Related: Drug Money Saving Banks
Drug War a Cover For North American Union
Mexico is already there:
"A city under military occupation"
"Mexico’s drug offensive stirs up ‘wasp nest’; Concern grows over increased military presence" by Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times | July 19, 2009
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The bullet-scarred border city that is the emblem of Mexico’s drug-war mayhem.
Riding in a Ford pickup with five gun-toting soldiers, he pulls over suspicious-looking cars, sets up impromptu roadblocks to search for drugs and weapons, and tends to the nuisance calls that make up a police officer’s life: robberies, street fights, fender benders.
Ciudad Juarez resembles a city under military occupation as President Felipe Calderón ratchets up his war against drug traffickers. Calderón launched the military offensive 10 days after assuming office in December 2006, saying it was necessary to restore government authority in parts of the country. Today, 2 1/2 years later, Calderón and Mexico face a stark reality: The longer and harder the war is prosecuted, the more complex and daunting it becomes.
The offensive has exposed corruption so widespread that key institutions, from police forces to city halls, appear rotten to the core. And a battered society has grown increasingly worried about the effects of the massive military deployment on its democracy.
We already are a North American Union because the U.S. government is the same.
A cascade of setbacks - prison breakouts, kidnappings of federal officials, killings of priests - has led to questions about whether Calderón was prepared for the breadth and depth of the problem.
“They hit a wasp nest, and the wasps are stinging,’’ said Jose Luis Pineyro, a specialist on national security at Mexico City’s Autonomous Metropolitan University. “There definitely wasn’t a well-structured plan to know what kind of threat they were confronting.’’
Government forces have scored victories, almost all credited to the military: They’ve arrested more than 66,000 suspects, seized tons of cocaine and marijuana, and intercepted guns, grenades, airplanes - even drug-laden, submarine-like vessels.
But every success is offset quickly by a fresh surge in violence, sometimes in unexpected places such as the tourist magnet of Acapulco. No state has been spared bloodshed or scandal. To date, the government has not gone after major money-laundering operations, the fuel that keeps the cartels going, and none of the current leaders of the main cartels has been captured.
A senior military official in Ciudad Juarez said, speaking of the unyielding bloodshed: “We are fighting an enemy we don’t know and don’t see and only feel their results.’’
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The drug gangs appear as strong and as vicious as ever as they fight not just for smuggling routes, but for shares of the growing domestic market. More than 45,000 troops have been deployed in these 2 1/2 years to hot spots across the nation. It’s not just boots on the ground: Army generals and colonels have taken command of law enforcement in seven states and, from Juarez to Tijuana to Cancun, have supplanted civilian authority. Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million, remains the test case, embodying the reach of Calderón’s strategy and its risks....
Meanwhile, CUI BONO?Who is getting rich of illegal drugs?
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Also see: Drug War Report Feels Familiar
