[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15015]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           GOOD WAR--BAD WAR

  (Mr. KIRK asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, successful counterterror programs teach that 
to win, you must attack both terrorists and their money. Through 
Congress' partisan lens, Iraq is the bad war, while Afghanistan is the 
good war. Our partisan lens will not recognize good news from Iraq or 
bad news from Afghanistan.
  In Afghanistan, the Taliban is back, funded by billions from heroin. 
The U.N. reports that in 2008, Afghanistan is now also the top producer 
of hashish. Money from heroin and now hashish total hundreds of 
millions, if not billions.
  In sum, the Taliban's drug profits now may equal the operations 
budget of General McKiernan and his NATO Army.
  The hot issue today is a possible surge of troops to Afghanistan. I 
will sound a note of caution that without aerial spraying and other 
counterdrug programs that worked in Colombia, such an Afghan move will 
only accelerate violence between two very well-funded opponents.
  To turn the rising Taliban tide, we must attack both heroin and 
hashish in the narco-state that is Afghanistan.

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