If they deny it, it must be true

Anybody who knows anything about anything, i.e. bloggers, knows that the war in Afghanistan is over drugs and money. A few days ago, it was reported that "The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support..." Ross thought this was a good idea, as did Obo.

It appears that the peace-loving Italians actually did this:

When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified... The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.

What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet, The Times has learnt. The clandestine payments, whose existence was hidden from the incoming French forces, were disclosed by Western military officials.

Italy has promptly denied it of course, but they would, wouldn't they?

Of course, if you take a step back, you'll realise that the whole war is the conflagration of American prudishness (they want heroin to be illegal); Australian/Tasmanian commercial self-interest (they want to control the market for legal opiates) and British stupidity (we do what the Americans do), so could fix it by sourcing legal opiates from Afghanistan instead.

Even better than that we could legalise heroin and source heroin from there as well, and it would become just an agricultural economy like any other. With oppression of women and gays and limb-amputations just to add a bit of local colour, of course.