After 9/11 and the Talibans refusal to turn over the al Qaeda leaders and others we invaded Afghanistan ridding that country of their leadership and Supposedly to go after the guilty of that huge criminal terrorist act against our Nation and People, Then We pretty much Left, taking our military personal and promised rebuilding money with us. The War Drums beat instead for invasion of an innocent country and it's people, Iraq, which became the overwhelming focus while smaller numbers of troops stayed in Afghanistan starting a long stagnated occupation.
Karima, 13, hopes to beat her opium habit. But she knows it will be hard in a country where opium abounds.
Afghan Women and Kids Fight Drug Addiction
Najiba's four kids Karima, Marjabin, Naqibullah and Hila range in age from 4 to 13. Like her, they are all opium addicts, reports CBS News correspondent Mandy Clarke from Afghanistan.
"I started taking opium more than a decade ago," Najiba says, "when my 7-year-old son was killed by a truck."
She started giving it to her children to keep them from shivering in the winter. They've all had treatment before, but poverty lead them back to drugs.
Najiba says opium, which she boils as a tea to suppress hunger pains, is cheaper than a meal and brings her family some happiness............Rest Found Here
Vast Supply of Opium is Problem for Entire Families
Fri Aug 07 2009
According to the U.N., there are a million Afghan drug addicts. But the actual number is at least double that with, women and children make up a quarter of those addicts. Mandy Clark reports.
If we had stayed in Afghanistan, and used the promised money, not only ours but the rest of the worlds at the time, we probably could have stopped the growth of addictions of these families, which has ramped up with the occupation and continued conflict, to the once readily grown poppies for opium, eradicated under the Taliban supposedly, but started back up as they were taken down with bumper crop growth each year since. It would have also helped suppress the growth of use around the world especially here in the U.S. as Afghanistan now supplies much of the illegal opium trade and we are seeing a growth of use here.
We probably would have even gotten the leaders of al Qaeda, our once good friend bin Laden and company, and saved invading another country right next door, Pakistan, saving even more lives and not creating more criminal terrorism across that country, the region and the international stage, along with growth of others terror cells attacking the policies of the west!
Now we have two destroyed countries that need rebuilding, not only the countries but the destroyed lives of the citizens of both, and we're still occupying both as Afghanistan has become even more deadly in the past couple of months. Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed, whole parts of the cities, whole villages, vast area's have been destroyed and the people of have lived with their own multiple 9/11's, on large scale and small, daily.
Afghanistan Stopped Being About The 9/11 Attacks on this Country as soon as we started focusing on Iraq, now both are just Quagmire Occupations with the killing and destruction continuing in the stagnation of both operations theaters, that's what happens when one invades another's country and they fight back with enough rage in the residents of and stayed support from the rest!
Both countries will now be living with the results of these Wars for decades to come which brings on weaker Security for the Rest of the World, especially those who's militaries are occupying, and continuing the occupations!
And we give names to our policies, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, where's the "Freedom" coming out of the policy!!
We had a chance, coming out of our own devastation and anger, to be the country we like to say we are, think we are, and portray on the world stage that we are, we failed tremendously once again!!
Deja Vu All Over Again
The Biggest Difference between our long and deadly occupation of Vietnam, and the Vietnamese are still living with the devastating after effects of, and these two quagmires are the Vietnamese just wanted the occupiers out of their country, they forced the French to leave as they then did Us, they had no interest in fighting back against the policies of outsiders and they rebuilt. These two present quagmires started, long before 9/11, as a result of our long running failed policies and probably will continue, ramped up now as the hatreds have been. The residents of these countries will live in the aftermath of for the decades coming and some, it only takes a few, will seek retribution for what we've forced upon them, outside of their borders!
Add On ReportHeroin Use as our Soldiers Die......Drug Busts Up, According to PoliceHeroin Use Replacing Prescription Drug Abuse for Many Young UsersFrom California to New York, law enforcement agents are reporting a troubling rise in the use of heroin as availability of the drug rises and prices drop.
In Sacramento on July 30, federal prosecutors indicted 21 people on charges of trafficking 440 pounds of heroin into California.
On July 25 in New York's Suffolk County, police arrested two men with 17 pounds of uncut heroin in the biggest such bust in that county's history.
On July 21, authorities nabbed an East Palo Alto, Calif., gang member with 70 pounds of heroin stashed inside a Lincoln Town Car.
The growing number of arrests -- and deaths -- reported around the country point to a resurgence of the drug not seen since the 1970s. But unlike three decades ago, authorities say that today's heroin is much more potent. It is also finding its way to younger users, who are moving from prescription pills to harder drugs.............
UpDate:Village of addicts
Half the people in a rural Afghan village have turned to opium because they lack medicine and access to health care.
Opium addiction ravages Afghan familiesScourge of remote villages leaves even babies hooked
Open the door to Islam Beg's house and the thick opium smoke rushes out into the cold mountain air, like steam from a bathhouse. It's just past 8 a.m. and the family of six — including a 1-year-old baby boy — is already curled up at the lip of the opium pipe.
Beg, 65, breathes in and exhales a cloud of smoke. He passes the pipe to his wife. She passes it to their daughter. The daughter blows the opium smoke into the baby's tiny mouth. The baby's eyes roll back into his head.
Their faces are gaunt. Their hair is matted. They smell.............
UpRooting Afghan Poppy Crops
Iconic Memphis musician and producer Jim Dickinson has died at age 67.
Buddy Harris says, "We got Scott." The remains of Captain Scott Speicher are back home nearly two decades after he left for the Persian Gulf War.
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- The city, friends and military across the city gave a final salute this morning to Captain Scott Speicher.
Jon Kern, a teacher at Mandarin Middle School, waited 18 years to hear what really happened to Navy Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher.
The city, friends and military across the city gave a final salute this morning to Captain Scott Speicher.
William Kostric wears a 9mm pistol as he stands outside a town hall meeting on healthcare held by President Obama, in Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday. 
On July 25, Harry Patch, the last British veteran of World War I, died, marking the passing of an entire generation of veterans of the so-called "war to end all wars." What was most remarkable about Patch’s experience is that he came to believe that what he and his fellow soldiers had done so proudly in their youth had been in vain. At a remembrance ceremony on November 11, 2007, Patch explained: