Word: raab
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...Since the election, I've heard virtually nothing from the powers that be about the war on drugs," Von Raab protests. "On occasion there is a ceremonial session in which some official talks to us for ten minutes, but as a practical matter, we have been becalmed for a year now. No initiatives, no bold strokes...
...Raab admits that he and Brady have never got along. Brady, he says, has treated the drug issue as a "bother" and has hardly discussed it with him. A spokesman for Brady counters that "Mr. Von Raab's judgment may be affected by the decision to appoint a new Customs commissioner...
...Raab acknowledges that his agency has not made a dent in the U.S. drug supply, despite some record-breaking seizures. He contends that interdiction and domestic enforcement are doomed to fail as long as the international market is glutted with cocaine, marijuana and heroin. "We're not using any diplomatic energies of consequence to try to put pressure on the producer and transshipping countries," he complains...
...letter to Bush, Von Raab targets the foreign policy establishment for special scorn: "Maybe it is time for the war on drugs to take its place as our nation's top priority, to interfere with banking interests and Third World debt schemes. Time to interfere with State Department bureaucrats' quest to make the world safe for cocktail parties." State Department officials call Von Raab a "loose cannon" who lacks "a certain rationality." He responds . in kind, calling his Foggy Bottom critics "wimps . . . conscientious objectors in the war on drugs...
Some of Von Raab's positions are extreme by any standard. He told TIME that he would support sending U.S. troops to Latin America to clean out the Medellin cocaine cartel -- preferably with the Colombian government's permission but without it if necessary. "People talk about sovereignty," says Von Raab, "but what about our sovereignty? They are chemical-weapons factories. They fly poison out and drop it on shopping malls...