It's The Queen That Pushes Dope

April 12, 2010 (LPAC)—Peter Dale Scott, in an article published by the Canadian anti-American outfit Global Research, argued that no effective strategy for opium eradication in Afghanistan is possible, because it is the CIA, not the British, who are behind the drug trade globally. While selectively picking up on actual evidence of past U.S. intelligence involvement in the drug trade during the Vietnam and Afghan wars, Professor Scott totally ignored the historical and ongoing role of the British, in waging opium war on a global scale, including in both Myanmar and Afghanistan. He also claimed, incredibly, that there is no evidence that the Taliban plays a significant role in the current opium trade in Afghanistan, placing all the blame on the "corrupt" Karzai government, which he casts as an American- installed puppet regime.

Not surprisingly, Scott's own solution to the Afghan opium epidemic is that proposed by the London-based Selis Council, now renamed the International Council on Security and Development, which proposes to keep the opium flowing, but channeling it into "legitimate" medical needs. Opium legalization, anyone?

One noteworthy irony in the Scott piece is his citing of Gulbudeen Hekmatyar, the Afghan warlord, as one of the key so-called "CIA" agents involved in the opium trade. Hekmatyar was the chosen "mujahideen" of the Pakistani ISI during the 1980s, and he was backed, from within the United States, by none other than British agent John Train and his Free Afghan front group. Train was the architect of the "Get LaRouche" propaganda salon, that was integral to the frameup and railroad prosecutions of LaRouche and associates. It is this kind of clever distortion—to let the British totally off the hook—that is one tell-tale sign of a British Fabian publicist.