I hope you weirdos and hippie freaks are happy. This morning NPR, clearly bowing to enormous pressure from the liberty addict lobby, ran a piece on the Orwellian undertones of using terms like "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Fortunately for our national dreams of goodness, rainbows, and unicorns, it was mercifully brief as they stated the controversy, suggested there was something wrong with bland euphemisms for heinous acts, and then beat a hasty retreat. It could have been much, much worse.

But just the fact that they had to air the piece at all is a sign of how deeply the tireless moles of past-looking history-mindedness have been digging. I hope everyone here who has been needling NPR feels a suitable degree of shame for the part they may have played, however small, in what may very well prove to be merely the first step of many down this dark path.

The article was purely from the perspective of the detainee. Hardly objective reporting.--farragut

The six years Wakil spent in detention without a voice resulted in "objective reporting" during that time?

Also, I would like to offer a retraction of something I wrote earlier. Apparently misremembering the history of the Taliban and opium, I asserted that their opposition to production of the drug coincided with the era of their receiving money from Saudi Islamists (meaning, mostly, al Qaeda), and only when that money stopped did they resume involvement as a necessary fund-raising activity.

I used that assertion as the basis for the claim that nobody in Afghanistan is ever permanently against poppy cultivation, no matter what they may say. But I was wrong.

Apparently the Taliban was making money from opium even while also being funded by al Qaeda. And the US.

So there you have it. Opium production is not a constant fact of Afghan economic life absent external financial input. It's a constant fact of Afghan economic life, end of line.

I always get why they hate us all jumbled up for some reason and forget that it's our freedom that they hate. Must be our "freedom" to keep dropping bombs on their poor heads and houses that's got them all ticked off.

Hey, buddy, freedom ain't free. It needs to be defended at all times, apparently by incinerating people in faraway places before they have the chance to shake their deadly fists at us.

And don't you forget it.

yeah, silly to think the CIA involves itself with drug-running.

anyway, i have no agenda here, certainly not to lionize the Taliban (they lost my sympathies when they blew up the Bamian buddhas). When I say "I don't know where the world's heroin is coming from" I mean that the drug/CIA/ISI/you-name-it underworld is so murky that nobody really knows what's up.

But you're wrong about heroin eradication (yeah, a UN-Taliban joint propaganda venture. I'm sure. And how is the ban simultaneously a shrewd business move to shore up prices while at the same time causing the Taliban to teeter on the edge of power?) and wrong about the time period. As a parting gift, let me rewrite your original statement for you:

The U.S. is not acting properly in Afghanistan, but that never meant that the Taliban were wonderful indigenous freedom fighters, did it? They always have funded themselves on heroin, except for a 1.5 year period in 2000-2001 (though some accuse the Taliban of creating a mere propaganda ploy to drive up the price of heroin, so they can resume production. Of course, they were driven from power before this question could be resolved). Heroin to Iran, heroin to Russia, heroin to Europe and beyond. Blood heroin, as in blood diamonds. That's why people like Wakil oppose it.

There. That's what intellectual honesty looks like. Don't thank me. Consider it a public service. My last word on the matter.

but you forgot my Buddhas!

or the non-interventional fascists who believe that the Afghans want the Taliban and heroin more than anything in the whole wide world.

I like when you show your true colors, chickenhawk. How does it feel to smear and tell lies about those that oppose the war you support?

You would have us spend an eternity in Afghanistan with no endgame, no goals, no nothing except your urge to "make amends". You have nothing but your freedom drones and your do-gooding ideals. Nothing. Victory is impossible, and neither you nor the Obama Administration can even define what victory means, let alone plan for it. All you can do is throw out random vague goals like "educations" among your many buzzwords.

And you really should put a disclaimer at the start any post you make about foreign policy: "WARNING: Ondelette has an ISI fetish".

Besides, ISAF, CIA, ISI, who gives a shit? Keep blurring the big picture with your meaningless acronyms.

The following article is speaking directly to blind do-gooder crusaders like YOU:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article6632876.ece

So the fortunes of war are irrelevant. To save your sanity, your solvency and perhaps your life, it’s important not to grasp the detail, or it will bankrupt you, kill your sons and break your heart. Don’t hunt for truth. Don’t dissect. Don’t delve. Don’t help. Don’t peer at the demented jigsaw puzzle of dollars, capital letters and committees, or shuffle the pieces around: they don’t add up to a country. Push aside your microscope, fetch your telescope and put your eye to the wrong end. The devil is not in the detail. The devil is in the whole damn thing.

So take a look at the whole damn thing; see that occupying Afghanistan was a mistake; then close your mind to further argument or entreaty; because of argument and entreaty there will be no lack, but it will never be conclusive; and in the end we will have to decide. We must harden our hearts against this beautiful country and these handsome, noble, crazy people; and all the rest is noise.

Ondelette the Chickenhawk would rather not look at the big picture, and would rather focus on playing word games with his bowl AF-PAK Alphabet Soup.