Tom Burghardt: Drugs, Guns and Nukes, Iran as the New "Dope"

As Israel, the United States and their NATO allies set their sights on the "prize,"Iran's vast petrochemical wealth, multiple themes have been floated by corporate media to make the case for war. Since the 1980's, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and now, according to the Treasury Department, Iran's alleged links to global narco-trafficking networks have all been evoked as clarion calls for "regime change". It would serve us well however, to explore the recent history of the secret state's reliance upon the illicit trade, and how such alliances advance America's wider geopolitical goals. In the 1980s, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and now, according to the Treasury Department, Iran's alleged links to global narco-trafficing networks have all been evoked as clarion calls for "regime change."It would serve us well, however, to explore the recent history of the secret state's reliance upon the illicit trade and how such dalliances advance America's wider geopolitical goals. In the 1980s, it was the Sandinistas and "Castro-Communism" who did nicely for the Reagan administration. As money and weapons flowed to "our boys," the Contras, they repaid the favor by massacring Nicaraguans by the tens of thousands for Uncle Sam, while generously providing cocaine by the ton, to party-happy Americans during that "go-go" decade. Indeed, when Columbia drug lords Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar began their profitable partnership, they did so alongside dope-dealing Bolivian fascists and Argentine neo-Nazi generals with long-standing ties to the CIA. As Consortium News revealed: "The putsch, which became known as the Cocaine Coup, installed Luis Meza and other drug-connected military officers who promptly turned Bolivia into South America's first modern narco-state. The secure supply of Bolivian cocaine was important to the development of the Medellin cartel in the early 1980s."