EIR package - Obama's Afghan Opium War

The attached document is the opening package for the current EIR, titled: Obama's Afghan Opium War: New Grounds for Impeachment. There are four articles in the package:

1- LaRouche Demands Impeachment: Obama's Afghan Policy Is Tantamount to Treason,
by Jeffrey Steinberg
2- Documentation: Russia's Ivanov: Let's Jointly Fight Afghan Drugs
3- Russians See Foreign Financing of Attacks
4- Obama War To Defend the Opium Traffickers, by Michele Steinberg.

I have included here the opening paragraphs of the first article. The entire package is attached, in pdf format. Please circulate the package widely, and let me know of any responses. Mike Billington

LaRouche Demands Impeachment: Obama's Afghan Policy Is Tantamount to Treason,
by Jeffrey Steinberg

April 4—Lyndon LaRouche is demanding President Barack Obama's immediate impeachment or resignation from office, for crimes that are "tantamount to treason," starting with his Afghanistan policy. "American soldiers are being sent to Afghanistan to be shot by an enemy that the President is defending," LaRouche charged. "By refusing to go after the opium trade, which is the logistical and financial backbone of the Taliban insurgency, the Obama policy is giving those narco-insurgents a free hand to kill American soldiers."

President Obama's personal complicity in the opium treachery was demonstrated on March 28, when he made a 24-hour unannounced visit to Kabul, to scold Afghan President Hamid Karzai for his government's "corruption," but never mentioned the opium and heroin trade, which accounts for over 90% of the world's supply, and bankrolls the very Taliban insurgency that the Administration purports to be combatting.

"American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, fighting an enemy that thrives on the opium trade, that the President refuses to target," LaRouche declared. "That kind of policy is tantamount to treason, and warrants the President's immediate impeachment. It cannot be tolerated."

LaRouche also called for the immediate dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, who has been pivotal in the disastrous Obama policy.

In stark contrast to the Obama policy, the Russian government has called upon the United States and NATO to collaborate on a full-scale war on the Afghan opium and heroin trade, which is the backbone of a global narco-insurgency, now running wild in Eurasia and the Americas, and which has been the cause of at least 1 million drug deaths from Afghan heroin overdoses over the past decade alone, according to United Nations data.

Two weeks before President Obama's Kabul visit, Victor Ivanov, the head of the Russian federal anti-narcotics agency, spoke at a conference in Kabul, demanding a comprehensive campaign to eradicate the Afghan opium trade. Ivanov cited UN statistics, showing that the Afghan opium trade generated at least $65 billion a year in criminal revenue, and was the principal source of funding for the Taliban insurgency, as well as terrorist organizations operating across Eurasia, into the Russian North Caucasus.

As reported on Russian television on March 15, Ivanov's call was explicitly challenged by a British military officer, Richard Connelly, who was quoted: "Nobody knows better than Afghan politicians do, the history of their people and their way of life. Therefore the best thing is for them to decide themselves, what to do with the plantings. Without participation from the international forces."

Such rhetorical nonsense has been used by the British for the past decade, to aid and abet the Afghan opium trade, which is the lifeblood of Britain's offshore financial operations, centered in such locales as Dubai and the Cayman Islands, where the drug profits are laundered and invested.

A week after his Kabul speech, on March 24, Ivanov presented a detailed proposal at the NATO-Russia Council meeting in Brussels (see Documentation), for a comprehensive international campaign to wipe out the drug scourge, starting with the eradication of Afghan opium, of trafficking organizations, and of the money-laundering infrastructure. The Ivanov proposal was summarily rejected by the U.S. and NATO.

[see attachment for full article and the rest of the package]