Early Report on the Afghan Police Mentoring Program

what do you mean, “de facto gangsters”?

You found a gem of a picture in a worrisome context, and its on-the-groundness does raise questions about our chances for success anytime soon. So sad.

The grinning helmeted guy, sucking a lollipop: Matt Lauer?

Beyond funding the Taliban, the explosion in Afghan narcotics production fueled wide- spread corruption in the Afghan government and police. Drug abuse by police officers became increasingly common as did other forms of criminal behavior. from US Institute for Peace Special Report PDF
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6502175/Afghan-National-Police-penetrated-by-Taliban-at-every-level.html
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http://www.rawa.org/police-3.htm
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In another triumph of Americanism, with the introduction of cheap candy to Afghanistan we will be responsible for an outbreak of diabetes and tooth decay.The Afghan soldier has a beautiful set of strong white teeth, a sight rarely seen here in West Virginia, our own domestic version of Afghanistan.

That was exactly my first thought also.

Michael, you will have to remove.. /> ..from the links to avoid a 404 trip

An opening scene, from Monty Python tours Afghanistan.

I’ll just throw this in, because I have never seen a good answer to the question:
why don’t we, or the UN, or the World Bank buy up the poppy harvest and have it made into the pain relievers that are now chemical mimes of opiates? the morphines, codeines, codones, etc.
could ‘Big Pharma’ have a finger in this?

“success”? is that sorta like “freedom”, or more like “hope?”

sucker…

Is it the mentoring of the type that was done with the military education by US of the South and Central America’s? Later the fruits of coups, repressions and torture of the people there. The blue print of US success, which is now crumbling down in precisely those countries.
Times are different and the lollipops won’t work.

Who is aooming whom here?
That dude looks high!

They sell those hash lollipops at my medical marijuana club!

Oh come one, its just a picture of a grown man grinning away because the photog caught him sucking at a lollipop like a little boy.

What was Kojak’s line?
“Who loves you, baby?”