Posted on 01/15/2009 12:29:10 PM PST by AuntB
http://www.kdbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=9648792&nav=menu608_2_3
DHS ready for surge if Mexico violence spills over
http://www.kdbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=9648792&nav=menu608_2_3
[snip]EL PASO, Texas - U.S. Homeland Security officials say they have a contingency plan to help border areas fight Mexican drug violence if it spills across the U.S. border.
Chertoff ordered specific plans drawn up last summer as deadly violence in Mexico grew.
The so-called “surge” plan includes Homeland Security agents helping local authorities and maybe even military assistance from the Department of Defense.
An aide to Texas Governor Rick Perry says Texas officials were briefed on the plan — but not consulted beforehand.
McCain’s home state is America’s kidnapping capitol. There’s roughly one per day there and kidnappings are no longer necessarily tied to drug trafficking or illegal immigration.
It’s kidnapping for fun, sport and $$$.
Also, a US congressman’s sister-in-law was recently kidnapped in Mexico but she was released when the kidnappers realized who they’d nabbed.
“The abducted woman was the sister of the wife of U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. The woman was eventually released by her abductors, after they discovered her relationship to the Congressman — indicating that it was a random kidnapping and the perpetrators had enough on the ball to understand the downside of snatching a U.S. Congressman’s family member.”
You know that most of us aren’t so lucky and that the powers that be in DC are glad to let this happen to us as long as it isn’t happening to them.
**Military ready if drug gangs cross border**
He’s kidding right? Hell, they crossed over a couple of decades ago, they’re running for office and suing the cops for interfering with their business! Nobody, but nobody respects America anymore - like us, the cartels just shake their heads in disbelief and keep on trucking.
This is interesting:
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Vatican suggests excommunicating Mexican drug traffickers
The Vatican’s No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, calls for a ‘harsh deterrent’ to the drug violence that left more than 5,000 dead last year.
[snip] The Vatican, Bertone said, is alarmed at the “disasters” of drug-fueled violence, kidnappings and generalized insecurity in Mexico and, increasingly, in some of its Central American neighbors.
Within the “narco-culture” that surrounds the drug trade here, gangsters make use of a blend of Catholic observance mixed with superstition and their own iconography. For example, many revere the so-called saint of the narco- traffickers, a Robin Hood-type character named Jesus Malverde.
In some parts of the country, however, priests have been willing to accept money from local drug lords to pay for church repairs or other community projects.
“They are very generous with the societies of their towns,” Bishop Carlos Aguiar Retes, president of the Mexican Bishops Conference, said in April, according to the newspaper Reforma. In some remote towns, he said, “they put up lights, communications, roads, at their own expense. . . . Often they also build a church or a chapel.”
“There are seminaries, churches, who accept money not knowing where it came from,” Mercedes Murillo, president of the Sinaloan Civic Front in the city of Culiacan, a major drug-trafficking center, said in a recent interview. “They wash their hands like Pontius Pilate.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-vatican-mexico13-2009jan13,0,499152.story
My Mexican neighbors don’t seem to have a great deal of patience with Mexican gang types, and they don’t let them hang around for very long.
Check this out....the Senate (including republican Hutchison) are going to throw some more $$$ down the Mexico drain. The billion and half just wasn’t enough to throw away.
http://www.alpineavalanche.com/articles/2009/01/15/news/news01.txt
Rodriguez aims at gun running
Special to the Avalanche
Alpine’s representative in the U.S. House - Democrat Ciro D. Rodriguez of San Antonio - introduced legislation Tuesday aimed at cracking down on illegal gunrunning.
Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, introduced matching legislation in the Senate Monday.
“We must continue our work to stop the violence on both sides of the border,” Rodriguez said. “We have made some progress in stopping the ruthless drug cartels but illegal trafficking of guns into Mexico continues, and we are a long way from keeping people along the border as safe as they deserve to be.”
“Narcotic trafficking organizations aren’t confined by borders,” Hutchison said. “The increasing violence in Mexico is now a U.S. national security issue. The powerful Mexican drug cartels are a threat to the safety and security of U.S. communities and the U.S. law enforcement officials who seek to protect us.
“We must commit to providing the necessary resources to end the destructive violence of the Mexican drug cartels, on both sides of the border. This legislation takes an important step toward protecting our citizens from the terrorism that drug cartels seek to spread.”
The bill would authorize $15 million in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 to expand the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Gunrunner Initiative, ATF’s southwest border initiative to deprive drug traffickers of firearms and reduce firearms-related violence on both sides of the border.
The money will be used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to hire, train and deploy an additional 80 special agents, enough for at least seven more Project Gunrunner Teams in the border region to investigate and help prosecute individuals that traffic weapons into Mexico.
The bill also authorizes $9.5 million in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 to enhance cooperation between the United States and Mexico.
This money would allow ATF to assign an additional 12 agents to consulates in Mexico to support Mexico’s efforts to trace seized weapons and to train Mexican law enforcement officials in anti-trafficking investigative techniques.
According to the ATF, most of the firearms violence in Mexico is perpetrated by drug traffickers who are vying for control of drug trafficking routes to the United States and engaging in turf battles for disputed distribution territories.
Here a billion, there a billion... pretty soon your talking about a lot of money.
this is scary
January 15, 2009
How Seriously Should We Take the Mexican Crisis?
Douglas Farah
A little-noticed Joint Forces Command study, The Joint Operating Environment: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Forces, has some interesting conclusions on Latin America and particularly Mexico. A tip of the hat to David Holiday of OSI for bringing it to my attention.
While there have been several recent studies looking at future challenges, including the more heralded “Global Trends 2025” By the National Intelligence Council, this one actually tackles the issues of transnational crime and stateless areas. The NIC report in particular, was notably silent on the implications of failing states and criminal/terrorist pipelines.
The JOE, as the report is called, is a DOD’s “perspective on future trends, shocks, contexts, and implications for future joint force commanders and other leaders and professionals in the national security field. This document is speculative in nature and does not suppose to predict what will happen in the next twenty-five years. Rather, it is intended to serve as a starting point for discussions about the future security environment at the operational level of war.”
In looking at potential developments, the report concludes:
In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and
Mexico.
That is an interesting juxtaposition for Mexico, and one that, surprisingly, has not risen to the top of the foreign policy agenda. Although President-elect Obama met with Mexican president Calderón to discuss the drug war, it is unlikely the stark terms of this issue were discussed.
Mexico is at a crucial juncture. The Calderón government has gambled that it can take on the criminal enterprises of drugs, illegal smuggling, extortion and kidnapping while having a non-functional judicial system and without diminishing the culture of impunity that allows the cartel sicarios kill the best and brightest with impunity.
He had no choice, except to accept the future of Mexico as a “narco-state.” The lack of serious U.S. commitment to seeking alternatives to the existing policies, including demand reduction and a serious effort to shut down the flow of sophisticated weapons, left Mexico virtually alone.
The Merida Initiative is a step, but it is not clear what that step is toward. More than 5,700 people were killed in drug-related violence in Mexico in 2008. That is a staggering figure, and it includes dozens of policemen, journalists and the few of were willing to take on the terror of the organized criminal gangs.
It is also more than all the U.S. deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since those conflicts began, a sobering point of reference. Yet it remains unclear how the story will end.
In reference to the collapse of Pakistan, the report concluded:
The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.
The descent into chaos is a real possibility, all the more so because the new administration will struggle to meet the internal economic crisis and will have little time and few resources to look south. Unfortunately, that will only exacerbate the downward spiral there.
It is certainly not just Mexico. With Mexico will go Guatemala, Honduras and much of the rest of Central America. How it will play out in the so-far complacent states of Nicaragua and Venezuela, which currently view the cartels as allies in their anti-U.S. coalition, remains to be seen.
The paper should be a starting point for far more serious discussions about a region where we remain largely blind to the threats that loom.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Douglas Farah is an award-winning investigative journalist and Senior Fellow in Financial Investigations and Transparency at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. E-mail him at doug@douglasfarah.com.
Doesn’t the knowledge of this give you a nice warm fuzzy with the anti-gun, anti-american dimwits in power in Washington city?
They’re not. Not while there’s tons of sports on television.
Well said!
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