the other day, There was an intresting article about a marines smuggling 40kg of weed from california to japan.
posted by delmoi at 11:51 AM on May 13, 2005