Two comments and a prediction...

...about the following item.

Two Arab sailing boats carrying illegal drugs possibly linked to al-Qaeda have been seized in the northern Arabian Sea, the United States Navy says.

The drugs on the wooden dhows included heroin with a street value of at least $3m, it said in a statement. ...

On Friday, the navy said the USS Decatur had seized almost two tons of hashish valued at up to $10m aboard a boat near the Straits of Hormuz.

Of the 12 people detained in that operation, the US believes three have links to al-Qaeda.

"We are investigating potential al-Qaeda connections to these operations," Rear Admiral Jim Stavridis from the US Navy said on Saturday.

Smuggling routes in the region are known to be used by al-Qaeda, says the US military - which describes the seizures as "a vital part of winning the global war on terror".

First comment: Back in the old days, when the drug menace about to overrun all civilization was pot-smoking, LSD-crazed hippie weirdos, police would routinely double or triple the actual street value of any drugs they seized in raids, the better to create a sense both of peril and success. (Or more: I recall one article - it was from the August 20, 1968 New York Daily News, to be exact - which gave a value to a certain haul of pills which worked out to valuing them at just over $34 each. The actual street value was no more than $2 each and for some kinds of pills as little as 20 cents. In early 1970, an article in the now-defunct Newark (NJ) News had police valuing a haul of 10 pounds of marijuana at $70,000, or $7,000 a pound.) Frankly, I doubt much has changed on that score now that the drug menace about to overrun all civilization is fanatic Islamic narco-terrorists. So I regard the numbers with a good deal of suspicion.

Second comment: Of 12 people grabbed, the US "believes" three - one-quarter of them - have al-Qaeda "links." Not only does this mean that three-quarters of the people arrested aren't even suspected of a connection to al-Qaeda, but even in the case of the three it's "possible" links, "potential" connections. (By the way, just what does "links" mean? How distant and tenuous can a connection be and still qualify as a "link?" Certainly, experience to date reveals no hesitation on the part of the US to make the most dramatic reach from the most limited of evidence.) Yet in the very next sentence, this is "a vital part in winning the global war on terror." Suspicion - and vaguely-defined suspicion at that - now slides right into established fact. The spin machine is revving up.

Which leads to the prediction: Don't be surprised if a push for more draconian drug laws coupled with more invasive police powers are presented as a matter of national security, marking opposition to them as unpatriotic, un-American, and even "objectively pro-terrorist."