In the days following the terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration began to sell the American public a bill of goods that linked drugs to terrorism. Remember the ads that were put out? The ones that linked pot users to the terrorist attacks? Those ads always got under my skin. Now with the hearings, we are learning more & more about the mentality that was happening in the White House & the Dept of Justice (not to mention the CIA & FBI) before the terrorist attacks.

Today we hear that the 9-11 commission states that Ashcroft said that terrorism was not our top priority, that anti-drug trafficking was. That appears to be consistent with how *I* remember pre-terrorist attacks Ashcroft. I quote from one of my fave op-ed pieces:

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.

In the article just above this piece is this:

The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement's ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's largest crop in less than a year, officials said today...

On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced a $43 million grant to Afghanistan in additional emergency aid to cope with the effects of a prolonged drought. The United States has become the biggest donor to help Afghanistan in the drought...

Afghanistan is now under United Nations sanctions, imposed at the insistence of the United States because the Islamic movement will not turn over Osama bin Laden for trial in connection with attacks on two American Embassies in Africa in 1998.

So, the Taliban started to outlaw poppy production in 2001. That led us to give them money as a reward. OK, one part of the drugs=terrorism equation chopped off. But we seemed to have ignored the other fucking part of the equation! I can't recall where I heard it, but someone mentioned the idea that the Taliban banned production to help raise the street value of heroin ala OPEC. Hmmmm...

I know all decisions are weighed for good & bad, but how in the world does our government decide to give a faux-government like the Taliban so much fucking money when we know the Taliban had 1) bin Laden; 2) Locked women & girls away; 3) Destroy anything that it didn't like? Was it a ploy to pay off the Taliban (the yellow-coded evil ones) for bin Laden (the red-coded evil one)? If so, let's just fucking say it!

Althou, at this point, if Bush comes on the TV tonight and says it just like that, I won't believe it. He's had plenty of time to explain himself.

And where did I get most of this info before the attacks? The Feminist Majority.

Each time I see Eleanor Smeal I forget to say thanks for sounding the alarm about the Taliban so damn early. It's not her fault that no one listened.