They say they don’t want foreign troops on their soil, but I think it’s just a simple case of America-hate. That sentiment has been growing strong since 2000. We’ve really got to put idiot republicans in charge more often!

Ecuador to shut down U.S. anti-drug operation

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The United States is losing access to one of its three counternarcotics bases in Latin America, U.S. military officials said Wednesday.

The Ecuadorian government has told the Bush administration it will not renew a 10-year agreement letting U.S. troops conduct anti-drug operations from Manta Air Base, an Ecuadorian Air Force installation, military officials said. [...]

“The Ecuadorian people do not want foreign troops on our soil, and the government has to follow the mandate of its people,” Luis Gallegos, Ecuador’s ambassador to the United States, said Wednesday.

“…the government has to follow the mandate of its people.”

Huh? What does that mean? Is that some new-fangled political ideology not heard of in our part of the world yet? Sounds like radical thinking. It’ll just end up causing them grief in the end.

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John Cole, of Balloon-Juice, has a post up regarding a meritless search warrant and a kicked down door. Instead of the expected meth lab, Brooklyn Park police found chemicals required to maintain a fish tank.

Many comments to this post dealt with the absurdity and waste brought about by the War On Drugs™. Balloon-Juice commenter, “NR”, posted a link, along with the following quote from that site:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will - to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty - no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

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By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
Associated Press Writer

NOGALES, Ariz. (AP) - U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agents executing simultaneous raids discovered a recently completed smuggling tunnel linking the two countries, officials said Friday.

The entrances to the tunnel, described as a passageway its builders planned to use to smuggle drugs, were discovered in a home in Nogales, Ariz., and an apartment in Nogales, Mexico, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Five people were arrested during the raid on the Mexican location. No arrests had yet been made on the U.S. side of the border.

Investigators tipped to the tunnel’s existence during its construction have had it under surveillance since April, and no drugs were moved through it before authorities moved in, said Terry Kirkpatrick, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.

This tunnel crossed about 100 yards as the crow flies, but was actually about 200 yards long because it meandered and dipped. The dirt walls were reinforced in areas with wooden supports and sand bags and had a lighting system, but no ventilation.

Of more than 20 tunnels that have been found in Nogales, only about four, including the latest, have not been tied into the drainage system that runs cross-border beneath Nogales, Mexico, and Nogales, Ariz.

“To have a fully serviced independent tunnel absent using the drainage system under these two cities is a significant event for us,” said Tony Coulson, assistant special agent in charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Arizona.

Agents who served a search warrant late Thursday at the tiny, one- story home found the tunnel entrance hidden beneath plywood sheets weighted down with bags of dirt inside a utility room.

The home was largely unfurnished, and searchers found picks, a jackhammer and other excavation equipment.

The tunnel was the largest discovered along the U.S.-Mexico border since January 2006, when a tunnel extending nearly a half-mile from San Diego to Tijuana was found.

Federal officials said the tunnel discovered Thursday has been temporarily sealed and will be filled in after the investigation is complete.

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from United Press International

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A boy brought a packet of heroin to a Buffalo, N.Y., daycare center and gave some of the drug to other children, apparently thinking it was candy.

Three children at the YWCA Schoolhouse Commons tested positive for the drug, The Buffalo News reported. All were treated and released.

The state Office of Family Services has temporarily closed the daycare center. The 5-year-old boy and his three siblings were also removed from his parents’ home and placed in the care of a relative.

Wayne Clamp and Kari Lyn Lee said their son did not get the heroin from them or find it in the house. They said they believe he picked it up from the sidewalk somewhere near the daycare center.

Clamp told the News police showed him the packet, which looked like a candy bag. He said it was an easy mistake for his son to make.

“He didn’t think it was something bad,” Clamp said. “He said it smelled like bread crumbs.”

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from United Press International

WASHINGTON, June 14 (UPI) — Congress wants the U.S. military to play a bigger role in combating the production of opium in Afghanistan.

The problem, according to a report Thursday in the Christian Science Monitor, is that eradicating the Afghans’ livelihood won’t help U.S. forces win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

At the same time, the opium trade is funding the Taliban and the other insurgents fighting coalition forces.

Despite the dilemma, the House included a major counter narcotics component in a reconstruction and aid bill for Afghanistan that passed last week.

The bill calls on the military to provide logistical support for as many as 150 employees of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

“It’s the drug trade that allows our enemies in Afghanistan to purchase the weapons with which they kill our soldiers and corrupt the Afghan government,” says U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who co’sponsored the legislation.

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Patriot and I have shared some thoughts of late, and with the news of the rat infested, mold ridden Walter Reed Building 18 in the news this week, I got to thinking……….

About the lack of services for our returning soldiers, and veterans. The Walter Reed Building 18 has been in the news the past week. That building is in Washington, at a state of the art facility. Can you imagine the condition of the Va hospitals and facilities around the country that aren’t in the public’s eye? I can tell you the Hines hospital in Chicago is nothing to write home about. Nor is the care you’ll receive there. The majority of our veterans do not live in major cities, and have to travel very long distances to receive medical care. This presents quite a problem for many elderly vets. Then there’s the story of the VA not spending 2.8 billion allocated for mental health services. The nightmare stories go on and on and on.

Now let’s talk about the costs of the war on drugs. Someone is arrested every 20 seconds for drug offenses. There have already been over 228,000 arrests this year. (It’s February 22!) Of those, about 114,000 have been for cannabis. Police arrested an estimated 786,545 persons for marijuana violations in 2005, The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Approximately 25% of prisoners are there for drug offenses. We spend billions of dollars yearly on the “war on drugs” and how many billion more to try these “criminals” and then house inmates who’s crime is smoking and selling marijuana. Billions. For programs that are ineffective.

Why not legalize marijuana and take the billions upon billions saved and earned and put it into building VA clinics all over the country so our veterans don’t have to travel hundreds of miles to get healthcare? Why not put those billions and billions into fixing outdated Va facilities like Building 18 at the Walter Reed complex? How about letting people who marijuana helps mediically have access to marijuana?

I know it will never happen……..I’m just sayin…….

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