Hyde urges Rumsfeld to alter Afghan drug trade policy

[rodeodance]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-23-drug-trade-policy_x.htm

Hyde urges Rumsfeld to alter Afghan drug trade policy

Posted 10/23/2006 11:23 PM ET

By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A leading House Republican is urging Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to revamp the U.S. strategy against heroin production in Afghanistan, saying record opium poppy harvests show efforts to target farmers are not working.

Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said in an Oct. 12 letter to Rumsfeld that the U.S.-supported poppy eradication program in Afghanistan is a failure. In the previously unreported letter, provided by Hyde's committee office, Hyde urges the military to help agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) take out drug kingpins and heroin processing centers. The current program, backed by the State Department and international agencies, focuses on low-level poppy farmers.

The "opium crisis" has "increased violence and terrorism against coalition forces there, and is now threatening to totally corrupt all of the new Afghan democratic institutions we support," Hyde's letter said, echoing concerns voiced by many U.S. officials — including Rumsfeld — that drug money is aiding a resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld has not answered Hyde, but Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Finn, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Monday, "We take this matter very seriously, and we will be responding."

[acmavm]

1. My first question for Mr. Hyde is what frigging democratic institutions?

And how are they working? And are they in that six square block area where we have control?