George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 275

< 274 >

“Is this the truth?”

The report from the CIA left Bush perplexed. He had believed that even if they couldn’t stop drug production, they could at least control drug consumption. He honestly thought that maintaining the current level would be enough to manage the drug problem to some extent.

To be precise, he believed that reducing the wealth gap and improving the economy without significantly changing the current drug policy would decrease consumption. Simply put, he had no intention of meddling further with drug policies or anything related to them.

However, information brought by a CIA agent stationed in Brazil presented Bush with a considerable dilemma.

“It’s entirely true. It has already undergone multiple cross-validations within the CIA. The probability of any flaws in this information is astronomically low.”

This was not good. It was a truly strange sight. George W. Bush, known for his reckless handling of matters, was at a loss and floundering.

“I wish it were like Afghanistan.”

If it were Afghanistan, they could simply eliminate the cause itself. The reason for cultivating drugs was the high profits, and the reason for using drugs was addiction.

So, with what is known as ‘throwing money around,’ they could find the cultivation sites, burn them all down, stabilize the economy, and then find all the drug addicts and lock them up in prison.

The reason for imprisoning all the addicts was that most of the drug users in Afghanistan were somehow connected to the Taliban. At the time, there were very few drug addicts not associated with the Taliban.

Anyway, the reason Bush was struggling was that it was already too late to take action.

The damn drugs were already spreading within the United States. In a way, they had already lost the war on drugs before it even started. To be honest, there wasn’t even a war to speak of. But as long as drugs were illegal, wouldn’t condoning it disqualify him as president?

Yet, trying to track them all down was not easy in this land of freedom. They could easily catch and jail those who foolishly posted drug party scenes on social media, but how could they capture those who were secretly enjoying drugs in places where even radio waves couldn’t reach them?

Even catching the dealers was difficult this time. A sudden raid might have been better, but the massive busts in Brazil and Colombia made them wary.

Moreover, the major cartels in South America, the main production area, were scattering drugs in an attempt to protect themselves, causing them to be sold at unbelievably low prices in the United States, which greatly troubled Bush. With the prices so low, the means of access increased, leading to the creation of many drug addicts regardless of poverty.

This was especially prevalent among teenagers, similar to cigarettes. They were getting their hands on marijuana out of curiosity or a desire to show off. It would be fortunate if they stopped at marijuana, but they were increasingly moving on to methamphetamine and other drugs, driving everyone crazy.

This was not a problem that could be solved simply by deploying more police.

And what was truly amusing was that the gangs and criminals were greatly intimidated by the police, who were unusually eager to crack down. This phenomenon was particularly noticeable in Detroit, which was experiencing its most peaceful period in history since it had become a mess.

“The process of smuggling the drugs is also quite a spectacle.”

What process would one have to go through to crack down on drug smuggling? Not a complicated procedure, but a matter of principle.

Unless it was a truly secret route, most smuggling occurred via air or sea. There was a legendary smuggling method of crossing the border through tunnels, but that was impossible in the current United States.

Among these, airport security had become dozens of times more complex due to 9/11, blocking the air route, and most sea routes were also blocked. However, to smuggle large quantities, they had no choice but to secretly bring them in through regular routes, but unfortunately for them, all sorts of new technologies were being introduced, leading to them being caught in inspections.

Of course, they couldn’t stop the small amounts that were smuggled in with great effort, but at least they were arresting and imprisoning all the large-scale smuggling operations.

But if the people who were supposed to be arresting them were in cahoots with the smugglers, the story would be different.

This incident occurred via the sea route. The senders made the goods in ‘paper’ form, disguised them as books, and brought them in through containers. What was truly infuriating was that the books were actually ordered by a large bookstore in the country.

It was questionable why paper drugs, a new technology that wouldn’t appear until much later, had emerged so early, but it was even more questionable how the ordered goods had been intercepted and replaced with drug books.

This was also revealed after reading the report slowly. The order itself was quite normal, but the truck driver transporting it to the bookstore was originally affiliated with the other side.

So, the goods were easily delivered into the hands of the dealers, and the books were cut into bite-sized pieces and scattered throughout the United States, leaving enormous profits. There were so many that no matter how much they cracked down, they kept popping up endlessly.

The only consolation in this damn problem was that the enormous profits had not yet entered Colombia.

It seemed they had calculated in cash due to the nature of the transaction, but the timing coincided with the events in Colombia, making it difficult to take the cash anywhere.

Even if they tried to send it in installments, the amount was too large to send easily. It wasn’t so much that the CIA or DEA were incompetent, but rather that they had become too cunning.

That was because if Bush hadn’t known about paper drugs, he would have surely scolded the CIA again, asking what kind of nonsense this was.

Of course, it was truly regrettable that they hadn’t properly found out about the information in advance, but it seemed that very few people within Brazil knew about the technology.

‘A genius buried in history? Or did the person who developed it in the original history develop it early?’

It didn’t matter which. The problem was the drugs that had been spread domestically. The amount that had come in was at a level that the current police force could not possibly recover.

To summarize: paper book drugs were imported legitimately as real books through the Brazil-Colombia sea route, and in the process of entering the United States, where they had to be inspected, there was a secret collusion between a few corrupt port employees and the police force that was supposed to be arresting them.

The drug business in Brazil itself was a coalition of a small number of organizations, and the work progressed at an abnormally fast pace. Although not yet revealed, the CIA suspects that there was protection from the Brazilian government.

Later, a CIA agent in Brazil belatedly brought information, and in the process of extracting it, they realized that the transaction had already been completed. The reason why they had armed hundreds of people to catch one agent was also revealed at this time; they seemed to have thought that the agent was a hostile organization that had come to spy, not affiliated with the CIA or DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration].

‘The goods have gone out, but the money hasn’t come in, so they must be going crazy. Moreover, information that the DEA was landing was leaked while they were all on edge, so they must have been suspecting each other.’

It wouldn’t be to the point where the organization was on the verge of collapse, but the bosses and high-ranking officials in Brazil, not to mention the lower ranks, were quite disappointed with the fact that the results of the investment had come out, but the investment funds were not returning.

‘They must have been so disappointed that they suddenly started beating up innocent Colombian rebels. Of course, I can’t say that the Brazilian cartels with their eyes rolled back weren’t scary at all, but perhaps this was the best they could do from their perspective.’

The Colombian rebels were also scary, but fortunately or unfortunately, they did not wield much power within Brazil. To be precise, they had not deeply infiltrated, and since the Colombian government was putting pressure on them, they had no time to pay attention to Brazil.

However, this was the whole story, and what was important here was the response of the federal government and the president who learned the whole story.

“Chief of Staff, what do you think of this?”

“Is there anything to think about at length? We just need to respond according to the manual. Hollywood movies and novels portray the manual as a collection of tradition, conservatism, and incompetence, but you know better than anyone that it is the culmination of effort and experience created by the world’s best administrative power, don’t you?”

That’s right. The average person finds even the phone manual boring, so it would be no different for the government manual, but why would they spend a huge budget to create a manual if they didn’t intend to follow it? Regardless of East or West, there is always a reason for consistently investing money in that field.

“It would be a problem if it’s too rigid, though. Is it time to respond decisively this time?”

Even without that, he had to hear the stories he had been hearing from NASA later in a separate report because of this damn thing. He was wondering why the report was so unusually ‘thick,’ but he didn’t think it was strange since he thought he had gotten back as much as he had invested.

‘NASA has always produced things that look like they came out of SF [science fiction], even when the budget was reduced like crazy.’

Solar-powered rockets, bio-nano batteries, and so on. The list goes on and on. It was true that NASA was past its prime compared to the Cold War era, but it could not be denied that some of the things that advanced humanity in modern times came from NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration].

Fortunately, the Star Wars series was released just in time for the decision to increase NASA’s budget in 2002, so he received quite a bit of help from Star Wars. He just hoped that this would continue in 2005. Bush remembered that the next series was released around May. He wasn’t very interested in the movie itself, but he had to use what he could.

‘What’s important now is not space, but the country. The country. I think I know why past presidents and the federal government were so eager to cut NASA’s budget.’

But now, the very reason that he is actively supporting NASA has already become part of this high approval rating. He couldn’t rashly cut or cancel NASA’s budget.

And Bush had no intention of cutting NASA’s budget. It was just that he felt like he knew why.

“Mobilize the police force. Tell them to respond classically.”