> The only thing I found is the opposite of the claim in
> the LA Times article. This year 2000 report says on
> the State Dept's website claims an increase in poppy
> seed cultivation. Can anyone independantly confirm
> Mr. Scheer's claims?
The original article touting reductions in cultivation appears to have been published in the New York Times, two days before Scheer published in commentary in the L.A. Times. Here's the abstract from the NYT website - I'm not a paying subscriber, so I can't retrieve the whole article. However, the gist of it is summarized in the first paragraph anyway:
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May 20, 2001, Sunday Taliban's Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides Say By BARBARA CROSSETTE Source: The New York Times Section: Foreign Desk 763 words
Drug Enforcement Agency
The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement's ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's largest crop in less than a year, officials said today. The American...
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A version of the Barbara Crossette article did appear on the Australian Sydney Morning Herald site as well:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0105/21/world/world7.html
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So I think the above substantiates fairly reliably the Powell/U.S. Govt. "gift" Scheer talks about, but obviously the underlying question of just whether the the $43 million was based on the Taliban's actual ability to eliminate the poppy production in a year (as the articles and Govt. sources claim) or a bribe of sorts related to future production declines (which would imply a certain amount of obfuscation on the part of U.S. and Taliban authorities), or "drought relief," might be open to some debate. In any case, the money seems to have changed hands just a few short months prior to the terrorist attack. Whether the starving Afghani farmers benefitted from any of it, or a portion was diverted to enable the bin Laden organization, is anyone's guess. I doubt there was much accountability asked for, or received, once the money left U.S. hands.
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/ dave /