Enjoy the holiday everyone!

In my post earlier today, I didn’t mention anything about what the Obama Administration is trying to do inside Pakistan itself, but it’s quite important and extremely disconcerting. Jeremy Scahill has a very good rundown on the extent that we’re operating across Afghanistan’s southeastern border.

Australia-based writer Gregor Salmon spent the last eight months exploring the world of Afghanistan’s opium trade.

“Poppy is not just a crop… it’s a financial system, a finely-tuned industry,” he said.

“It’s a low-risk crop in a high-risk environment.”

He got used to feeling a “constant sense of unease” and managed to talk farmers, police, government officials and Taliban.

And he found corruption is so rife in the police force and government that Afghanistan isn’t likely to shake its addiction any time soon.

When we invaded Afghanistan back in 2001, this wasn’t the mission we signed up for. We went there to remove a government that provided safe haven for the people who planned 9/11 and to capture the leaders of al Qaeda – who were based there and operating training camps for potential terrorists. We removed the government. The leaders of al Qaeda and the terrorist camps have gone elsewhere. But 8 years later we’re still there, trying to solve a problem that’s only related to terrorism because of how we’re dealing with it.

“There are farmers who I spoke with who will obviously tell you … ‘We don’t have much money, this is a lifeline crop, it’s against our religion and we don’t want to be growing this garbage, but ultimately we have no choice’.”

And Salmon says the Taliban are also finding enormous benefits in opium cultivation.

He says Taliban commanders and officials told him the general rule is the Taliban take a 10 per cent cut of opium income, giving them roughly $500 million per year.

That money, of course, buys a lot of weapons with which to continue their protection racket and attack American troops.

There are government attempts to eradicate the crop, but Salmon is critical of such efforts.

He tagged along with a poppy eradication team, but he says it was all for the cameras.

“It was a sham,” he said.

“The whole eradication [program] is corrupt. The poor people get their crops eradicated because they don’t have the money to pay off the government.

“You pay to have your crops spared.

We’ve known for a long time now that the eradication program has functioned like this. Either farmers and drug lords pay the Taliban to provide armed protection against the eradicators, or they pay off local officials directly to keep the eradicators from their fields. And the poor farmers who have their fields eradicated often just join the Taliban. In the end, the Taliban ranks (and weaponry arsenal) grow and the drug lords and corrupt members of the government get richer. And Afghanistan still produces around 90% of the world’s opium when it’s all said and done. It would be hard to devise a more backwards strategy if one tried.

The Obama Administration has inherited this mess, and have shown signs that they can do something the previous administration didn’t… deal with reality:

“We are downgrading our efforts to eradicate crops-spraying, a policy we think is totally ineffectual,” [Richard] Holbrooke, the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in his testimony.

The money spared would be devoted to stopping trafficking, pursuing drug lords and helping farmers grow other crops, he added.

“Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars we’ve spent on crop eradication has not done any damage to the Taliban. On the contrary, it’s helped them recruit,” Holbrooke said.

“In my experience,” the veteran US diplomat and negotiator said, “this is the least effective program ever.”

Holbrooke deserves credit for shattering that illusion, but what happens now that we’ve launched another major military offensive there? What exactly are we trying to accomplish? We’re not fighting quite the same kind of ideologically driven religious fanaticism that had overtaken Kabul in the 90s and welcomed Arab religious extremists to use their land as a safe haven. We’re fighting an illegal industry, one that through our attempts to stop it has become a new and far more potent threat to our occupation.

The new strategy appears to be aimed at the titans of that industry, the drug lords themselves. Can it be done? We can’t do it in Mexico, although the industry became concentrated in Mexico after we spent years trying to eradicate it in Colombia. It’s worth noting that while most of the cocaine in still grown in Colombia, the people who are now making the vast majority of money off of it are in Mexico. It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that we’ll end up with a similar dynamic along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the crops are grown in Afghanistan, but the huge profits end up being shifted to the border area of Pakistan.

This is another situation where government officials continue to believe their own drug war propaganda. A person making money by producing heroin is not a terrorist. You may not agree with what they’re doing, but they’re not the same level of threat as a group of people training to kill civilians within the United States. We’ve made this shift in our objectives in Afghanistan to something completely different from what our original mission was. And the new mission is something that has only ever succeeded by moving the targeted problem elsewhere. Drug trafficking never goes away, it just shifts to different routes.

What’s even more odd about what’s happening right now in Afghanistan is that it’s causing reporters at The New York Times to completely make shit up:

With a nationwide election only weeks away, the paradox of President Hamid Karzai has never seemed more apparent: He is at once deeply unpopular and likely to win.

The article cites data from a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute which can be found here. On page 36, you can very clearly see that the “deeply unpopular” Karzai is in fact the most popular politician in the country, with a favorability rating of 69%

What exactly is going on here? And it’s not just the New York Times who’s been selling this lie, even while referencing the same polling data.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised when public officials get journalists to lie for them, but what’s the motivation for it? American officials have long been complaining about Karzai’s unwillingness to crack down on the corruption, but it’s also long been true that if he really cracked down the corruption, he’d be dead within a week. This is what happens in a country where an industry that’s roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of their GDP is made illegal. Even Karzai’s brother is making money from it. Does the Obama Administration really think that an election is going to change all of that? That it’s just a matter of motivation and will to stop it?

Afghanistan remains a place where our soldiers (and the soldiers of a number of our NATO allies) continue to fight a very real war – while our politicians appear to be fighting a propaganda one to convince us that this war is still the war we started there in 2001. It’s not. It’s a drug war now, and it’s one that makes no sense for us to fight and one that we have no hope of actually winning. Even if we recognize that there’s a more real terrorist threat next door in Pakistan, all we’re doing is handing those groups more and more of the profits that once went to people all throughout Afghanistan, some of whom were eager allies of the United States.

Another page (14) in the IRI survey showed the results when Afghans were asked to rate the overall performance of various entities on a scale of 1 to 5. Scoring dead last, below “The president”, “The police”, “The government”, “The Afghan National Army”, and even “The opposition”, was the “International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)”. The Obama Administration and Richard Holbrooke deserve some praise for ending our truly idiotic five-year attempt to wipe out Afghanistan’s opium trade by plowing the fields of poor farmers, but we still deserve a much better explanation for why we’re still there and what we think we can accomplish.

A medical marijuana dispensary is now operating in Spokane:

After years of buying marijuana illegally, Judy now has a doctor’s note that says marijuana is a proper medication to ease her pain.

She buys her supply from a shop called Change. It opened two months ago and is run by Christopher Stevens, Noah Zarate and Scott Shupe.

People smoke and buy marijuana at the Northwest Boulevard store, and police know about it. The owners wrote a letter to Spokane police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick about their business; her reply stated that her officers are committed to enforcing local, state and federal laws.

Stevens, a candidate for Spokane City Council, took her reply to mean police would not interfere with the business.

I hope Stevens is correct and that the police will leave them alone. Unfortunately, that may not be the case.

Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor John Grasso handles most medical marijuana-related crimes. Police often consult him before pursuing a case, he said.

Grasso thinks dispensaries operating in Spokane, including Change, on Northwest Boulevard, are illegal because they provide marijuana to more than one person.

But it will take a police investigation to trigger prosecution, he said.

The factors in this equation haven’t changed. Either patients are going to spend their money in a safe environment with their money going towards local entrepreneurs and the local tax base or they’re going to spend their money on the black market with their money going towards organized crime groups – usually from Mexico – who have the resources to set up massive farms throughout the state and are willing to shoot it out with the police if necessary to protect their profits.

Spokane police appear to be doing the smart thing for now and looking the other way. These things sometimes change very quickly and unexpectedly though. The risk of opening up an actual dispensary in the state has been great enough that not even Seattle has any operating out in the open yet. As a result, authorized patients either grow for themselves or find someone to grow for them. Robbers or overzealous police actions sometimes wipe out a patient’s supply for weeks or even months.

Allowing and regulating dispensaries like Change is the solution to this problem. The Obama Administration opened the door for doing this by saying that they wouldn’t interfere with state dispensary laws. Three states now allow them – California, New Mexico, and Rhode Island (Rhode Island’s House recently overrode the Governor’s veto with a unanimous vote). For Olympia to leave dispensaries like Change operating in semi-legal limbo is just another failure in a long line of legislative failures on this issue.

UPDATE: A Seattle-based dispensary operator will be interviewed on KUOW today at noon.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

[via C&L]

Last week’s contest was won by mlc1us. It was Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona.

Here’s this week’s, good luck and happy Father’s Day!

Scott Morgan asks a fundamental question that needs to be asked when discussing our prison problem. How many people in jail for drug crimes are completely innocent, and are there solely because of how easy it is to convict an innocent person of drug crimes? He references the recent case of two men in New York City who were able to find video evidence proving that they were framed by the police. Had they not uncovered that evidence, there’s no question they would have been sent away to jail. Rarely, if ever, do juries believe the testimony of defendants over the word of the police. And in fact, many people just accept plea deals after their attorneys tell them there’s no way to win.

Morgan writes:

If it were only possible somehow to reveal the full scope of wrongful, fraudulent convictions in the war on drugs, I don’t doubt that the entire nation would be stunned and sickened. Yet, for anyone who’s paying attention, it’s not necessary to fantasize about the true extent of injustice and corruption that the drug war has unleashed on innocent people. You can read about it in the newspaper all the time.

In Ohio, we saw a DEA agent indicted for helping frame 17 innocent people. In Atlanta, we saw police plant drugs in the home of an innocent 88-year-old woman after shooting her to death. In Tulia, TX we saw a rogue narcotics officer frame and arrest most of the black people in town. In Hearne, TX we saw the same damn thing. And across the country, we’ve seen dozens of innocent people who might well have ended up in prison if they hadn’t been killed first by the police who raided their homes.

What should give anyone pause is how frequently we encounter law enforcement officials – and especially narcotics officers – who act as if they’re above the law. It should certainly give us pause to reflect upon how this points to the high likelihood that there are large numbers of completely innocent people behind bars in this country due to the drug war.

A number of people have been accusing Obama of not being forceful enough in his statements on Iran. The point has already been covered by bloggers far more knowledgeable on Iran than I, but it’s worth repeating: anything that allows for the Iranian regime to paint these protests as being influenced by external powers the more it helps them. Underscoring this fact comes this interesting tidbit from earlier today:

12:43 pm: Iranian state media reportedly lying about what Obama is saying:

This morning a friend of NIAC who gets Iranian Satellite TV here said that state-run media showed President Obama speaking about Iran this morning. However, instead of translating what he actually said, the translator reportedly quoted Obama as saying he “supports the protesters against the government and they should keep protesting.

Assuming this report is correct, it shows the Iranian government is eager to portray Obama as a partisan supporting the demonstrators.

In order to support their attempts to quell the uprising, the Iranian government is pretending that Obama is saying the things that John McCain, Charles Krauthammer, and Paul Wolfowitz have criticized him for not saying. This may be the best illustration to date for why the people who see the world as they do should be kept as far away from the White House as possible. They continually play into the hands of extremists, and they will never learn from their mistakes.

Obama’s response today was a little more pointed in the criticism of the Iranian government’s crackdown, but he still makes it clear that Iran’s future is up to the Iranians.

Steve Clemons has some interesting posts about the unraveling situation in Iran. Brad DeLong has a collection of updates as well.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was White’s Ferry near Leesburg, VA. And commenter ‘rhp6033’ gives us an interesting history tidbit related to this area north of DC.

Here’s this week’s contest. Good luck!

– Nicholas Kristof takes on the drug war in the New York Times. Senator Jim Webb takes on the drug war on Capitol Hill.

– The ACLU has set up a centralized portal page for news and updates on the investigation into the Bush Administration’s torture policies.

– The Feds have frozen or seized the bank accounts of 27,000 online poker players.

– Dave Neiwert was on CNN to discuss the rising amount of far-right violence since Obama has taken office.

– Back in 2006, a SUNY New Paltz student named Justin Holmes was elected President of the Student Association. Holmes also happened to be a member of NORML and Students for Sensible Drug Policy. After his election, the University zealously tried to get Holmes expelled. They briefly succeeded before a judge reinstated his enrollment. Holmes now has a new blog set up (and an 85-minute documentary).

– Transform writes about how the U.S. successfully censored a WHO study on cocaine in the mid-90s

Juan Cole is skeptical about the results of the Iranian election yesterday, pointing out what appear to be some rather glaring red flags. The big question that’s on a lot of people’s minds is the effect that Obama is having on this and other recent elections in the Middle East. I’ve been fairly pleased with Obama’s approach to the region so far. His speech in Cairo was well-timed and struck the right chords. But I also tend to agree with Josh that it’s wrong to give him all the credit for Hezbollah’s poor showing in the Lebanese elections earlier in the week.

That said, I disagree with this:

Let’s rewind with a little context: Contrary to all conventional wisdom (even conventional wisdom in Israel), Israel’s war on Hezbollah in 2006 was actually successful. It was not, as everyone reported, a sort of mini-Vietnam for the Israeli army. I’ve been arguing this for a while. And anticipating Hezbollah’s troubles.

Check it out: Israel routed Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon.

I think this AP report provides better context for what happened there. While the author contends that Obama actually did weigh on the minds of Lebanese voters, concerns over Iranian influence were the main impetus behind the rejection of Hezbollah.

Lebanon is a nation used to being caught in the middle of larger battles, between Israel, the U.S., Syria and Iran. The Lebanese Civil War on the 80s splintered the country into a number of factions, many of which became specifically aligned with one or more of those outside powers. The recent trend in Lebanese politics has been to oppose whichever faction appears to be taking the hardest line within those larger conflicts and raising the temperature in Beirut. When that faction was Israel in 2006, Hezbollah gained in strength. Today, that faction appears to be Iran. And while I agree that Obama’s speech in Cairo didn’t necessarily directly inspire Lebanese voters to vote one way or another, the perception of change that Obama’s election has brought to how the U.S. will deal with the region most likely altered the perceptions of who many Lebanese see as a greater threat to their stability.

UPDATE: Gary Sick has an interesting post on what’s happening in Iran.

Lots of medical marijuana news recently. Here’s a recap:

– Andy Hobbs writes in the Federal Way Mirror about the shortcomings of our state’s medical marijuana law along with the situation that patients and providers find themselves in as a result. There will be a part 2 posted later. UDPATE: Here’s part 2.

– The Tri-Cities Herald printed an interesting editorial suggesting that the way to solve Washington’s medical marijuana supply problems is to have the police supply patients with marijuana confiscated through drug raids. As Russ Belville points out, this is not a new idea, and it’s one that has been rejected by police agencies. It’s also not a very good idea in the first place. Medical marijuana patients should be getting marijuana that’s being grown by people who know what they’re doing, not from the police evidence locker where they can’t verify the age, purity, strain, etc.

The main obstacle to states establishing these kinds of distribution systems has been the federal government. That’s the reason why California’s loosely regulated system of dispensaries had been so loosely regulated. If a city or county documented a bunch of information about their operations, the DEA would simply obtain those records and shut down the operation. Any state that tried too hard to set up their own system put themselves in a position where the DEA and DOJ could quickly dismantle it.

But the entire dynamic may be changing. Attorney General Holder reiterated that the Obama Administration intends to respect state laws on medical marijuana, meaning that states should be free to establish their own systems for growing and distributing marijuana to patients without federal interference. New Mexico has been at the forefront of this, trying since 2007 to establish state authorized providers. Even with those reassurances from the Obama Administration, the initial state-authorized dispensary in Santa Fe was nervous about being named in news reports for fear that the DEA will move to shut them down.

– In Rhode Island this week, their state Senate voted 30-2 to legalize medical marijuana dispensaries. The answer to the dilemma raised in the Herald editorial is to move in the same direction as Rhode Island and New Mexico and establish more secure avenues for allowing medical marijuana patients to obtain their medicine from state-approved growers who grow specifically for patients. That the Rhode Island legislature can vote nearly unanimously to move in this direction while the Washington legislature is doing absolutely nothing about our clearly broken system just re-emphasizes the fact that we have a testicular deficiency in Olympia.

– UCLA-based anti-drug researcher Dr. Donald Tashkin now supports the legalization of marijuana. Tashkin is most well-known for conducting a study funded by the National Institute of Health, where he hypothesized that there’d be a definitive link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer, but discovered that there was “no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect”. Caren Woodson from Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group in California, writes about some recent studies done on the use of marijuana for alleviating the pain associated with HIV/AIDS.

– Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed what would have been the most restrictive state medical marijuana law in the country. The legislature approved the bill after hearing some compelling testimony from patients and relatives. It’s been speculated that Pawlenty’s decision was made with an eye for a Presidential run in 2012, but it’s not entirely clear that vetoing the bill was the smarter move when nearly 3/4 of the American public supports medical marijuana laws. Instead, it may be a good indication of how detached the groupthink of the Republican leadership is from the reality of what the average American cares about.

– California dispensary operator Charles Lynch was sentenced to a year in prison. Many had hoped that since dispensary owners like Lynch are no longer being targeted under the Obama Administration that they’d support Judge George Wu’s request for leniency from the mandatory minimum sentencing restrictions.

So we’ve captured a cold-blooded killer with ties to an organization with a history of terrorism who now says that there are a number of other active plots around the country. When do we start waterboarding Scott Roeder?