A Setback In Big Mac's Attack

By Donovan, POWD

As is typical of grandiose follies of the American kind, the drug war teems with irony. We had Oliver North run for the Senate and a recent Mexican Drug Czar was also, predictably, a drug lord.

We labeled the murderous, costly invasion of Panama "Operation Just Cause" and got caught on CNN trying to put a couple hundred Panamanian non-combatants into mass graves Kosovo-style. (Just 'cause they were in the wrong place at the wrong time). The DEA dude who proudly escorted Noriega off the plane was shortly thereafter arrested for money laundering.

Then there are the smaller inconsistencies, like all the sons and daughters of tough on crime Congressmen escaping the horrific drug sentences daddy voted in. We had a judge called The Forfeiture Queen who ordered people out of their homes left and right, but kept her own when her son was caught dealing dope from it.

We had "I Got You Babe" Sonny Bono, dopehead turned drug warrior, take on that pine tree at 80mph while flying high on legal drugs and we've seen then Senator (The Blimp) DeConcini's staff busted for investing in the company that produced the covering for the AEROSTAT drug balloons that haven't done diddly squat. Why, it's a nonstop litany of buffoonery and infamous paradoxicality that make us the laughing stock of the western world.

The latest absurdity ought to sound the death knell of this country's ill-fated war on drugs simply because it signalizes the improbability of prohibition in such a stunning way.

Laurie Ann Hiett was arrested in August for running a small Colombian narcotics ring. She was shipping drugs-assumably cocaine-from Bogota to New York, even marking her own return address on some of the shipments. (Tsk-tsk, Laurie, honey!) If convicted, she faces up to 12 years in prison. [U.S.A. Today, August 9, 1999].

Who is Laurie Anne Hiett, you ask? Well, sportsfans, she's the wife of Colonel James Hiett, head of U.S. anti-drug operations in Colombia, a real kick in the crotch for drug warriors in the area.

The Colonel claims it was news to him, too, I mean, isn't the spouse always the last to know? That won't salvage his career, however, another piece of drug war wreckage.

It's an ill-omened beginning to the proposed billion dollar military commitment to that region, with military-industrialists like Drug Czar General McCaffrey envisioning an ever-expanding role for the mission-starved Armed Forces: advisors, aircraft, equipment galore! All paid for by Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average, the same propagandized zombies who work seven months of the year financing all this incessant nonsense. And the war in Colombia is a Pandora's Box, with a Latino army even less inclined to Just Say No than the hapless Mrs. Hiett was. You've got guerillas seeking some kind of nebulous independence and alleged "narco-terrorists" just as capable of meting out the same kind of terror the U.S. so freely metes out itself. In the middle are the indigenous people attempting to exist in a war torn landscape. What a mess.

Several weeks ago five American military personnel lost their lives during an alleged covert drug surveillance flight. It's so deja vu it's dizzying: covert ops, civil war, border crossings, jungles and mountains, hearts and minds, drugs and corruption; all with a military/industrial machine slavering to get it on. If the American public doesn't disabuse Big Mac, the Drug Czar of his latest "bright and shining lie," the body bags will stream back to Gringoland in the same kind of monotonous regularity we experienced 32 years ago.

Vietnam had the fictitious Tonkin Gulf Incident, and this time it's General McCaffrey's call to arms to save our children from drugs, a slogan no less contrived. But in yet another drug war imbecility, we risk losing a lot more young folks in a South American quagmire than we'll ever lose to drugs up here.

Meanwhile, Laurie, welcome to the gulag. Just kick back, kid; fix some Keefe coffee and enjoy the show. It's bound to keep you in stitches.