Mmmmmmmmmmmmnotsomuch. I mean, the Bush Administration flew envoys from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to Washington in early September 2001 to recognize their achievements in eliminating poppy production. That poppy production skyrocketed as soon as the Taliban were assed out. And yeah - a farmer in Afghanistan can make something like $5 an acre from corn or wheat or $5k an acre from opium. But the CIA don't need heroin money. The black budget given the CIA is something like 10 times what they're apportioned by congress. They've got one of the world's largest air forces - I believe they're flying more drones than the Marines have planes. But even when Ollie North was playing games with the Mullahs and cocaine, the war in Afghanistan was ten times as much money and entirely above the board. The prevalence of heroin in the United States is due to the massive crackdown against meth, just like the prevalence of meth in the United States was due to the massive crackdown against quaaludes. Hells yeah - heroin was harder to get back when the Taliban was beheading farmers. But the Narcos will sell whatever people will buy and market forces are favoring smack right now.
I'll add to what you said by also saying that I generally don't trust articles that say "Conspiracy Fact" as a term (if it's fact, it's fact), and then use phrases like the following: I mean, that's a mouthful to simply reference another news source then to have them be a part of the conspiracy as well... I really don't understand the conspiracy mindset. Being schizoaffective I've met a lot of fellow schizophrenics and most are not very conspiratorial. A large majority of schizophrenics are a little too occupied trying to deal with their symptoms, their medications, staying calm, and simply feeding themselves in general. Money is a huge problem, and even handling and understanding the social security system is hard not because it's a difficult process but just because of the disorganization of thoughts that prevents learning and understanding or in some cases is just too distracting. Generally people might have outbursts or temporary flights of conspiratorial ideas, but they are either very temporary in a social setting and you immediately withdraw from that social setting, or they are very specific to your own life that tying together ideas from this mesh of external entities generally isn't the "plot". Conspiracy nutjobs are generally fairly sane people, just morons who choose to go down this path of basically everything that we are trying to dig ourselves out from, yet never actually reaching it. I don't really know why.The main-stream media (MSM) establishment mouthpiece The Washington Post admitted
The best take on conspiracy nutjobs I've seen is Jon Ronson's "Them: Adventures with Extremists" which came out of his BBC series, "The Secret Rulers of the World." He gives you a great, credulous, "what the hell are they thinking" perspective on any number of nutters while making them human and giving you an insight into the nugget of truth that drives them. I'll say this - I feel a whole lot more sympathetic towards both Randy Weaver and the Bilderberg Group.