Winning hearts and... manhoods?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28389048/

Mwahaha, the CIA returning to it's old habit of peddling drugs?

You got to give credit to the guy who thought it up and dared to risk making the suggestion. I hope it's as effective as the report claims it is. You just don't get the same results with handing out chocolates, cigarettes and pantyhose these days.

[gunnergoz]

It's an improvement over waterboarding 'em. I'll take progress any way we can get it.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Oh, I don't know. Those younger wives might turn out to have been 9, 11, 12 and 14.

[Merkin Muffley]

Well I hope they were subtle about it and didn't give it the hard sell.

[orwell]

I didn't expect the bayonet to make a return to the battlefield, let alone a fleshy one.

[gunnergoz]

Wait until the liberal journalists get a hold of this one! Thanks to the Bush administration moralist policies, US aid and relief agencies all over the third world for years have been promulgating sexual abstinence as the answer to global overpopulation and STD's. And here, your friendly American CIA Spook down the road is now giving away Viagra to encourage village males to indulge in wild orgies in the mountains...no wonder they talk about US hypocrisy! With us sending a mixed message like this, who would ever take us seriously?

But chill, its all part of the plan.

See, what the journalists don't know is that this Viagra distribution program is targeted to regions with large populations of sheep...

[Bigduke6]

Lame, and distressing.

If this is the propaganda the CIA is handing the US general public, and expecting the US general public actually to buy, how well can the actual hearts and minds war be going?

The idea that you cannot influence Pathan tribesmen with cash is ludicrous, and the idea that Pathan headsmen would prefer infidel sex pills to cash is only slightly less ridiculous.

This is one of the stupidest stories to come down the pike for a while, and, except in the most general terms, I don't buy it.

Ok, maybe a few Pathan tribesmen are getting bought off with US visas (which if true is maybe not the brightest of CIA ideas - do we really want these people in the US). But viagra? To the elder leaders of the more obsreperous and therefore religiously conservative Pathan tribes?

Nope, I don't believe it. It's just silly.

My guess, what happened here is a CIA press person talked to a Washington Post reporter - probably over lunch in Georgetown - and whatever modest facts that started out this goofy report got inflated by some powerful imaginations and a public hunger for some good news so powerful, it seems able to accept any fantasy quite uncritically.

[Lars]

Original story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/25/AR2008122500931.html?hpid=topnews

Seems plausible, although as you say Bigduke, a bit sensationalist, which is no doubt why they published it. Americans love sex too.

Your concerns about the conservatism of the elders are addressed on page two, btw.

And yes, it does say "According to the retired operative who was there..."

[John Kettler]

Well, there's the notorious Spanish language birth control pamphlet the U.S. produced and distributed in Central and South America some years ago. It caused a religious and political firestorm with it's "prayer" "Virgin conceived without sin, help me to sin without conceiving!" Given that gaffe, pretty much anything's possible.

Regards,

John Kettler