The War on Drugs and War on Terror, Strange Bedfellows?

The Drug Enforcement Agency in orchestration with military assets have been in Afghanistan for some time interdicting opium cultivation and distribution, like they have done in Central and South America with the coc aine in the past. That is at least the story our benevolent leaders would want the general public to believe regarding the DEA's involvement in Afghanistan at present. Could there be more to the story than meets the eye?

Apparently, they are joining special forces in stemming the tsunami of narcotic trafficking coming out of Afghanistan that ultimately finds its way to the streets of America.

DEA agents along with Special Forces already are rolling up processed poppies — black tar opium — especially in village bazaars in Helmand province, the main location for poppy production.

www.npr.org...

Now, will these efforts result in success or further exasperate the insurgency, because it is clear, that much of the income for it comes from drug trafficking? It is a monster that has grown out of the void left by the Taliban when they were ousted from power following 9/11. Never take a piece of meat away from a hungry dog because they are libel to get aggressive. Poppy cultivation and distribution have risen to staggering proportions since 2001 when the US supplanted a presence in country.

For much of its eight-year tenure, the Bush administration's counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan were focused on destroying the vast fields of poppy that have long been the source of the world's heroin. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Afghanistan's contribution to the global heroin trade has risen to 93%, according to the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime.

But the Obama administration believes that the effort drove many farmers and influential tribesmen into supporting the Islamist insurgency. The Afghan government and some NATO allies in the country agree.

articles.latimes.com...

Perhaps, a civil service initiative was in order at the start of the war? Such as, getting forces versed in civil decorum into the provinces where opium farming has a history, and teach them modern farming techniques to grow legal cash crops, such as wheat or corn. However, why it wasn't a focus of the Bush Administration is a mystery? The 93% increase, as reported by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime is blatantly unacceptable and raises a lot of questions as to why it is so high after the US began combat operations in Afghanistan.

Now, lets look at how lucrative this illicit enterprise has become for Afghan warlords. A half a billion dollars enters that country annually and most likely finds its way into the hands of those that have a seedy disposition to the Western presence in Afghanistan.

With the Taliban now controlling large swaths of Afghanistan, traffickers and their networks pay the militants as much as $500 million a year, according to some U.S. and U.N. intelligence estimates, to grow and protect the poppy fields, smuggle the drugs and run sophisticated processing labs and drug bazaars in Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

Similar drug trafficking activity is flourishing in the lawless tribal belt that includes northwestern Pakistan, and it is providing huge amounts of cash to the Pakistani Taliban and possibly Al Qaeda as well, the officials said.

articles.latimes.com...

That income stream is just staggering and who it ends up with is just as bad! Now, with the waste and corruption involving the early stages of occupation of Iraq, it is safe to assume that many of those crooked officials have found their way to Afghanistan to get fat off the land as they have done before.

Apparently, the DEA is trying to increase their numbers by 2010. A lot of good that will do, because as I have shown, the problem is now deeply entrenched and almost impossible to reverse. It has had over 8 years to grow and fester to what we are seeing today.

"We see their involvement through just about every stage of drug trafficking, and in each of the four corners of Afghanistan," Thomas Harrigan, deputy administrator and chief of operations for the DEA, said of the Taliban. "They use the money to sustain their operations, feed their fighters, to assist Al Qaeda."

In response, the number of DEA agents and analysts in Afghanistan will rise from 13 to 68 by September, and to 81 in 2010. More agents will also be deployed in Pakistan. It is "the most prolific expansion in DEA history," Harrigan said.

articles.latimes.com...

If the US/Nato mission is careful and with the recent revelations of the election irregularities, fraud, and corruption in the race between President Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan has the potential of becoming a narco-state like we have seen with central and South American countries. As a result, once again, our forces will be caught in the middle of the meat grinder looking over their shoulders, as a cruel reminder of past adventures by our political leaders.

Now, are government agencies procuring some of that lucrative income for themselves for their moonlighting efforts, off-the-grid projects, and other seedy activities? That is up in the air at the moment? However, I found a blast from the past about the DEA during the early 90's out of Pakistan. This article is pretty telling regarding the speculation above. Please read the entire article to get the full picture, because it is very intriguing, to say the least.

A top gun with the DEA’s Special Operations Division, along with two fellow law enforcers, are not what they seem, if Gaetano (Guy) DiGirolamo Sr., a convicted heroin dealer, is to be believed.

The trio are, in fact, drug dealers themselves, argues Yale law professor Steven B. Duke in court pleadings filed on behalf of his client, DiGirolamo.

narcosphere.narconews.com...

Who knows what is going on in Afghanistan at the moment, but as reporter, Gary Webb, uncovered in his "Dark Alliance," series the "War on Drugs," is fraught with gray, and not much black and white, regarding the distinction between the government and the criminals they are tasked with pursuing. Webb died under mysterious circumstances for those who don't know. However, that is a topic for another time, but I am sure many are familiar with the case.

On a parting note, many in the DEA are disillusioned by their involvement and mission in Afghanistan. Some have mentioned lack of training, proper weapons, and other shoddy efforts to maintain readiness and effectiveness by their contingent in country. Now why would they be sent into a combat zone unprepared is another question?

Yet when four supervisors, including Dionne, traveled on brief trip to Afghanistan in 2005, they spent more than $700 on boots and uniforms for themselves, according to DEA records.

On longer tours, agents complain that they're not issued ammunition or magazines and are forced to borrow them from fellow agents. Ballistic vests aren't fitted for specific agents. Rifles are issued without laser sights and optics like the military has, and personal locator beacons and GPS systems are hard to come by. Some agents said they end up buying thousands of dollars of equipment themselves.

"The DEA does not have enough resources or equipment to get the job done in Afghanistan," one agent said.

www.mcclatchydc.com...

So, welcome to a new episode of the "Twilight Zone," and that is the new front in the "War on Drugs," and it is in the middle of the Afghan Heartland where the "War on Terror," is taking place. Strange bedfellows aren't they?

[edit on 26-10-2009 by Jakes51]

reply to post by Jakes51


S & F
Afghanistan is rich in two things.

Sand and Poppies.

We will sure hear all about the CIA in this. Afghanistan doesn't have much in the way of agriculture, oil or industry. They have no other real source of income. The fact of the matter is that IT IS A MESS!


But the US/CIA are not the only ones in the game.

Soviet-Afghan war led to increased production in the Pakistani-Afghani border regions, as U.S.-backed mujaheddin militants raised money for arms from selling opium

At present, opium poppies are mostly grown in Afghanistan, and in Southeast Asia, especially in the region known as the Golden Triangle straddling Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Yunnan province in the People's Republic of China.

Source


EDIT TO ADD: I found this report from 03
Afghanistan retakes heroin crown

Afghanistan retook its place as the world's leading producer of heroin last year, after US-led forces overthrew the Taleban which had banned cultivation of opium poppies. The finding was made in a key drug report, distributed in Kabul on Sunday by the US State Department, which supports almost identical findings by the United Nations last week.

[edit on 26-10-2009 by SLAYER69]

Yes, I agree it is becoming a mess over there. It doesn't make matters any better, with wranglings of the contested Presidential election. Then the President hasn't highlighted his intentions for Afghanistan and his benchmarks are for success. It's as though he is clutching for straws. Then General Stanley McChrystal is at odds with the President's inaction and lack of direction. I can't remember the last time insubordination like that was made so public, General MacArthur and President Truman in the Korean War, perhaps?

Then you have a half-a-billion dollar drug trade feathering the pillows of the insurgency and propping up drug lords in the provinces to the south and along the Pakistani border. It is really shaping up into a real melodrama over there, and still I am looking for what direction the US/Nato mission is taking in Afghanistan? The military only functions when there are clear objectives. I find it very depressing, that they tread water, awaiting directives from their commander-in-chief. Lets hope he can find a solution and quickly.

reply to post by Jakes51


Some Believe the US simply looked the other way while we were in Iraq and allowed the Poppies/heroin business to grow so the people had a means of income. [Pacifying] them until we could devote our full attention to Afghanistan like we are now.

Others feel the CIA wants the money from the drug business so it can finance even more black ops. Still others feel now that the Taliban are in a fight they need the revenue to fund their insurgency...


Answer: IMO all of the above.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
reply to post by Jakes51

 

Some Believe the US simply looked the other way while we were in Iraq and allowed the Poppies/heroin business to grow so the people had a means of income. [Pacifying] them until we could devote our full attention to Afghanistan like we are now.

Others feel the CIA wants the money from the drug business so it can finance even more black ops. Still others feel now that the Taliban are in a fight they need the revenue to fund their insurgency...


Answer: IMO all of the above.

I agree with your evaluations and the causes are multifaceted. However, I am under the conclusion, that who really gives a crap about the causes because it is not going to change the fact that we have a military presence over there in harms way. When hostilities end, then we can talk about the causes.

The million dollar answer is where we are going, and I am dumbfounded? I have no idea? Give the forces some direction and objectives to take, and then they will be far more efficient than remaining in a holding pattern as they have been, awaiting orders from DC. However, I agree with you all the causes are ones I agree with and all have contributed to the current stalemate in Afghanistan.

Great thread and a lot of wonderful information Jake!

The fact of the matter is the Heroin business is only surpassed in profit and revenues by the oil business.

It’s not just about money either but politics as well as over the centuries a few different nations and a number of different smuggling and criminal syndicates have violently fought over the control of this lucrative multi-billion dollar annual business.

Afghani and Turkish Heroin has long been the domain of the Italian Mafias, and the French Connection.

Golden Triangle Heroin from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Burma/Myramar has long been the domain of the Chinese Triads both in Hong Kong and China.

During the Opium Wars the English Crown played an active role in the Chinese Heroin trade principally through India and Hong Kong as a base of operations. The Russell family whose patriarch was the founder of the infamous Yale Fraternity the Skull & Bones and later Johns Hopkins Medical University and Hospital made it’s money off of the smuggling of Chinese Opium into the United States as a form of franchise awarded from the English Crown and the Rothschild Family long rumored to have controlled the Heroin Trade out of China. It could be argued that the entire American Medical System was an offshoot of the Opium and Heroin Trade in an attempt to give it an additional and legitimate market. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Heroin could be purchased through the Sears and Roebuck catalog mail order and J.C. Penny’s too. Touted as a miracle drug developed by Bayer pharmaceuticals of Germany it was available without a prescription and recommended for headaches and allergies.

Highly addictive and a hard habit to kick (withdrawals cause one to kick their leg violently over and over again hence kicking the habit) it wasn’t long before the notorious Post Master General of New York City Comstock aligned with the suffrage and prohibition movements made successful efforts to first create a Stamp Tax in which Stamps were not made available for the product and then to outlaw it all together.

Yet Hollywood Celebrities, wealthy industrialists and bankers, moms and dads of all walks of life and economic strata have remained hooked ever since on the Bayer Wonder Drug commonly known as Heroin.

It is rumored and alleged many of the principal American oligarchs had a hand in the smuggling trade and still do.

Many people contend that the CIA which is registered as a For Profit Corporation aids select individuals throughout the world to smuggle Heroin and other drugs and to use their share of the profits for clandestine intelligence operations it fears Congress will not approve funding for.

This was one of the more seemly details to come out of the Oliver North Iran Contra Investigation where proceeds from unauthorized arms sales to Iran were used to fund the Nicaraguan Contras and purchase them weapons and supplies in defiance of a Congressional order barring the CIA and Regan Administration for doing so. It has been alleged that planes full of arms flown by a CIA owned Airline out of Opa Locka Airport here in lovely Miami where I reside went down full of weapons and came back full of Cocaine.

Some people would contend amongst other things that the war in Indochina was in large part fought by both the French and the Americans to control the Chinese Triad Opium Source at its source and to profit off of it.

When American soldiers started smuggling Heroin back into the U.S. in body bags containing their fallen comrades the DEA newly created by the Nixon Administration was sent in to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to stem the tide.

Yet in personal account after personal account of DEA agents stationed in the Golden Triangle during the War in Indochina they all told of frustrations with the CIA obstructing their work, refusing to allow them to interdict certain shipments of raw opium, and in other cases to effect arrests of suspects that the CIA deemed vital to the secret wars it was running off the books unbeknownst to Congress and the American Tax Payer in Laos and Cambodia, both key opium producing countries.

While it was argued when eventual reports of CIA and U.S. Troops were involved in Laos and Cambodia the argument that these were strong holds and being used by North Vietnamese guerillas as sanctuaries where they could not be touched were offered as an excuse.

However some feel that the CIA secret war in those countries was all about controlling and profiting off of the opium at its source and making sure it would only go to those smugglers and criminal syndicates that were deemed politically acceptable to the CIA’s interests.

After the American installed puppet regime in South Vietnam fell the CIA continued on for a while in the region as did the DEA but eventually had to fall back to it’s base of operations in Bangkok, Thailand and try to run it’s interdiction and control efforts less successfully there.

At that point the Triads began to rival and then eclipse the Italian and French and Turkish Crime syndicates for dominance of the lucrative trade.

When Hong Kong fell back to Chinese rule after the British lease expired on what had been a Crown Colony for hundreds of years it became impossible to stop the growth and dominance of the Chinese Triads over the trade.

Afghanistan in the throws of a long bloody proxy war being waged between the Soviets and the U.S. CIA sponsored Mujahedeen in part was the Soviets cutting the CIA and the oligarchs out of the lucrative opium trade all together.

As Italian, French, Turkish and American fortunes suffered and waned, both Mexico and Columbia were turned too by the CIA to start Opium crops to keep a hand in the business and try to battle the Chinese dominance of the market and the profits.

The areas in Afghanistan that are ideal climate wise for growing the best opium poppies are far larger and more significant.

In addition as a lucrative cash crop in constant demand it gives it’s growers the money to buy security through weapons and developing private armies in the form of criminal cartels and buying corrupt police officials and judges to conduct their business.

Some people feel that 9-11 was simply a pretext to allow the West to dominate the Heroin trade once more and there is much evidence to support that and other money making endeavors carried out by the oligarchs in Afghanistan like an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan through Turkmenistan to cut the Russians out of profiting off the flow of Kazakhstan’s huge oil reserves through it’s own pipelines.

The DEA is basically used to eliminate those people who aren’t politically aligned with the CIA in the Opium and Heroin Trade. The DEA suspects and does not like it and wants to actually do it’s job, but the CIA sees that it does it’s job selectively and with local politics in mind, by basically having them target the people that the money and power that comes off the trade aren’t deemed politically acceptable to the CIA’s control of who really gets the power and profit off of the trade.

The DEA is used to basically shut down unapproved franchises so that the approved franchises can rake in the bulk of the sales and the profit and control and power.

Not only is the money involved to be made staggering, but so is the power a person of no political standing can generate through that money. It is not so much that the Powers that Be need the money or want the money; they don’t want anyone else to have that kind of money or power.

The War in Afghanistan is all about the Heroin trade and there is some history here in this post to help you understand why.


[edit on 26/10/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I appreciate your post.
But although there is evidence to support your stance. I agree it has weight. I can't see it being all about the heroin only.

That wouldn't make much sense.

Spend hundreds of Billions to make Hundreds of Millions.

reply to post by Jakes51


Jake51, more and more interesting is the fact that this is now totally new, at least not to me.

Taliban Build Multi-Million Dollar Insurgent Operation, Complicating U.S. Efforts

Quote from : Golden Crescent

The irony is thick in the air for me because I was just discussing this topic last night in the Blackwater thread supplied below how if the mercenaries are sent over to Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else, why are we not trying to go after the Asian Golden Triangle, or the Middle Eastern Golden Crescent, and the drug smuggling, and as well the human trafficking because these are the sources for a lot of dirty money being made.

Maybe not quite in the same context, but it was going there, I'm sure.

Be careful though or your topic might get this into the wrong arena.

[edit on 26-10-2009 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

reply to post by SLAYER69



Good questions Slayer first of all though Heroin is a multi-Billion dollar a year industry and not a multi-million dollar industry.

Second the oligarchs who control the trade aren't spending billions, they are spending trillions, but not of their money my friend, of your money!

The British and the American Tax Payers are picking up the tab for them. We are either the most generous people in the world towards the filthy rich or the most gullible!

Third you have to understand it's not about the money but the power and ifluence that staggering sums of money can create. The narcotics trade has the capability to breed new oligarchs. Once multi-billion dollar fortunes are made off of illegal narcotics that money can be invested into ligitimate businesses. The principal family can take it's illigitimate wealth and start making ligitimate wealth as it distances itself from the illigitimate part of their business. They can become philantropists and endow charities. If they can survive to the thrid generation of the family by that time their wealth is clean and their reputations are beyond reproach because of the wealth they control and the corporations they have started to hide and shelter it and the legal representation and lawyers and accountants to adminster it all.

Pablo Escobar built Medellin's soccer stadium and helped improve the lives and gave away sizable portions of his profit to improving the lives of many of the city's residents by providing the goods and services at no or little cost that the Columbian Government and other businesses weren't.

Locally he was considered a Saint and a Hero. Had he survived to leave heirs and they survived a generation or two Escobar would have become one of not just the most powerful and respected names in Columbia but one of the most legitimate because of the good works down with some of the ill gotten gains.

Was Pablo Escobar a saint? No he was a cold blooded ruthless murderer.

Yet he convinced many of Medellins citizens he was a Saint for his own selfish and criminal purposes.

That is precisely what the Powers that Be do as well, through their own foundations and charities and think tanks. They too are ruthless cold blooded murderers but capable of convincing people otherwise.

If you study the history of the Oligarchs they all made their fortunes off of smuggling, pirating, privateering, mercenary activity, missionary activity to disenfranchise pagan peoples from their land and wealth and stock and commodities fraud.

A few generations down the road with millions, then billions, and then trillions in their trusts funds and corporations and vaults they live not only highly respected lives but ones above the law.

The illegal narcotics trade is like a head start program and school for people that desire to gain oligarch like wealth and power.

Keeping them from doing that and rivaling the existing oligarchs power is a critical thing to the existing oligarchs.

All these things should be considered because in my humble oppinion all these things are real and are considered by the oligarchs.



[edit on 26/10/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Great posts, Proto! My goodness, you have a keen ability to look at topics in a wider context. I agree with your first post and perhaps the illicit crop cultivation and distribution has something to do with the US mission in Afghanistan, and yes, the CIA has been alleged to have raked in profits from shady sources to fund black ops behind the backs of Congress, as well as, governments of old.

However, as Slayer mentioned in his posts, there is a lot going on in the Afghanistan, and as he has wrote about in the past, at length, it is the Great Game part two. All the big players seem to have something at stake in that part of world, which includes: China, Russia, the US, and India to a lesser extent. I have always been enthralled with the Vietnam War era with all the civil unrest, black ops, illegal activities, Water Gate, high profile political assassination, and other misfortunes. I think Afghanistan is slowly shaping up into that monster that remains a thorn in our side to this day, but this time who knows how far it will take the United States down the rabbit hole?



[edit on 27-10-2009 by Jakes51]

reply to post by Jakes51


Jake51, and everyone else, if you have not read these two books, or at least do not have a basic understanding of the topic, and I believe you do as well as most people on the thread, you will not understand that this is basically everything coming around full circle :

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Amazon Review : Washington Post : Minimized Due To Large Quote

The youth is Mohamed bin Laden, justly venerated in Saudi Arabia. But collective memory plays funny tricks, and in the West he will be permanently remembered as the father of Osama.

The bin Ladens, though their Horatio Alger story overlaps Western experience, emerge as unmistakably Middle Eastern -- to the point of being torn asunder by today's religious struggles.

Coll, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Washington Post managing editor, leaves the psychology to his readers.

He prefers writing on economics and politics, leavening them with anecdotes and gossip; the result is a fascinating panorama of a great family, presented within the context of the 9/11 drama.

By the mid-'80s, bin Laden moved beyond money matters to supplying arms to the Afghan irregulars, the mujaheddin, then to recruiting and training Arab militants to fight alongside them.

Arms were now cheap.

The United States was flooding the market, chiefly with Stingers, the anti-aircraft missiles that assured the Russians' defeat.

Coll found no record of CIA meetings with bin Laden.

The agency knew who he was but showed no special interest in him or awareness of the danger his militancy represented.

I could have included the whole Washington Post review, from Amazon, but it would have filled the character count almost on it's own.

Both of these books are by the same author, Steve Coll.

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Amazon Review :

Steve Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 offers revealing details of the CIA's involvement in the evolution of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the years before the September 11 attacks.

From the beginning, Coll shows how the CIA's on-again, off-again engagement with Afghanistan after the end of the Soviet war left officials at Langley with inadequate resources and intelligence to appreciate the emerging power of the Taliban.

He also demonstrates how Afghanistan became a deadly playing field for international politics where Soviet, Pakistani, and U.S. agents armed and trained a succession of warring factions.

At the same time, the book, though opinionated, is not solely a critique of the agency.

Coll balances accounts of CIA failures with the success stories, like the capture of Mir Amal Kasi. Coll, managing editor for the Washington Post, covered Afghanistan from 1989 to 1992.

He demonstrates unprecedented access to records of White House meetings and to formerly classified material, and his command of Saudi, Pakistani, and Afghani politics is impressive.

He also provides a seeming insider's perspective on personalities like George Tenet, William Casey, and anti-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke ("who seemed to wield enormous power precisely because hardly anyone knew who he was or what exactly he did for a living").

Coll manages to weave his research into a narrative that sometimes has the feel of a Tom Clancy novel yet never crosses into excess. While comprehensive, Coll's book may be hard going for those looking for a direct account of the events leading to the 9-11 attacks.

The CIA's 1998 engagement with bin Laden as a target for capture begins a full two-thirds of the way into Ghost Wars, only after a lengthy march through developments during the Carter, Reagan, and early Clinton Presidencies.

But this is not a critique of Coll's efforts; just a warning that some stamina is required to keep up.

Ghost Wars is a complex study of intelligence operations and an invaluable resource for those seeking a nuanced understanding of how a small band of extremists rose to inflict incalculable damage on American soil. --Patrick O'Kelley --

Another in depth look at both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, if you delve into thes books be prepared for a thrill ride in that they dive deep into the myths of the covert wars set afire by previous Administrations.

These book talk about the start up of Operation Cyclone and how we got to where we are now due to the C.I.A. funding the Mujahideen.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Operation Cyclone : Funding

The U.S. offered two packages of economic assistance and military sales to support Pakistan's role in the war against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

The first six-year assistance package (1981–87) amounted to US$3.2 billion, equally divided between economic assistance and military sales.

The U.S. also sold 40 F-16 aircraft to Pakistan during 1983–87 at a cost of $1.2 billion outside the assistance package.

The second six-year assistance package (1987–93) amounted to $4.2 billion.

Out of this, $2.28 billion were allocated for economic assistance in the form of grants or loan that carried the interest rate of 2–3 per cent.

The rest of the allocation ($1.74 billion) was in the form of credit for military purchases.

Sale of non-U.S. arms to Pakistan for destination to Afghanistan was facilitated by Israel.

Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip Afghan resistance groups with weapons,[citation needed] including Stinger man-portable air-defense systems.

The program funding was increased yearly due to lobbying by prominent U.S. politicians and government officials, such as Charles Wilson, Gordon Humphrey, Fred Ikle, and William Casey.

Under the Reagan administration, U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen evolved into a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, called the Reagan Doctrine, in which the U.S. provided military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.

If you have seen Charlie Wilson's War, you have seen but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all of this drama being fought over in the Middle East right now.

Amazon Review :

Political movies about backroom negotiations need not be dry or heavy-handed, as Charlie Wilson's War delightfully proves.

Based on the true story of playboy congressman Wilson's efforts to fund Afghanistan's defense against the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, the film is borne along on breezy attitude and a peppery script by West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin.

Wilson, played by Tom Hanks (who also produced), is the perfect hero for this kind of tale, because there's nothing perfect or heroic about him: He's a highball-swilling, fanny-pinching gadabout who becomes radicalized on the issue of helping the Afghans against their mighty aggressor.

He has help in the form of a right-wing Texas anti-Communist (Julia Roberts) with a genius for raising money, and a sardonic CIA operative (Philip Seymour Hoffman, stealing the show) who lacks all the social skills Wilson has in abundance.

Sorkin's syncopated speech is just the ticket for director Mike Nichols, who understands exactly how to keep this kind of political comedy popping (the complicated story comes in at a hair over 90 minutes, amazingly).

Some scoundrels are on the right side of the angels, and the movie's Charlie Wilson is one of them. --Robert Horton

[edit on 27-10-2009 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


SpartanKingLeonidas, thanks for the added incite and the fountain of information you have been so generous to share with us. It looks like I have some books to get my hands on in the future. I saw "Charlie Wilson's War, " and it was an entertaining yarn on a historical event, and you can't go wrong with Tom Hanks as the lead, but a personal movie review is for another time. There was also a History Channel treatment of the Charlie Wilson story as well, just can't remember the title though?

However, I look at Afghanistan as like an onion with layers of information to get through before even hoping to reach the center. It is really quite murky over there isn't regarding the the Russian, US, and Chinese interest in the region and how multifaceted the story really is.

reply to post by Jakes51


No problem, Jake51.

I read a lot, and almost every single book I comment on, I have read.

The books in this thread I've mentioned, I've read.

When I read them though, I cross-reference them with already acquired knowledge, I research more by looking the information up, and dig deeply into the mire, bog, and quicksand that is contained within the conspiracy theory.

I would have done a War on Drugs thread long ago, if I could guarantee the potheads wouldn't get on and talk about their usage, because while I may hate some of the crap being spread around liberally as truth via organizations like the D.E.A., I hate drugs more than they do, because if you're going to go after something you don't do it in the half-baked measure they do.

In other words, if they really wanted to win the "War on Drugs", they would have gone after the sources in my original post, twenty plus years ago.

It's all about the money, plain and simple.