‘US marines involved in Afghan drug trade’

Press TV has interviewed Wayne Madsen, investigative journalist in Washington about the accusations of lies fed to the American public. He discusses startling revelations about the drug lords in Afghanistan and their relationship to President Karzai and the US Special Forces and US marines. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: why is it that whenever a military official resigns or suddenly comes out of the US armed forces a secret is revealed about what happens behind the scenes. The questions is will we be expecting more of these unraveling stories?

Madsen: Well, it’s hard to say. What happens is when somebody in the military or intelligence community comes forward with allegations of corruption, malfeasance or incompetence they’re usually rewarded with a huge amount of pressure. In some cases investigations open up for revealing classified information.

So, there is a certain chill factor that sets in with these individuals, but Colonel Davis certainly isn’t the first one to acknowledge and report on the fact that the Afghanistan campaign was flawed from the beginning.

A large part of the responsibility for what happened in Afghanistan, the failure of US policy lies at the feet of General David Petraeus as he said. But unfortunately, Colonel Davis will now find it a very tough road to go down while General Petraeus on the other hand was rewarded for his incompetence by being made the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA.

Press TV: It’s interesting that there are reports from US marines in Afghanistan that are protecting poppy fields and are somehow contributing to the drug trade. What do you know about this and in general the relationship between US forces and the drug trade in Afghanistan?

Madsen: Well, this has been reported before that US Special Forces and marines have been involved in protecting the poppy fields that are controlled by various Afghan war lords who depending on what day of the week it is support the US. Some of these war lords of course are connected through family links to President Hamid Karzai.

This goes to show that the US has never learned its lesson from past military adventures, for example, in South East Asia during the Indo-China war the US and the CIA was very instrumental in smuggling opium and heroin out of the Golden Triangle some of which found its way into Saigon and was unfortunately used by many US troops there that got hooked on heroin.

The same thing is taking place now with Afghanistan. Anytime you’ve got drugs involved with the CIA you’ve got basically slush fund accounts where the CIA has access to massive amounts of money, there’s no accountability, no oversight by Congress.

This is an old old story that goes back when the CIA was first formed in 1947 and unfortunately the CIA is still very much the same way today with the drug smuggling operations.

Press TV: With all this being said, what future do you seen with the US presence in Afghanistan? How will it end do you think?

Madsen: I think we know from history that Afghanistan has been the graveyard of the empires: Alexander the Great; certainly the British were defeated there; the Russians were defeated there; and it’s not going to have a very good outcome for the US.

But in the short term, with all this war talk about a war with Iran, you can be assured that the US military presence in Afghanistan will remain in the short term because this is part of a strategy to encircle Iran.

So, in the short term US troops will continue to die in Afghanistan and Colonel David, what he has to say, will be proven unfortunately very very correct.