WAR ON DRUGS TAKES BACKSEAT TO OTHER CONFLICTS

Military Had Been Key In Finding Traffickers

Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.
military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving
significant gaps in U.S. anti-narcotics efforts.

Since 1989, Congress has directed the Pentagon to lead the detection
by air and sea of illegal drugs headed to the United States and to
support the Coast Guard in catching them.

But since 2002, the military has withdrawn many of those assets,
according to more than a dozen current and former counter-narcotics
officials, as well as a review of congressional, military and
Homeland Security documents.

Internal records show that in the last four years, the Pentagon has
reduced by more than 62 percent its flight hours over Caribbean and
Pacific Ocean routes used to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and Colombian
heroin. The Navy is deploying one-third fewer patrol boats.

The Department of Defense defended its policy shift in a budget
document for Congress in October: "The DOD position is that detecting
drug trafficking is a lower priority than supporting our service
members on ongoing combat missions." Members of Congress and
drug-control officials have said the cuts have hamstrung anti-drug
efforts at a time when about 1,000 metric tons of cheap, high-quality
cocaine are entering the country each year.

In the budget report, the Pentagon estimated that it detected only 22
percent of the "actionable maritime events" in fiscal 2006 because it
"lacks the optimal number of assets." Even when they found suspected
smuggling vessels, authorities had to let one in every five go
because they lacked the resources to chase them.

"We have not stopped trying to fix that gap. We're very much
concerned about it, and working very hard to try and fix these
problems," said Edward Frothingham, acting deputy assistant defense
secretary for counter-narcotics. "But in the post-9/11 world, some of
these assets are needed elsewhere."

The cutbacks continue even though the Pentagon has classified the
anti-drug effort as part of the war on terrorism, citing intelligence
showing ties among terrorists, drug dealers and organized crime.

"In the post-9/11 world, where both securing and detecting threats to
our nation's borders have become critical national security
objectives, we cannot continue to neglect the fact that
narco-traffickers are breaching our borders on a daily basis," said a
report issued last month by the House Oversight and Government Reform
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources.

At a 2005 hearing before another House subcommittee, Rep. Dan Burton,
an Indiana Republican, said the lack of military assets and the
amount of drugs getting through "just boggled my mind."

"The spike in narcotics shipments via Central America we ignore at
our own peril," said Burton, who at the time was chairman of the
international relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. "They
could be carrying weapons, terrorists and other things that could
destroy not only the youth of America, but American cities."