The US military has long had a drug problem. The army was severely impaired in Vietnam due to drug use, much of it supplied by the CIA via the airline called Air America. In the 1980’s, when the Congress outlawed funding of the Contras in Central America, the CIA turned again to drugs for finance. Gary Webb ran an expose’ in the San Jose Mercury News that eventually cost him his job and his life – suicide was the official cause of death, but with spooks, deaths of those who try to expose their activities are always suspicious.
The money from drug operations has to enter the “legal” economy at some point, and international banks play a key role. As British journalist Ed Vulliami wrone in a Guardian piece last July, “Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels”,
The notion of any dichotomy between the global criminal economy and the “legal” one is fantasy. Worse, it is a lie. They are seamless, mutually interdependent – one and the same.
With that in mind, take a look at the photographs supplied by the Pentagon in this piece, US/NATO troops patrolling Opium Poppy fields in Afghanistan. There is a disconnect between the captions and the images, some hilarious. For instance, farmers are smiling in the photograph above as they “destroy” crops that they are obviously harvesting. Troops walk astride fields, well known to all, not to destroy them, an easy task, but rather to guard them.
This could be a key to understanding out continued presence in Afghanistan – protection of a drug and drug money pipeline. The Taliban was highly effective in destroying the poppy fields prior to arrival of the Americans. Production now flourishes.
Piece of Mindful 
I’m always a bit leery of Global Research, but this article is worth at least a quick browse.
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Good piece I think, merely pulling back the curtain on the unfathomable corruption that is not embedded in, but IS our financial system. My only question: Has it always been so
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CIA and Pentagon work is government work. Government works for the banks. Wells Fargo bought Wachovia in 2008, which was fined for laundering in 2010. Banco Santander, SA, Citigroup, and HSBC have also been exposed for laundering. A better question might be: What bank doesn’t launder drug money? And what government doesn’t work for the banks? Sen. Tester received mucho cash from bankers for his reelection campaign. He sits on the Senate Banking Committee. I’m sure he will investigate and bring crooked bankers to justice.
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U.S. Air Force bases were central to importation of opium from Afghanistan and the middle east in the late 60’s and 70’s. Those of us who grew up in Great Falls in that time span are well aware of how airmen operated as middlemen in a scheme to funnel money back to “freedom fighters” and other “rebel” causes in the region. I might add that over the years many youth from that era have either died from addiction or struggled with the aftermath of a youth saturated with opium cakes easily available on the streets and in schools.
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