I hope he does it. I wouldn't mind seeing an all out war between islamist assholes and the Colubian drug cartels.

If it is actually known that 75% of the worlds opium comes from Afghanistan, what's the point of NOT destroying all the damned poppy fields there? Especially when, as it says, the actual farmers only receive a pitance and the drug cartels cash in?

Cocaine users are selfish jerks who don't care that they're funding people who kill villagers with chainsaws. They don't care about the world one way or another; all they care about is what is right in front of their noses.

But if he were trying to poison marijuana, now that would be a different matter entirely...

Two Arabs are sitting in a bar smoking hashish and chatting over a
pint of fermented goat's milk.

The first Arab pulls his wallet out and starts flipping through
photographs; they start reminiscing. "This is my oldest son, he's a
martyr.

"Praise Allah! You must be so very proud," says the other.

"Yes, and this is my second son....He's a martyr also."

"A fine looking young man....praise be to Mohammed!" replies his
friend.

After a pause and a deep sigh, the second Arab says wistfully,
"They blow up so fast, don't they?"

Osama bin Laden is a moron for even considering this. I'm finding it hard to believe that this is even true, it's so stupid.

Leaving aside the obvious point that cocaine cartels have absolutely no reason to cooperate with this, what exactly does he think it would accomplish? It certainly wouldn't terrify average American voters. It might make Americans use less cocaine, which would only be good for us. It would deprive underground groups like al-Qaeda of a potential source of income. It would make all kinds of criminal groups less willing to deal with them, making it harder for them to launder money, sell drugs and diamonds, smuggle people, and so on. It just wouldn't help them any.

Bombs are scary. But poisoned cocaine? Come off it. It's like a discarded Austin Powers script or something. This idea is so stupid I feel stupider for having heard about it.

Yeah, there are big holes in the story--the thing that gets me is the face-to-face meeting between Osama and the drug lords. Wouldn't even happen in a Tom Clancy novel.

Poisoned cocaine, well, it makes his heroin business look like a more pleasant alternative, and it punishes debauched infidels. So improbable and wacky but not inconsistent with OBL's plans.

It's like a discarded Austin Powers script or something. This idea is so stupid I feel stupider for having heard about it.

Mega Dittos. Damn ACE, talk about loose shit!

As for Ace's remark to the effect that OBL is needlessly alienating the cokehead demographic, my understanding is that he doesn't want to be friends with anyone here, except perhaps those who entirely agree with him--who are nevertheless just as expendable as anyone else. OBL is said to want to completely inflame the U.S. and the liberal democracies generally, and to draw us into a war that he thinks Allah and the faithful will win. OBL is indeed calculative; it's just that his calculation includes a factor we think is spurious, the awesome power of Allah.

But we can learn something from our enemies' virtues, when we have understood that the virtues of war are force and deceit. What could we employ against them? I'd be satisfied just to stop their reproduction, since the function of timid moderates is to spawn brave young radicals. But such an approach has the defect that it would leave them alive to try to take their vengeance. Genocide would be more effective, but I've been assured it's against all the laws of God and man, so I certainly won't suggest it.

Since my thoughts are tending in the direction of demographic solutions to demographic problems, I'll mention here that I favor shutting down Social Security and Medicare so we can boost the income tax exemption for dependent children. That's right; I think that in order not to merely prolong our decline, but to achieve actual victory over Islam, we must condescend to have babies, as trailer-trashy as that may seem to all the yuppies out there. As for the old men and old ladies who will miss their Social Security under my proposal, they can fuckin' get a job and build an estate for their grandchildren instead of sucking money out of the paychecks of working parents.

I follow the example of the God of Moses, who doesn't want much to be liked, but wants chiefly to be obeyed. Repent your dinky little families, or admit that the future belongs to Allah--no, to the silly people who believe in him.

Arafel

At last, an Al Qaeda plot I can get behind!

Actually (for the benefit of the overly literal-minded), I don't want cokeheads killed (and, when you think of it, poisoning them is redundant). I just want them to stay the fuck away from me. I don't know if cocaine turns people into assholes, or just releases their inner asshole, but talking to a cokehead is hell. Stoners are boring, too. At least junkies sleep a lot, which keeps them out of the way (when they're not trying to rob you).

"As for the old men and old ladies who will miss their Social Security under my proposal, they can fuckin' get a job and build an estate for their grandchildren instead of sucking money out of the paychecks of working parents."

I'm not sure if that was tongue-in-cheek but those old men and old women have been more then likely paying into SS their whole lives. If anything, its their money they're collecting, not yours.

That's an awfully naive interpretation of Social Security. People aren't really 'saving up for their retirement', they are funding the people who are on Social Security now.

First, that 9:08pm was mine. If I'm going to be the no-name nudnik the least I can do is remember to type my name :)

Anyhoo, jic, my comment wasn't meant to illustrate the workings of the SSA; I think we can all agree, though, that if congress had never 'borrowed' money from the SS trust and the trust had been invested in the most conservative instruments, we wouldn't be having this discussion. My point was people who have worked and payed FICA all their lives and are now retired shouldn't be expected to 'get a job'.

I don't think that's fair either, BrewFan. But, unfortunately, SS is unsustainable in it's current form. Whether it is replaced or collapses, people will suffer. I think that there will be less suffering with the former option then the latter. Investing the money was never really an option, it would be essentially the same as the government removing that money from circulation.

"talking to a cokehead is hell'

the few cokeheads I've known were all totally arrogant and more or less paranoid - perhaps this story will send them over the brink.

Ace, this story, as I said over at LGF, makes no sense. It's logistically impossible - I mean, think about it. You have to find a poison virulent and long-lasting enough to stand up to the "stepping" process, that doesn't change the appearance of the drug so much that people won't buy it.

This doesn't strike me as all that likely.

I think the DEA has been led up the garden path on this report. Heck, I don't know that the DEA, or any other part of the goverment, believes this.

Ace, drop your linen and start your grinnin', because here's a link that - if you have any professional esprit whatsoever - will become your next post:

Arch-Liberal Bob Somerby of the The Daily Howler just rips into Joshua Micah Enoch Hezekiah Marshall like a rabid dog ripping into the meaty thigh of a slow, pudgy 8-year-old.

God, there's blood on the floor, on the walls, everywhere. He accuses Marshall of being a dishonest, propagandistic hack who's insulting his readers' intelligence with blatant lies. And I promise that's not a slanted 'interpretation' of Somerby's post, but a near abstract-like summary of his thoughts.

Now remember: this is Bob friggin' Somerby we're talking about here. Not Ace Of Spades, but the Daily Howler.

Ah, fratricide.

By the way, I forgot to mention: scroll down once you click on the link. The Daily Howler is a digest-like "thoughs of the day" format, so the lengthy Marshall flaying comes after some other small topics.

Here's a little sample to whet the RWDB appetite:

"As readers may have noticed, we’ve been troubled by the slide-toward-propaganda of Josh Marshall’s once-superlative work...."

Trust me, you'll not read anything quite so satisfying the rest of this month. I know Ace dislikes Marshall every bit as much as I do.

Dianna - there's a LOT of poisons that would fill the bill. Sodium cyanide for example - its crystaline, white, looks a bit like crack when compressed, and readily available in quantity (electroplating shops use potassium/sodium cynaide by the 55gal drum in copper/zinc plating processes). The only tip-off with the cyanides is they tend to sting if they get in an open cut and have an aromatic almond odor.

I suppose you can guess my family used to be in the electroplating business...

Dianna writes:

Ace, this story, as I said over at LGF, makes no sense. It's logistically impossible - I mean, think about it. You have to find a poison virulent and long-lasting enough to stand up to the "stepping" process, that doesn't change the appearance of the drug so much that people won't buy it.

Not at all Dianna. Aside from the utter stupidity of the coke merchants wrecking their Gift From God Cash Flow business forever...which makes the whole story stupid and likely a plant by a dumb asshole at the DEA pissed that all his friends snicker when he tells them he is part of the winning War on Drugs...it's theoretically possible to poison coke.

Or Pepsi, or milk, or baby formula, even *weep* beer.

With something colorless and odorless, with no taste. And most importantly, something that doesn't kill right away but days later - so even a SF gay bar coker doesn't "get wise" as soon as the coker friend he bought a gram with drops dead on the 1st toot.

Common garbage like cyanide wouldn't work. Jihadi chemists would just add some cool stuff like anthrax spores, dimethyl mercury, or ricin to the final refined coke.

But they haven't tried poisonings yet, even with Israelis. Though some throw anticoagulant rat poison into the bombs in hopes it will make shrapnel wounds more likely to cause a victim to bleed out.

Maybe poisoning is considered too sneaky and cowardly even for Arabs to do.

This story sounds like bad anti-drug propaganda - even lower than Reefer Madness quality .

Apart from the points already raised about the Colombian cartels not being dumb enough to kill the goose that lays their golden eggs, and that it's implausible that OBL was somehow able to travel to South America, there's the fact that al-Qaeda doesn't have a drug distribution network, and the final bit of stupidity: the Talking Killer Fallacy (TM Roger Ebert).

I mean, c'mon: presuming al-Qaeda would even come up with such a cockamamie plot in the first place, why the fuck would they tell anyone about it? They didn't exactly pull off 9/11 by letting those flight school instructors know that they planned to fly planes into buildings, did they? They've got to have at least some concept of OpSec.

(As a side note, that's the same reason I find the story about the alleged Department of Agriculture official's meeting with Atta, which Mark Steyn mentioned in a recent column, simply not credible - from the disclosure of the plan to make a huge crop duster, to the offer to purchase aerial photos of Washington, to the vague threats of violence.)

The only thing preposterous about the story is the volume mentioned and the Columbians. Obviously the Columbians have no interest in eliminating their customers.

There's no reason at all why this couldn't work on a smaller more local scale.

A couple of creative Johnny Jihad's could easily parlay $20,000 into a couple of kilos and a city-wide panic.

Don't even need "poison" per se - anything with long term undesirable effects would do. Ground up asbestos for example. Easy to come by in some parts of the country where it was used as siding on houses for many decades (I own two buildings in upstate NY sided with asbestos). Still a lot of asbestos insulation glopped on pipes in basements...

Oh -Cedarford - cyanide is hardly "common garbage" to anyone who has handled large quantities of it like I have.

You give that stuff a LOT of respect, or it removes you from the gene pool.

Talk of unfairness is subject-changing. Thank you, to those who have already made some reply on that point, because I never would have.

According to the Social Security Administration, "The annual cost of Social Security benefits represents 4.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) today.... " (link) In our $11 trillion economy, that's about $470 billion. Assuming expenditure of a nice, round average of $20,000 per child per year, the nation's parents and would-be parents could support an additional 23,500,000 children.

I haven't included the annual cost of Medicare in the calculation. Nor have I included the annual burden placed on the economy by the absence of millions of retirees from the workforce. While Arabs and muslims proliferate, the U.S.'s fertility rate is barely at replacement level. Western Europe and Japan are far below replacement level. They're dying. I don't know the generalities about Japan, but with regard to Europe, the problem again is that taxation is depressing birth rates. Returning to our case, the fact that this is a problem for national security can be seen in the fact that the country is having trouble with military recruitment.

If you don't already think you're f*cked, here comes the double penetration: The only reason we can count ourselves anywhere near adequate recruitment is that we employ women as soldiers outside of combat positions. Yes, faced with low fertility, we've staffed our armed forces with women of childbearing age.

Arafel

I really don't see the correlation bewteen population and global dominance. I think, if you look at the relationship, there's enough examples of truly crappy countries with assloads of mewling, pewling swollen-bellied rugrats begging for enough flies to stave off death for another day that couldn't float a liferaft, let alone fight the U.S. military, that any relationship is just as likely to be a negative correlation.

I'd rather be able to educate and train an elite and technologically savvy military than struggle to outpopulate the slums of Dearborn and Paterson.

I think this coke story was dreamed up by some dorks at the DEA.

Why we're talking about this here I don't know, but maintaining a sizable population is necessary for a healthy economy and country. Germany and Japan are finding out first-hand what it is like to see a population growing lopsidedly older with far too few young people to take care of the older ones and fill the needs of the working class.

Dianna writes:

Ace, this story, as I said over at LGF, makes no sense. It's logistically impossible - I mean, think about it. You have to find a poison virulent and long-lasting enough to stand up to the "stepping" process, that doesn't change the appearance of the drug so much that people won't buy it.

Hmm. OBL must have something that is odorless, colorless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.

Fortunately, I've spent the past several years building up a tolerance to iocaine powder.

Cedarford writes:

Common garbage like cyanide wouldn't work.

You know cyanide isn't Jewish, right?

Fortunately, I've spent the past several years building up a tolerance to iocaine powder.

I don't know, Pompous, that sounds farfetched. Are you giving us your word as a Spaniard?

"Talk of unfairness is subject-changing. Thank you, to those who have already made some reply on that point, because I never would have"

For obvious reasons; you're embarrased you made such a silly statement. In fact your whole "demographic solutions to demographic problems" is quite silly.

I don't know either.

There's no German word for "productivity increase" is the problem there.

The point seems to have been that if we can't outbreed these people there's no use in fighting them now since we'll be overrun eventually. That's a point worth arguing. But in the near term, the idea is to defuse the ideology that drives them.

If you accept that non-loony Muslims make good citizens then you shouldn't really care if there's more of them. We just have to make sure we wipe out the loonies and discredit their ideology first. If that means chicks in uniform, lock and load.

Maybe poisoning is considered too sneaky and cowardly even for Arabs to do.

In the name of Allah, nothing is too sneaky and cowardly for our Jihadis to do. Allah Akbur!

Paraphrased from "Bill Cosby Himself":

I once asked a man what was so attractive about coke. He said that it intensifies your personality. I said, "Yeah man, but what if you're an asshole?!?"

I don't know how you got off on to SS, BrewFan, but you need to get your facts straight.

1) SS was never, NEVER, never a savings/retirement plan. The money we put into SS is supposed to, and does, go directly to current recipients. Anything left over goes into extremely low yield (like 2 or more points behind inflation) bonds that only Congress can (and must) purchase as part of the federal budget. These are the famous IOUs that everyone talks about.

2) You don't want Congress investing the excess funds into any market.
2a) If they invest it into the stock market, then you will have government ownership of companies. How should Congress vote its shares? What companies should it invest in? For God's sake, they can't even balance their own personal checking accounts, hence the house banking scandal in the 1990s.
2b) With the kind of money that is to be invested, bond investments would collapse interest rates to almost nothing. Then where would you save your money when CDs yield .1% annually and savings accounts might net you a nickel on a year's investment of $10K?

You'd invest in equities. With money that cheap, the economy would fly.

But you're not really talking about enough money to bring rates down like that.

Cedarford,

Terrorists have tried to use poison against the United States before, and in the 1990's, no less!

Unfortunately, I don't have specifics, but my uncle-the-cop has referred in general terms to an attempt to poison the California aqueducts. He was involved in breaking it up, fortunately.

kbiel,

1) SS was never, NEVER, never a savings/retirement plan. The money we put into SS is supposed to, and does, go directly to current recipients. Anything left over goes into extremely low yield (like 2 or more points behind inflation) bonds that only Congress can (and must) purchase as part of the federal budget. These are the famous IOUs that everyone talks about.

I never said any such things. Please read the post Arafel made at 6:42 then my response at 9:08 for context.

2) You don't want Congress investing the excess funds into any market.

I never said any such thing

2a) If they invest it into the stock market, then you will have government ownership of companies. How should Congress vote its shares? What companies should it invest in? For God's sake, they can't even balance their own personal checking accounts, hence the house banking scandal in the 1990s.

I never said any such thing. My hypothetical was based on investing in 'conservative instruments' by the SSA, not Congress. How you got stock market out of that is beyond me.

Sorry about the loose sh*t with the italics tags!

Compos Mentis said, "Why we're talking about this here I don't know...." I understand. The connection is tenuous. When I read Ace's remarks on mass poisoning, I admit, one of my first thoughts was along the lines, "That would be a fine idea, if the shoe were on the other foot." From there, I made the transition to thought about relative population sizes, i.e. demographics. At that point, I started channeling Mark Steyn's views on demographics(although he would probably disown both my venom and the seeming absoluteness of my remedies in the forms in which I propose them). From your concurring remark about Germany and Japan, I gather that you've read Steyn's essays on this topic, too.

- - - - - - - - - -

I said, "Talk of unfairness is subject-changing. Thank you, to those who have already made some reply on that point, because I never would have."

Brewfan replied, "For obvious reasons; you're embarrased you made such a silly statement. In fact your whole 'demographic solutions to demographic problems' is quite silly."

I add: I keep saying that the West is coming to have fewer and fewer young men, proportionally, with which to maintain or field armies against Islam--and, I'll add, China. I'm talking about the necessity to be able to field armies while maintaining all of the other functions of our societies. On the other hand, you bring up a claim of unfairness, and then you want to talk about my supposed embarrassment. I respond again that the West's demographic suicide is more important than the claim of unfairness. As for my supposed embarrassment, if I were embarrassed, the demographic problem would still be exactly what it is. My embarrassment, if I had any, wouldn't matter any more than the claim of unfairness does. I maintain along with Mark Steyn that all these transfer payments from young to old are putting the West in danger of dying off or being killed off. In the case of Western Europe and Japan, it's truly a matter of diminishing numbers of young people--other than young muslims. In the case of the U.S., it's thankfully merely a matter of relative decline, of our becoming proportionally fewer and fewer in comparison to global Islam, as well as China.

- - - - - - - - - -

Reply to Spongeworthy: If I thought we would always maintain our technological and economic leads, I wouldn't be nearly as worried. Also, I agree that cultivation of an elite is more important than cultivation of numbers. I just don't think that cultivation of an elite is enough; we need numbers, too. As for making good use of muslims who are moderate--for the time being--I'm willing, in principle. The problem, I think, is that however moderate most muslims may be acting right now, the Koran is a radicalizing power. I keep urging people to read Sura 9, "The Immunity," in order to see what I mean. You support for ideology is fine, as well. I just think although we need the productivity and the persuasiveness that you mention, we need numbers, too.

Arafel

I never said any such things. Please read the post Arafel made at 6:42 then my response at 9:08 for context.

OK.

I'm not sure if that was tongue-in-cheek but those old men and old women have been more then likely paying into SS their whole lives. If anything, its their money they're collecting, not yours.

Hmmm, they paid into it and their collecting their money? Sounds like an account, you know, where people put money for safe keeping until later. No, technically you did not say savings/retirement, but the implication is clear and falls into the same false assumptions shared by many Americans, namely "it's my money, I paid it". Well, no, it's not your/their money. That money went directly to those receiving checks at the time. You made a donation, not a deposit.

I never said any such thing. My hypothetical was based on investing in 'conservative instruments' by the SSA, not Congress.

Then please define conservative instruments. I was positing what would happen when investing in the two major investment markets. Where would the money be invested where the money couldn't be used as a vehicle for implementing some kind of policy? My mistake, I used congress when I should have spoke of the government in general. Regardless of my loose shit, the SSA would certainly not act on their own. They would have rules put in place by congress and would be directed by the executive branch. That makes me feel sooo much better about it.

2b) With the kind of money that is to be invested, bond investments would collapse interest rates to almost nothing. Then where would you save your money when CDs yield .1% annually and savings accounts might net you a nickel on a year's investment of $10K?

I never said any such thing.

It's implied. Those magical conservative instruments have to put their money somewhere. There are generally two places for those funds, stocks and bonds.

However you might refer to spongeworthy's comment at 11:49 because he's right.

He is? What are equities? Ah, I see investments in individual companies, like stocks. Oh, I know, we have mutual funds et al that abstract the ownership of said stocks and bonds, but just dumping those funds into the markets will favor some companies/bonds/investments over others. Sounds to me like another possible avenue for policy. And we are not talking small change either, we're talking about billions of dollars. Cheap money in any market will depress interest rates overall. That is one of the reasons why President Bush does not propose that everyone be allowed to take all of their SS contributions and use them in personal investment accounts. That amount of capital will need to be infused slowly if we are to see sustained growth.

but the implication is clear and falls into the same false assumptions shared by many Americans, namely "it's my money, I paid it".

Finally, you got my point! I was talking about perceptions not process. I know how SS works

"That money went directly to those receiving checks at the time. You made a donation, not a deposit"

Shouldn't you have said "Only a small fraction of that money went to those receiving checks at the time the rest Congress has squandered away"

Then please define conservative instruments

Ok. Low risk investments of any kind. Do you thing stocks and bonds are the only way to invest money? Plus, later on in your comment you answer your own question: "Oh, I know, we have mutual funds et al that abstract the ownership of said stocks and bonds"

There are generally two places for those funds

See above.

Brewfan, good P.J. O'Rourke article on SS, that details the problems with investing the fund: http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0599ponzi.htm

Thanks for the link, jic. It is a good article and for the record I am a huge proponent of privatization of SS.

Finally, you got my point! I was talking about perceptions not process.

Sorry, that did not seem obvious to me from your previous comments.

Shouldn't you have said "Only a small fraction of that money went to those receiving checks at the time the rest Congress has squandered away"

Um no, that statement would seem to imply that the money was being misappropriated and/or mishandled. I meant what I said, the money is pumped out to recipients and excess funds are "bought" by congress in the form of low yield bonds. There has never been a guarentee, outside of some politicians' election campaigns, that excess funds belonged to anyone but the government. Hence, every person is making a donation, not a deposit.

Ok. Low risk investments of any kind. Do you thing stocks and bonds are the only way to invest money? Plus, later on in your comment you answer your own question: "Oh, I know, we have mutual funds et al that abstract the ownership of said stocks and bonds"

Well, yes. I believe that I have stated more than once that there are basically two vehicles for investment, stocks and bonds. There are futures markets, but that is quite the opposite of low risk and I'm not sure that futures could absorb billions of dollars. Other than that, all other vehicles are some derivative of stocks and bonds. Whether that money goes through a fund manager or not does not change the fact that the money is still going into stocks and/or bonds.

...and for the record I am a huge proponent of privatization of SS.

Ok, I missed that. Maybe your comments were tongue-in-cheek, but it seemed to me that you were saying that the SSA should have been making direct investments all this time and I was pointing out why that was a bad idea. These arguments were all hashed out 65+ years ago. Thankfully, sanity prevailed and the money was not invested. Individually directed investments, on the other hand, remove the political component and spread the risk out (though not evenly, depending on how individuals direct their investments).

I personally think there are better privatization plans than the Bush proposal, but Bush's proposal looks like it will transition well and has items in it that should keep the "but I've been paying SS for 40+ years, you owe me a check" crowd happy (though AARP seems to not care).