I know! You don’t see a headline like that every day, eh?
It seems that, like many another battle-scarred force before them, the Taliban has begun to take refuge in marijuana.
Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet (three metre) high marijuana plants.
General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defence staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.
It’s called the Mystery Machine, and they just forgot to run it through the car wash after investigating the haunted commune near Nelson, okay?
Actually, I’m just loving the idea that the Canadian DND purchasing department may soon be placing bale orders for the stuff to camouflage the armored vehicles. Who needs depleted uranium and kevlar when your APC is wrapped in a thick layer of BC Bud and Kandahar Candu, eh?
And, no doubt, a dense cloud of smoke.
“We tried burning them with white phosphorous — it didn’t work. We tried burning them with diesel — it didn’t work. The plants are so full of water right now … that we simply couldn’t burn them,” he said.
Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.
“A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action,” Hiller said dryly.
One soldier told him later: “Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I’d say ‘That damn marijuana’.”
raincoaster 
At 14 I saw my first joint: the guy who rolled it pulled it from a green garbage bag stuffed with pot that he kept under his sofa. It was rolled in newsprint cut from a roll-end. Needless to say, I was very disappointed by my second joint.
I actually smoked my first joint around 21, some nine months after joining a uniformed service.
A “confidential lifestyle survey” of the Forces, done about 1997 yielded 2 wonderful facts. The first, loudly trumpeted by the brass hats, was that the rate of recreational drug use was about 3%–about half the rate in the general population.
The second, less widely publicized, was that about 80% of respondents had no faith in the confidentiality of the questionnaire.
For obvious reasons.
Blabbermouth.
Well it’s hardly classified information. Unlike, for example, the cost of the G-Wagon, or whether in fact Canadian commandos fought in WWII:
Whew! They classified that one just in time, eh?
WHAT, there were Canadians in WWII??? Stop the fucking presses!
Psst. SUR! General Hiller, SUR! You know how you thought the men were a bit stressed? Weeeell, if we were to, like, fire up some phosphorous, man………..
STB
Its the real thing, Toke.
I’d like to see a consumer report on Kandahar Candu vs BC Bud. Surely there are some in the field (so to speak) who have extensive expertise.
Great work with this one, nicelly done!