BBC NEWS: UK troops 'given too many tasks'

BBC NEWS UK troops 'given too many tasks': "The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee says 'mission creep' had brought too many responsibilities, including fighting the drugs trade...The report said Britain's deployment to Helmand province was "undermined by unrealistic planning at senior levels, poor co-ordination between Whitehall departments and crucially a failure to provide the military with clear direction"...In the report Mr Gapes [the MP Select Committee Chairman] said the UK had taken on a "poisoned chalice" by assuming a lead role in counter-narcotics in partnership with the Afghan government.

He said the task had been "an impossible job for one country to do" and said it should be handed over to the International Security Assistance Force and the United Nations.

He added: "This issue of counter-narcotics, the heroin poppies, is a serious problem but it is not the main issue that we face in Afghanistan.

"The main issue is the security and the threat coming from, once again, becoming a terrorist base." "



Sorry, Mr Gapes, you and your "influential committee" are wrong, wrong and thrice wrong.

Narcotics is the key issue.

It is at the root of the insurgency, and hence security, since the Taliban are funded by narcotics, and it is at the root of corruption, which is one of the main complaints that ordinary Afghanis feel about the present disastrous situation.

And what do the Tories, the main Opposition have to say? Liam Fox wants it all to be more "joined up". Great.

Narcotics is the elephant in the room. It is amazing that all these politicians, with all the resources at their disposal, are unable to see that the way to join up all the NATO aims - security, neutralising Al-Qaeda, nation building, corruption, human rights, and getting the hell out of Afghanistan - all hinge on controlling the narcotics trade.

We get to control the trade by becoming the monopoly purchaser of the poppy crop, medicalising it and using it to relieve terminal pain in Africa. For more on this, hit the opium label below.

The Green Party has been advocating this policy, both in the UK and in Europe. The European Parliament has taken it up, as have the Afghan Red Crescent, the Italian Red Cross, and the International Council on Security and Development.

However, it is not something that the serried ranks of KK pundits, aka The Meejah, can get their collective brain around. If any MP in Westminster is even dimly aware of it, he has not spoken of it, and if he has spoken of it, it has not been reported.

Shame on the Government and the official Opposition. Shame on the shame ridden MPs. Shame on this ignorant and backward nation of ours, that invades another country without thinking things through. Shame on the lily livered cadres of journalists who preside over the so-called Public Debate.

The only way that the light of reason is going to shine again in Britain is after a process of radical reform of our entire political and economic system.

Go here to find what happens when farmers stop growing opium.