While my last post is still smouldering, here’s another news story to add to your stash… CNN is reporting that Canadian troops in Afghanistan have run into a new menace: Pot! Specifically, impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall, which the Taliban are using for cover. The problem is that the plants are well watered, meaning they absorb energy and heat very readily, making them very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices. Not that the Canadian army hasn’t tried. According to General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, “We tried burning them with white phosphorous — it didn’t work. We tried burning them with diesel — it didn’t work. The plants are so full of water right now … that we simply couldn’t burn them”.
Of course, if they do succeed in burning them (now don’t get ahead [heh, heh, I said head] of me here), there are drawbacks. As Hillier noted, “A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those [forests] did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action”.
Well, I guess that means we can’t make jokes about the Canadian Army going to pot… or flipping their lid… oh, the puns just write themselves…
