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Three big stories in today's NYT, both showing how our current approach to the "war on terror" is disastrous.

Fist, to Afghanistan:

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.

He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad news” for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.

He said the increase in cultivation was fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up their attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they worked to expand their opium operations.

“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing[...]

The increase in cultivation was mainly because of the strength of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan, which has left whole districts outside of government control, and the continuing impunity of everyone involved, from the farmers and traffickers to corrupt police and government officials, he said.

Isn't it comforting to know that the Taliban, one of the groups that helped significantly in the 9/11 plot, now has a nearly unlimited supply of funds? I thought one of the points of the war on terror was to cut off their funding, not allow them to develop new sources.

Second, we've got this story about the administration's efforts to protect us here at home:

Citing unexpected reliability problems, the Transportation Security Administration is suspending installation of the only airport checkpoint device that automatically screens passengers for hidden explosives.

The rollout of the devices, trace-detection portals, nicknamed puffers because they blow air while searching for explosives residue, had already been far behind schedule. Now the transportation agency is assessing whether to modify the puffers, upgrade them or wait until better devices are available.

“We are seeing some issues that we did not anticipate,” Randy Null, the agency’s chief technology officer, said last week.

The portal problems are part of a pattern in which the federal government has been unable to move bomb-detection technologies from the laboratory to the airport successfully. While workers at the Homeland Security Department laboratory here busily build bombs to test the cutting-edge equipment, the agency still relies largely on decidedly low-tech measures to confront the threat posed by explosives at airports, particularly at checkpoints.

Members of Congress and former domestic security officials blame poor management for stumbles in research, turf fights, staff turnover and underfinancing. Some initiatives have also faced opposition from the airlines or been slowed by bureaucratic snarls. Among the troubled or delayed efforts are the following:

¶The agency conducted tests last year that members of Congress and a former Homeland Security Department official called “disastrous” and “stupid” because they did not test the smaller, cheaper baggage-screening device in the way that it was intended to be used.

¶After spending years assessing a document scanner that would look for traces of explosives on paper held by a passenger, the agency now realizes it may be preferable to check a passenger’s hands. But no plan is in place to do so.

¶The agency gave grant money to an equipment maker to find a way to speed up explosives-detection machines that screen baggage and to reduce the frequency of false positives. Though the work was completed successfully a year ago, the agency has not made the necessary software upgrades on the hundreds of machines already in the nation’s airports.

So the Taliban provides aid and comfort to bin Laden, and 5 years later they're back with a vengeance. Bin Laden uses airplanes to attack us, to in the president's words "bring war to our shores," and 5 years later we can't even properly inspect our aircraft for bombs.

And then, this:

Standing in an empty Miami warehouse on May 24 with a man he believed had ties to Osama bin Laden, a dejected Narseal Batiste talked of the setbacks to their terrorist plot and then uttered the words that helped put him in a federal prison cell.

"I want to fight some jihad," he allegedly said. "That's all I live for."

What Batiste did not know was that the bin Laden representative was really an FBI informant. The warehouse in which they were meeting had been rented and wired for sound and video by bureau agents, who were monitoring his every word.

Within a month, Batiste, 32, and six of his compatriots were arrested and charged with conspiracy to aid a terrorist organization and bomb a federal building. On June 23, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales held a news conference to announce the destruction of a terrorist cell inside the United States, hailing "our commitment to preventing terrorism through energetic law enforcement efforts aimed at detecting and thwarting terrorist acts."

But court records released since then suggest that what Gonzales described as a "deadly plot" was virtually the pipe dream of a few men with almost no ability to pull it off on their own. The suspects have raised questions in court about the FBI informants' role in keeping the plan alive[...]

But lawyers for the defendants have raised questions about where a government sting ends and entrapment begins. Not only did government informants provide money and a meeting place for Batiste and his followers, but they also gave them video cameras for conducting surveillance, as well as cellphones, and suggested that their first target be a Miami FBI office, court records show.

At the hearing, Batiste's attorney, John Wylie, showed that the FBI's investigation found no evidence that his client had met with any real terrorist, received e-mails or wire transfers from the Middle East, possessed any al-Qaeda literature, or had even a picture of bin Laden.

I understand the need for aggressive law enforcement, but this is both sad and ridiculous. The FBI gave him the money, the equipment, and a target; they even formally sweared him in to al Qaeda. Worse, when he was left to plan on his own he talked about training his men in the use of bows and arrows. It took the FBI's help to get him to talk about the use of more lethal force. What did he actually do on his own? Not including, of course, his constitutionally protected right to speak.

Remember, this was touted by Attorney General Gonzales as a major victory in the war on terror. Because apparently, although the Taliban might be resurgent in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda might still be able to smuggle a bomb onto a plane, you can rest assured knowing that the Sears Tower won't be attacked by bow and arrow wielding, FBI assisted men anytime soon.

Congratulations, America! You are now officially safer!

UPDATE: One more for you today, via TPM:

The Pakistani regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been negotiating truces - with the Bush administration's encouragement - with Islamic separatists in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, mountainous tribal areas along the Afghan border where U.S. officials think bin Laden may be hiding.

In return, Pakistani officials are promising to restrict the country's troops in the area to major bases and towns and to pour huge amounts of aid - much of it from the United States and other nations - into the destitute region, according to American officials.

But as the truces take hold, separatists have been crossing into Afghanistan to fight alongside Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, according to Western and Afghan officials[...]

The separatists and the Taliban are Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal region. It's unclear whether the flow is an unintended consequence of the truces or is being ignored - or encouraged - by Musharraf's regime as part of the price for peace with the separatists.

Pakistan, which backed the Taliban before Sept. 11, says it's doing its best to seal the frontier of towering mountains and isolated valleys and denies that it's resumed support for its former clients[...]

"What's pretty clear is that a subtext" of the truces is that the Islamic rebels in Waziristan "have a free hand across the border," he said, adding that al-Qaida fighters who've backed the separatists also are crossing into Afghanistan.

"It points to a real probability of even higher levels of violence" in Afghanistan, he said.

Isn't this administration just grand?