It's not only the hub for supplying the troops in Iraq with supplies, it's also the major hub for opium coming out of Afghanistan, to be shipped to Europe and the US. But this isn't something new. Walter Duraney, who was the New York Times correspondent in Moscow during the 1930's, was telling the people in the West that everything in the USSR was just paradise. In the meantime, Stalin stole all the grain from Ukrainian farmers, and actually exported most, if not all of it. Result: Over 5 million Ukrainian starved to death. Both of these incidents took place because the government had taken away firearms,that could have been used to stop these genocides.