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Can we believe them - especially in light of the recent US military admission to guarding and assisting lucrative opium trade in Afghanistan (HERE)?

US agents laundered drug money: report

AFP – Sun, Dec 4, 2011

U.S. agents helped launder drug money Antinarcotics agents smuggled millions for Mexican cartels, a new report says.Their reason for doing it

Anti-narcotics agents working for the US government have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds to see how the system works and use the information against Mexican drug cartels, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Citing unnamed current and former federal law enforcementofficials, the newspaper said the agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders.

Some 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when its government launched a major military crackdown against the powerful drug cartels that have terrorized border communities as they battled over lucrative smuggling routes.

According to these officials, the operations were aimed at identifying how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are, the report said.

The agents had deposited the proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents, the paper noted.

While the DEA conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years, The Times said.

As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests, the report said.

According to The Times, agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations.

But Michael Vigil, a former senior official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, is quoted by the paper as saying: "We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money."

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How else would you infiltrate and take down a criminal organization such as this? I am all ears, please enlighten us.

This how crimes of this type have been brought to justice. Did you think "Miami Vice" was just a TV show? This kind of reporting is not productive at all, unless it exposes a collusion to continue the criminal activity for profits. Or if these actions fail to stop the lawbreaking of these organized crime syndicates. Remember most of us aren't plane and ship owners that are in the game but hidden because no one has infiltrated that far into the organization, yet.

I think this is just fanning the flames from mostly outside sources. IE: What is your personal stake in this game? I live here how about you? Is the question I ask when I see this stuff.

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Can we believe them - especially in light of the recent US military admission to guarding and assisting lucrative opium trade in Afghanistan (HERE)?

US agents laundered drug money: report

AFP – Sun, Dec 4, 2011

U.S. agents helped launder drug money Antinarcotics agents smuggled millions for Mexican cartels, a new report says.Their reason for doing it

Anti-narcotics agents working for the US government have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds to see how the system works and use the information against Mexican drug cartels, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Citing unnamed current and former federal law enforcementofficials, the newspaper said the agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders.

Some 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when its government launched a major military crackdown against the powerful drug cartels that have terrorized border communities as they battled over lucrative smuggling routes.

According to these officials, the operations were aimed at identifying how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are, the report said.

The agents had deposited the proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents, the paper noted.

While the DEA conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years, The Times said.

As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests, the report said.

According to The Times, agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations.

But Michael Vigil, a former senior official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, is quoted by the paper as saying: "We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money."

War on drugs revealed as total hoax - US military admits to guarding, assisting lucrative opium trade in Afghanistan

Wednesday, November 16, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

CIA responsible for reinstating opium industry in Afghanistan after 9/11

Rural Suicides Follow Medicaid Cuts

By ALAN FARNHAM | ABC News – Mon, Dec 5, 2011

Rural suicides follow Medicaid cuts Experts blame cuts in services for the mentally ill for a spike in suicides outside of cities. Other factors

Suicide is on the increase in rural America--nowhere so much as inwestern mountain states like Idaho, Wyoming and New Mexico. Mental health professionals attribute it in part to cutbacks inMedicaid funding, to the recession and to the culture of the rural West.

In Idaho, somebody kills himself every 35 hours, according to a 2009 report to Idaho's governor by the state's Council on Suicide Prevention. Their report calls suicide "a major public health issue" having a "devastating effect" on Idaho's families, churches, businesses and even schools: 65 students aged 10 and 18 killed themselves in a recent five-year period.

Recently, a county sheriff in Bonneville told the Idaho Falls Post Register that his department was getting more suicide calls than in 2010—a year in which 290 Idahoans took their own lives. "We're in a spike right now," he says.

Historically the suicide rate in rural states has been higher than in urban ones. According to the most recent national data available, Alaska has the highest rate, at 24.6 suicides per 100,000 people. Next comes Wyoming (23.3), followed by New Mexico (21.1), Montana (21.0) and Nevada (20.2).Idaho ranks 6th, at 16.5. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Idahoans aged 15-34. Only accidents rank higher.

Kathie Garrett, co-chairman of the Idaho Council on Suicide Prevention, says the problem has gotten only worse since the recession. "The poor economy and unemployment—those put a lot of stress on people's lives," she explains. To save money, people skip doctor visits and cut back on taking prescribed medications. Cuts in Medicaid have reduced the services available to the mentally ill.

"I personally know people who lost Medicaid who've attempted suicide," says Garrett.

Reductions in funding have led to the closing of mental health offices, she says. Such closings mean more in Idaho than they would, say, in Manhattan, where a therapist can be found on every block. Before the cuts and closings, somebody in Idaho seeking therapy might have had to drive 160 miles to find it.

Kim Kane, executive director of Idaho's Suicide Prevention Action Network in Idaho says other factors explain the high rate of suicide in western mountain states. One is the greater prevalence of guns: In 2010, 63 percent of Idaho suicides involved a firearm, compared with the national average of 50 percent.

She and Garrett also say the West's pride in rugged individualism can prevent people from seeking help. Their feeling, says Kane, is that they ought to be able to pull themselves up by their mental bootstraps. Idaho is the only state not to have a suicide-prevention hotline.

Garret, who has served in the Idaho legislature, complains state policy-makers don't all view mental illness as an illness—one on a par, say, with glaucoma or pancreatitis. Their belief, she says, is that a person suffering depression ought to be able to get help from church or family, rather than from state-provided professionals. "I told them," she says of her fellow legislators, "that when I had cancer, what I needed was a doctor. My family gave me support. My church gave me faith. But I still needed a surgeon."

Dave Strong, an assessment and referral coordinator for the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, says the people now most at risk, ironically, are not the most severely ill. "Schizophrenics, once they've been diagnosed and qualified by Medicaid, don't fall out of treatment," he says." They're always able to get services."

Rather, it's people suffering the first onset of their disease who have the hardest time getting treatment. With services reduced, the mildly depressed now have to wait until their condition has reached a crisis stage to before they can get medical attention.

"We wait too long now to get treatment to them," said Garrett. "It's like telling somebody with diabetes that he'll have to wait until he's in a coma." People with mental illness, she says, can and do recover. "There's a 60 to 80 percent chance they will. But it takes time. The meds are very tricky: it's not a case of one-size-fits-all." Given that seven years can pass between diagnosis and getting a successful treatment going, it's important, she says, to start early.

It's important, too, "to remind the people reading this that there is always hope. All that anybody feeling suicidal has to do to get help is call the national hotline number. Dial 800-273-TALK (8255)."

Also Read

Iran's 'cold war' with Mideast heats up Beyond conflicts with Israel and the U.S., the country engages in proxy wars across the region. 'Unpredictable'

LONDON (Reuters) - Worries of Israel striking Iran might or might not be overblown but across the region the largely hidden "cold war" between Tehran and its enemies is escalating fast, bringing with it wider risk of conflict.

Speculation Israel might attack Iran's nuclear program has been rife in the Israeli media and oil markets in recent weeks, with concerns that Tehran might retaliate with devastating attacks on Gulf oil shipments.

But that debate, experts say, misses large parts of the bigger picture. An increasingly isolated Iran alarms not just Israel and the West but its Gulf neighbors, especially longtime foe Saudi Arabia, and they are already fighting back - and the confrontation goes well beyond simply tightening sanctions.

From proxy wars in Iraq and Syria to computer worm attacks and unexplained explosions in Iran - to allegations of an assassination plot in Washington - a confrontation once kept behind the scenes is breaking into increasingly open view.

The storming of Britain's Tehran embassy last week - and the tit-for-tat shutdown of Iran's embassy in London - were just the latest signs that already limited dialogue is beginning to break down. That, analysts say, is inherently dangerous.

"With Iran, you have a government that is increasingly isolated and acting in increasingly unpredictable ways," says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and National Studies in Washington.

"There is certainly the risk that a country will take the deliberate decision to attack Iran. But there is also the risk that something happens that provokes... a war that nobody planned and nobody wants."

With the euro zone crisis still far from over and worldwide demand already faltering, such action and the resulting oil price surge could be disastrous for the global economy.

Confrontation is, of course, far from new. Tehran has long used militant groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and Hamas in the Palestinian territories to shape regional politics and strike enemies, particularly Israel.

The United States and Britain long accused Iran of using Shi'ite Muslim militias in Iraq to kill Western troops and impose Tehran's agenda.

The Sunni-ruled states of the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, say Iran stirs up unrest in their Shi'ite communities, although many Western analysts believe blaming Iran for protests this year in those countries is an overstatement or at least oversimplification.

Many such confrontations across the region appear escalating fast - and becoming much harder for Washington and its allies to control.

Watch Video HERE

PROXY WARS

"U.S. and Western power in the region is weakening, and that is leaving a vacuum - most notably in Iraq - and you can see the main stakeholders in the region reacting to Iran's readiness to fill that vacuum," says Reva Bhalla, head of analysis at US private intelligence company Stratfor.

This year's uprising in Syria - Iran's rare Arab friend - has created a new battlefield. Since the early days of the uprising, U.S. officials repeatedly and pointedly said they believed Assad's government was receiving support from Tehran.

Assad has since been rapidly abandoned by the Arab League, in a diplomatic effort led by Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab Gulf states. Analysts and officials say that could have as much to do with pushing back against Iran as in reining in killings and rights abuses in Syria itself.

Saudi or other Arab backing for the increasingly armed opposition could escalate matters further, potentially producing a sectarian civil war lasting years and spilling across borders into neighboring states.

In Iraq, the withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of this year leaves more room for both Iran and Sunni Arab neighbors to intervene through proxy militias. At worst, that could reignite the Sunni-Shia infighting that nearly tore the country apart during the US occupation.

"A proxy Saudi-Iranian war in Iraq represents a very considerable threat to oil supplies," said Alastair Newton, chief political analyst at Japanese bank Nomura.

POWER STRUGGLE

Some of the increased friction with its neighbors could be a symptom of a power struggle within Iran itself, Newton said.

"I think one of the reasons you're seeing temperature rising between Iran and others is because you're seeing temperature rising in Tehran itself."

Recent events such as the embassy storming, in which Iran seemed willing to tear up the international rulebook, could be a sign of increasing clout of hardline clerics and Revolutionary Guard commanders.

The attack on Britain's embassy prompted widespread international condemnation and looks to have ushered in a much tighter sanctions. That too may strengthen the hardliners.

The United States said in October it had caught Iran plotting to blow up the Saudi ambassador to Washington DC in a downtown restaurant. Whether or not the plot was genuine - and whoever was behind it - it marked a further worsening of relations.

COVERT ACTION

Iran's enemies appear to be using unconventional methods against it, suspected of striking within its borders. Israel and the United States both make clear they view covert operations as a sensible alternative to conventional military action.

Last year's Stuxnet computer worm, which damaged computers used in industrial machinery, was widely believed to have been a U.S.-Israeli attack to cripple Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed or disappeared, and Iran blames U.S. or Israeli intelligence services.

Two explosions last month in Iran, one of which killed a Revolutionary Guards gunnery general and around a dozen other officers, prompted widespread speculation in Israel that its intelligence services were involved.

Iran said the first blast was an accident and has not given clear accounts of the second incident.

Israeli officials refuse to confirm or deny they were behind any specific incidents. Several commentators and newspapers warned such action could still backfire badly - perhaps prompting the kind of rocket attacks on Israel launched last week by Hizbollah from Lebanon.

"Faced with such operations, the Iranian regime is embarking on and will embark on a series of actions of its own," said a front-page article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv by Nadav Eyal, foreign editor for Israel's Channel Ten television.

As to whether a deliberate air strike on Iran's nuclear program is genuinely more likely in the coming months, experts are divided. The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq makes it possible for Israeli jets to pass through its airspace without needing U.S. permission. But many say the costs would be too high.

"The problem is that no one knows what the mid-term consequences would be," said Alterman at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It could simply encourage the regime in place and intensify their commitment to following a nuclear program with even more energy than before."