Wow, good find on the bride story. Thanks.

Dressed in a gray suit with an American flag pin in his lapel, then-Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the modest two-lane span that U.S. taxpayers paid for would be “a critical transit route for trade and commerce” between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It’s paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe.’

* * *

Meanwhile, in the New Europe(OT),
‘Underworld figures facing charges of racketeering, embezzlement and worse have found a novel way to escape jail in Europe’s most corrupt country: they are running for parliament.

Some of Bulgaria’s best-known alleged mobsters have been let out of custody to campaign in the general election on Sunday under a legal loophole that gives immunity from prosecution to MPs and candidates. Those in the running include the Galev brothers – two reputed gangsters accused of running a southwestern town for years through their police and judicial contacts – as well as Ivan Ivanov, one of nine defendants in a fraud case involving EUR 7,5 M of farm aid from the EU. The case was supposed to be a showpiece trial to prove that judicial reforms were working in a country that was allowed into the EU in 2007, despite deep concerns about judicial independence and its backlog of more than a hundred unsolved contract killings.’

Colourful stuff, albeit on a puny scale next to, say, ‘Shoggoth’ Cheney
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=105302

Finally, it is important to remember that nations are only fictions to accomplish certain task, and that said fictions are becoming less important as others rise in importance. There has historically been a lot of collaboration between the U.S. and Russia, such as when they allied with Iraq against Iran, which also borders Russia.