Posted on 05/13/2012 12:10:24 PM PDT by Pinkbell
MONTERREY, Mexico — Forty-nine decapitated and mutilated bodies were found Sunday dumped on a highway connecting the northern Mexican metropolis of Monterrey to the U.S. border in what could be the latest outburst in an escalating war of terror among drug gangs.
Mexico’s organized crime groups often abandon multiple bodies in public places as warnings to their rivals, though Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said he did not rule out the possibility that the victims were U.S.-bound migrants.
The bodies of the 43 men and six women were found in the town of San Juan on the non-toll highway to the border city of Reynosa at about 4 a.m. (5 a.m. EDT; 0900 GMT), forcing police and troops to close off the highway. Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said at a news conference that a banner left at the site bore a message with the Zetas drug cartel taking responsibility for the massacre.
Domene said the fact the bodies were found with the heads, hands and feet cut off will make identification difficult. The bodies were being taken to Monterrey for DNA tests.
De la Garza said the victims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another location, then transported to San Juan, a town in Cadereyta municipality, about 105 miles (175 kilometers) west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, or 75 miles (125 kilometers) southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing.
Mexican drug cartels have been waging an increasingly bloody war to control smuggling routes, the local drug market and extortion rackets, including shakedowns of migrants seeking to reach the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I think an underground group of 1,000 vigilantes trained in Special Forces would help, along with movies detailing their successes.
And the Administration doesn’t care whether the DOJ and ATF supplied the weaponry.
How can that be? You mean to tell me that Fast and Furious ISN’T working? /heavy sarcasm
Liberals are intent on facilitating Mexico coming to you..
Now let’s not lose our HEADS over this....
Right you are. When Prohibition ended, the mafia did not disappear. It just moved on to other crimes.
That's why it's too simplistic to think that everything would be so much better if drugs were legalized.
Who knows if some other evil would come on the scene if drug dealing were not an issue. Maybe today’s would be evildoers would mostly be too stoned to do any harm.
Quite true that presented with nowhere to go, crime syndicates do not quietly bow out. It would have been better to have left the control of all medications in the purview of doctors, and the likes of the Zetas would never have been seen. However with much effort the Mafia has been pushed down to near nothingness today. It is fortunate that they never got heavily into the drug trade, or it would be a different story.
49 more that won’t come here....
I can see a day where pot is legal in this country, but I don’t envision the legalization of harder drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin. The cartels will simply shift their focus to the remaining illegal drugs.
The cartels would be eliminated as a supplier. Instead, it could be grown and cured domestically, and distributed to bars and smoke shops, the same as liquor (also formerly illegal) and tobacco. Taxes would be collected, and the domestically grown and distributed product could be regulated to keep it out of the hands of minors.
The international drug problem would not “magically disappear,” but pot would no longer be a part of it. And that would also make it easier to deal with the harder substances, such as meth, crack, coke, heroine and ecstacy, because the DEA, FBI and related agencies would no longer have to run around after pot traffickers. The illicit growers, smugglers and tax evading distributors could be handled by the ATF, which also handles the same enforcement problems for alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
The new industry would be an economic stimulant, and generate tax revenues. Law enforcement costs would be reduced. Perhaps even demand for the harder substances would be reduced, because pot would be available and legal, just as rot gut liquor became less in demand after Prohibition ended and consumers could finally buy beer.
Yep.
“and then the cartels, which have billions upon billions and their own armies go to war directly with the US Gov’t. You don’t think that the cartels will be willing to double their overhead to make the same yearly money, undercutting the “legal” trade? The cartels’ import channels are already set and far cheaper to operate than anything the US Gov’t could provide.”
They wouldn’t go to war over pot, not while they still have their illegal trade in meth, coke, heroine, etc. If they would, then the very least thing we have to worry about is whether pot is legal, and the US government should go to war immediately with the cartels just because they are a threat.
The cartels’ import channels are cheaper than the US-provided import channels, but who’s talking about importing? It can be grown domestically. Indoor growing can produce a higher-quality product than outdoor growing, but vast tracts of farmland are available for the latter, tracts that are currently devoted to government-subsidized tobacco crops. This is a cash crop that pays for itself without the need for a federal subsidy. At present, the inflating expense in growing pot domestically is in evading law enforcement. Once that is eliminated, there is only the ordinary cost of cultivation. Private industry is more efficient than anything the federal government can provide, and the cartels are living proof of that. Take away pot, and the cartels still exist, but they no longer have pot. If legalization works there, perhaps hashish and law-concentration opiates can be added.
Nothing really.
So why cure cancer, if you can’t eliminate death? It solves one thing: Pot trafficking, and that portion of the violence, corruption and death caused by it. It also eliminates a portion of the demand for the hard drugs, just as legalizing liquor eliminated a portion of the demand for wood alcohol and moonshine. Moonshine still is made and sold, but it’s a marginal industry now. There are no magic solutions. There are policies that mitigate problems, and policies that exacerbate them.
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