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’.”