A jaw-dropper

When it comes to the war on drugs, here are two awfully good reasons not to be a supply-sider:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The CIA obstructed inquiries into its role in the shooting down of an aircraft carrying a family of U.S. missionaries in Peru in 2001, the agency’s inspector general has concluded.

The inspector-general’s report said a CIA-backed program in Peru targeting drug runners was so poorly run that many suspect aircraft were shot down by Peruvian air force jets without proper checks being made first.

Unclassified portions of the report were made public for the first time on Thursday by U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, who criticized the CIA for the “needless” deaths.

These ludicrous policies got started in Clinton’s second term, when he brought Barry McCaffrey out of retirement to become the new drug czar, and apparently the Bush administration continued them. Unless the plane had been on the outskirts of a major population center, and there was good reason to believe it had weapons of mass destruction on board, there’s simply no excuse for something like this.