And of course the opium is back
Drug War Led Bush Astray Before 9/11
But what is perhaps even more astonishing is that, because the Bush administration's attention was focused on the "war on drugs," it praised Afghanistan's Taliban regime even though it was harboring Bin Laden and his terror camps. The Taliban refused to extradite the avowed terrorist even after he admitted responsibility for a series of deadly assaults against American diplomatic and military sites in Africa and the Middle East.
On May 15, 2001, I blasted the Bush administration for rewarding the Taliban for "controlling" the opium crop with $43 million in U.S. aid to Afghanistan, to be distributed by an arm of the United Nations. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced the gift, specifically mentioning the opium suppression as the rationale and assuring that the U.S. would "continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans."
Five months before 9/11, I publicly challenged the wisdom of supporting a regime that backed Al Qaeda: "Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998." I'm not clairvoyant, but I didn't need my own CIA to know that it's self-destructive to reward a regime that harbors the world's most dangerous terrorists.
