By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
February 18, 2002
"I'm Asked all the time how can I help fight against terror?" President George W. Bush observed while introducing his Drug Control Strategy. "Well," he said, answering the question, "one thing you can do is not buy illegal drugs. If you are buying illegal drugs in America, it is likely that money is going to end up in the hands of terrorist organizations."
This marks the second or third time that President Bush has referred to the terrorist-illegal drug connection lately. This is not really a new issue. It is just an issue that the major media has seemingly almost totally ignored in deference to the social acceptability of drug use.
I began writing about the drug-terrorism connection six years ago when I was editor of Michael Reagan's Information Interchange. In February 1996 President Bill Clinton allowed Terrorist Financed Weapons through the Arms embargo for Bosnia Muslims. In fact, the Washington Post reported, in September 1996 "In effect Clinton lifted the Arms Embargo SOLELY for shipments of arms and personnel from Iran to the Bosnian Muslims. The Administration's action was "in large part because of the administration's sympathy for the Muslim government" the Post said, "and the Third World Relief Agency and ambivalence about maintaining the arms embargo."
In 1999 Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, predicted that if American troops went into Kosovo against the Serbs, "they'll be fighting alongside a terrorist organization known to finance its operations with drug sales - including some to the United States."
The Washington Times said, in 1999 "By joining hands with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which intelligence sources say bankrolls itself by selling heroin and cocaine, the United States also would become partners of a sort with Osama bin Laden, the international terrorist behind last year's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Washington Times reports. According to the newspaper's sources, the KLA is linked to an extensive organized crime network headquartered in Albania. In 1998 the State Department listed the KLA as an international terrorist organization that supported itself with drug profits and through loans from known terrorists like bin Laden."
Before President Clinton ordered the bombing of Kosovo, without the approval of Congress, in February 1999, I questioned what seemed to be plans to use the U.S. Air Force as support for a group for the KLA, which the U.S. State Department had listed as a terrorist group. The mission of the KLA, I pointed out, was to "kill the police and others who refused to support them."
On September 11, 2001 it became perfectly clear to most Americans that the death of hundreds of police and firemen at the hands of terrorists was something we, as a nation could not tolerate. Yet, at the present time, the past president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, is being tried for "genocide" because, as he and others point out, he tried to stop the KLA from killing Serb policemen. vIn fact, last Friday according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur the Russian Parliament, in a 316-6 vote, passed a resolution that demanded "former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic be released from United Nations custody in The Hague, Holland, where he faces charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity."
According to the report "The proceedings against Milosevic had become a political trial of an entire country" and the Tribunal trying Milosevic was "ignoring crimes by NATO and Albanian extremists in Kosovo in its examination of the conflicts in former Yugoslavia in the past decade."
There is no doubt that, in view of what has occurred in the last few months, NATO, and the United States, are in an increasingly untenable position in trying to justify its prosecution of Milosevic.
In fact, MSNBC's online report on Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11 stated: "The Al-Qaida is believed to have operations in 60 countries, active cells in 20, including the United States. It is also believed to operate training centers in both Afghanistan and Sudan, the first beginning operations in 1994 with representatives from Egyptian, Algerian, Tunisian and Palestinian extremist groups. Among the countries or regions identified as having active cells of al-Qaida are Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Chechnya, Philippines, Egypt, Tunisia."
Somehow, Osama bin Laden's terrorist activities were, and are still, ignored in Kosovo and Chechnya. But, under President Bush, they have not been ignored in Afghanistan and the Philippines. In 2000, according to the Sydney, Australia Morning Herald, Kosovo had become "smugglers' paradise" supplying up to 40 per cent of the heroin sold in Europe and North America. NATO-led forces, struggling to keep peace in the province a year after the war, have no mandate to fight drug traffickers, and - with the expulsion from Kosovo of the Serb police, including the "4th unit" narcotics squad - the smugglers are running the "Balkan route" with complete freedom."
In other words, our tax dollars are being used to try to convict Milosevic in the Hague because he sent his army after terrorists in Kosovo who were killing his police, while spending more tax dollars trying to stop the terrorists in Afghanistan as American soldiers look the other way as terrorists in Kosovo kill Serbs and rake in the money on their drug trade.
This does not compute.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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