Friends of the Drug Trade

by Steve Soto

Bush and Cheney are responsible for the world's booming opium trade, and the broken state that is Afghanistan. Why?

Afghan opium poppy cultivation grew 17 percent last year, continuing a six-year expansion of the country's drug trade and increasing its share of global opium production to more than 92 percent, according to the 2008 World Drug Report, released Thursday by the United Nations.

Afghanistan's emergence as the world's largest supplier of opium and heroin represents a serious setback to U.S. policy in the region. The opium trade has soared since the U.S.-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, which had eradicated almost all of the country's opium poppies. The proceeds from the illicit trade are helping finance a resurgent Taliban that is battling U.S. and allied troops.

But the trolls will continue to ignore this and boast of success in Iraq.