Clinton W. Taylor, who heroically brought some closure to the whole Syrian flyers issue a few months back, now takes opponents of the drug war who are backing John Kerry out to the woodshed, citing his "continuing record as a drug warrior."

Unlike Vietnam, this is a war he has not yet repudiated. National-security adviser to the Kerry campaign -- and a likely Kerry Cabinet appointee -- is Rand Beers, formerly assistant secretary of State for Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, whose own record includes an aggressive pursuit of drug traffickers in Latin America.

All this may come as a shock to the psychotropic propagandists at High Times, who endorsed Kerry on October 15, noting that "In the 1980's, John Kerry exposed the hypocrisy of these Drug Warriors...[H]e headed an investigation that turned up extensive evidence of drug deals involving the CIA and the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, evidence that pointed directly to the drugs-for-arms-for-hostages scheme at the heart of the Iran Contra Scandal." (Actually, both a subsequent CIA investigation and an independent Justice Department investigation confirmed that despite Kerry's sinister intimations, the Contra drug trade was no CIA "scheme," but an intelligence failure.)

High Times misses the point: If they are looking to scapegoat a politician for what they perceive as a mistake in internationalizing the drug war, John Kerry is their man. His report recommends: "While the United States must continue to develop and implement a strategy for interdiction, the most significant portion of the federal effort should focus on denying the drug cartels comfortable foreign havens where they are protected by private armies and corrupt government officials."

Sounds suspiciously like the Bush Doctrine, but for drug cartels instead of for terrorists.

This piece seems the logical spawn of a Salon piece on Kerry's 80s-era investigation of Nicaraguan Contra links to drug traffickers we reported on earlier this week.

For more on alleged drug-policy differences between the incumbent and his main challenger, check out here, here, here and here.