This was the news from one year ago, Telegraph.co.uk:

Britain to continue poppy eradication in Afghanistan despite US reversal
By Ben Farmer in Kabul
Published: 3:39PM BST 28 Jun 2009

Britain will continue to fund the destruction of opium fields in Afghanistan despite the United States condemning poppy eradication as a waste of money.
The British Government said destroying poppy fields remained a key deterrent to growers and one of the "seven pillars" of its anti-opium strategy in Helmand province, Just a day after Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan, said that destroying the crop only drove poor farmers to join the insurgency. (emphasis mine)

A year later we read this: From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on line July 2 2010
Kremlin 'Unhappy' With Antidrug Efforts In Afghanistan
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said has stated that…We are not happy with what the world community is doing in the antidrug war" in Afghanistan, Ivanov told delegates on June 6 at the summit, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Ivanov said the blame for the continued production of opium in Afghanistan and the export of the heroin made from Afghan opium rests on "those who took responsibility for ensuring peace and stability in Afghanistan."

Ivanov said it's time for foreign military forces in Afghanistan -- the UN-mandated and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) -- to step up efforts to eradicate opium-poppy cultivation and heroin production.

"Next year, I think that ISAF will break the Soviet record of the duration of stay in Afghanistan," Ivanov said, claiming that during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979-1989, "the problem of narcotics practically did not exist."

One of the charges against King George III in the US Declaration of Independence was:
"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."

How does the small farmer whose village is dependent on poppy production feel about the multitude of NATO bureaucrats and soldiers sent out to harass the Afghan people? One year they may eradicate the fields and the next year they don't. The fat cats with connections in Kabul get rich and the little guys starve. Who are Obama and Petraeus going to listen to, and what will they do next?

Well, we're not teaching how to grow anything productive, so I can see how razing their only source of income could cause some angst.

On the other hand, it fracking opium.

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January 21, 2013: The End of an ERROR.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
---Benjamin Franklin

Poppy growing was the lowest under the Taliban.

That's a great stat.

It's a shame the Taliban also had an extensive record of repression, human rights abuses, and terrorism sponsorship.

There was also the small matter of them providing sanctuary and support to al Qaeda prior to 9/11 and failing to take any reasonable criminal or investigative action against that organization or Osama bin Laden following the attacks.

Don't get me wrong, lowering opium production by publicly executing the poppy farmers was certainly a step in the right direction (), but to hold the Taliban up as an exemplar of anything other than despotism and failed governance is ridiculous.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

All that and they kept production down to keep the cost up and better control the flow.

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I seriously doubt that we will ever be able to wipe out opium poppy production in that area.

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“I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.” Frank Sinatra

Why don't we just buy it ?

seriously, opium and it's many deriviatives are widely used as painkillers to this day, morphine for eample. Since the stuff is probably going to be be grown anyway why not just put it on a legal footing and buy the bloody stuff. What we don't use we can burn. After all we've got to buy it from somewhere....

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England has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only eternal interests - Palmerston

Indeed!

Why did Washington refuse an offer by Taliban government to hand B-L over if US can present a proof he was behind 9/11? Was it because Washington had no proof of A-Q involvement?

Btw, OBL worked for CIA.

You're not telling me anything I haven't heard before.

But I don't go in for conspiracy theories and all that. bin Laden worked for the CIA a looooong time ago. And I don't have a great deal of faith in the he-said, he-said coming out of the Taliban camp - as I've said, they were a despotic menace.

When a guy is on Arab television repeatedly saying "I hate America, I was behind 9/11, kill all Americans wherever you find them", and when darn near everyone he associates with has pretty much the same thing to say, all the who-done-it scenarios kinda lose their luster.

There's no sinister CIA/Dick Cheney/Blackwater/Illuminati/Joo plot behind 9/11.

A couple of terrorists got real smart and flew some planes into buildings in order to kill people.

Occam's razor.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

But we have B-52's with laser guided incendiaries.

Sure, someone could hide some in the basement, but not enough to buy the Taliban so much as a pot to piss in.

__________________
January 21, 2013: The End of an ERROR.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
---Benjamin Franklin

That's right, the most important is to put a LABLE on anything you don't like the sound of! It works a treat for Americans. Fortunately, not all people are Americans and retain their ability to think and analise facts for themselves without the aid of the official propaganda.

Anyway, you do admit the facts that 1.OBL was (is?) working for CIA. How long ago, you don't know, therefore should not comment on it.
2. Taliban was cooperating with the US, but wanted some evidence of a person's guilt.

Yet, the US did not posess such evidence and hopped off to liberate Afghans from their natural resources, pipeline and the lives of those who defend their country.

If Taliban was such a "despotic menace", why did the US help them to come to power and courted them until the point they became stroppy about the pipiline?

And just so you put things into perspective: for a great deal of people around the world -- the US is a despotic menace.

Because we thwart them every time they try to be a despotic menace.


I'm playing it.

__________________
January 21, 2013: The End of an ERROR.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
---Benjamin Franklin

Yes it was during the time when there was a glut in the market. It was banned to create an artificial shortage, thus raising prices.

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... ..................
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Indeed. No one gets to be a despotic menace but us! And, er, well, the people who are helping us. And, I guess, the ones who aren't getting in our way. But other than that, no more despotic menaces. I mean really, we've got to draw the line somewhere.

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"Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
— Robert A. Heinlein

Well, given that the war on drugs = repression and human rights abuses, I'm not surprised. The US govt is doing this to Americans, too.