Baby formula funding terrorists?

Forget about narco-terrorism, evidence acquired over the last four years would suggest that the real black market money financing terrorist cells comes from baby formula. Sad but true. While your government, through the lamebrained ONDCP ad campaign, is busy spending millions trying to convince you that every kid who smokes a joint is putting a bomb in a terrorist's hand, the results of four years worth of federal investigation are being ignored.

In the nearly four years since 9/11, police have uncovered and dismantled a growing number of regional and national theft rings specializing in shoplifted infant formula, over-the-counter medicines, and personal-care products. At least eight of the major baby-formula cases have involved "fences" who are of Middle Eastern descent or who have ties to that region, according to a Monitor review of congressional testimony, news accounts, and a study by the National Retail Federation released Tuesday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has traced money from these infant-formula traffickers back to nations where terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hizbullah, are active, investigators say. Then, the trail usually goes cold. Once funds enter such countries, there's often no way to track them.

Funny they don't have any trouble "identifying" the nexus between drug money and terrorists though, or at least that's how they justify spending billions on eradication efforts. Is that money supposed to be easier to trace than an illegal market for legal goods? Also, unlike the drug trade, officials of all stripes tend to discount the connection.

"Just because you have an infant- formula operation doesn't mean it's a terror funding operation," says Sergeant Jezierski. "We've heard that speculation, but we're not aware of a direct connection," says a spokesperson for a trade association that represents infant formula manufacturers in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington calls the claims irresponsible.

It makes perfect sense to me that any group wishing to make black market money would be willing to embrace the baby formula market. It's almost as high profit as drugs and there's less law enforcement devoted to this crime. However, whether you believe there's a connection or not, that formula theft is a growing problem for retailers can't be denied.

Although the FBI has also deployed teams nationwide to crack down on organized retail theft, some investigators say the problem is growing - and moving onto the Internet. On Monday, the online auction house eBay carried more than 1,000 offers of Enfamil baby formula. "This problem is getting worse, no question," Miller says. "It is in every state in the union, and neither law enforcement nor the retailers have their arms around it."

Maybe if they weren't spending so much of their resources on persecuting marijuana consumers, the feds would be a little more successful in solving real crimes.