OFFICIAL: TALIBAN BETTER FINANCED THAN AL-QAIDA

The Taliban are in much stronger financial shape than al-Qaida and rely on a wide range of criminal activities to pay for attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, a senior Treasury Department official said Monday. David Cohen, the department’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, said the extremist group extorts money from poppy farmers and heroin traffickers involved in Afghanistan’s booming drug trade.* The Taliban also demand protection payments from legitimate Afghan businesses, he said during a speech at a conference on money laundering enforcement.

Cohen’s assessment came as President Barack Obama and his top advisers discuss whether many more troops may be needed in the 8-year-old Afghanistan conflict. A critical part of the deliberations is whether the fight should be a more narrow one against al-Qaida or a broader battle against the Taliban-led insurgency.

What the “Since there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, we might as well bring democracy to Iraq” lie was for Bush, “It’s the Taliban, not al-Qaida” is now the “let’s change our reason for murdering innocent people” lie for Obama—since obviously the U.S. Government has never found alleged 9/11 perpetrator Osama bin-Laden or slowed down al-Qaida in eight years.

Anything so that banksters and the military-industrial complex can make more fiat currency—er, I mean dollars. And the GUNvernment can put more fear into (and have more control of) the lives of the sheeple.
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*Of course, from a Libertarian prospective, first the government creates a major problem by outlawing something that shouldn’t be outlawed, then the government has to fight the “criminal” class that it itself created.

UPDATE: Nick DelMedico sent this article in The American Conservative that shows another possible source of the Taliban’s money:

HOW AMERICAN TAXPAYER DOLLARS ARE BEING USED TO FUND OUR AFGHAN ENEMIES

Forget opium poppies for a moment. The Taliban has another huge source of revenue, worth up to $1 billion a year, which generously supplements its heroin-trafficking income and the cash-flow from rich oil sheiks in the Persian Gulf.

This money comes from you.

The allegation that millions of dollars of U.S aid and military funds have been siphoned off by the Taliban through elaborate extortion rackets is not something government officials readily discuss. But the departing head of the Army Corps of Engineers recently conceded that there was little his agency could do to stop it, and the U.S. State Department launched an investigation after reports of the scandal finally penetrated the mainstream news.

The Pentagon did not respond to TAC’s inquiries about charges that local contractors who deliver supplies and equipment to remote NATO bases in Afghanistan are charging Western governments “protection money” to pay off the Taliban, or Taliban-connected middlemen, to protect convoys along dangerous overland supply routes. Yet a growing consensus supports a fearsome prospect: U.S. taxpayers are funding the enemy.