(Bilal Ali Productions) Coordinated attacks in at least eight Mexican cities killed three federal police officers and two soldiers Saturday in what officials are calling an unprecedented onslaught by drug gangs

Another 18 federal officers were wounded, the state-run Notimex news agency reported, citing federal police official Rodolfo Cruz Lopez.

The attacks were in retribution for the capture early Saturday of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, a high-ranking member of the drug cartel known as La Familia Michoacana (The Michoacan Family), Notimex reported.

Following his arrest Saturday morning in Morelia, Michoacan, men armed with high-powered rifles and grenades attacked the police station where he was being held, the Secretary of Public Security said.

After failing to win his freedom, members of the group launched attacks in the cities of Morelia, Zitacuaro, Zamora, Lazaro Cardenas, Apatzingan, La Piedad and Huetamo in Michoacan state, Notimex news said, citing federal police.

Saturday’s attacks came just days after a drug gang in Tijuana declared they were at war with police, threatening to kill five officers every week until Police Chief Julian Leyzaola resigns.

The threat was made in a note found on the windshield of a slain officer’s car, news reports said.

At least three Tijuana officers have been killed since Monday, reports said. Leyzaola, a former army colonel, replaced a police chief removed from office in December after receiving numerous threats.

When you question our drug warriors about the rising tide of violence south of the border, they will claim that all these dead Mexicans – civilians, soldiers, police, and drug gangs – are a sign of progress.  They’ll tell you that the drug cartels are desperate because Mexican law enforcement is bringing the hammer down on them, so the cartels are reacting with increased violence, and the more bloody and violent they get, the more desperate they are.  They might even say we’ve “turned the corner” on this insurgency, the drug cartels are in their “last throes”, and “the surge is working.”

Somehow I don’t think that eases the pain of a Mexican madre who just lost her mio in the crossfire of a cartel / federal gun battle because American moralists can’t stand the thought of someone lighting up some Acapulco Gold instead of chugging a beer.

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Surprise, Surprise!

The bill, proposed by conservative President Felipe Calderon, would make it legal to carry up to 5 grams (0.18 ounces) of marijuana, 500 milligrams (0.018 ounces) of cocaine and tiny quantities of other drugs such as heroin and methamphetamines.

Mexico’s Congress passed a similar proposal in 2006 but the bill was vetoed by Calderon’s predecessor Vicente Fox, under pressure from the United States, which said it would increase drug abuse, but now is worried by the drug-related violence along its border.

Mexican President Calderon was praised by U.S. President Barack Obama this month for his military assaults on cartels during a visit to the Mexican capital. President Obama pledged more soldiers to the American side of the border to hamper the flow of guns to the cartels.

The bill, which needs to be approved by the lower house, also allows Mexican states to convict small-time drug dealers, no longer making it a federal crime to peddle drugs. Drug dealers are rarely convicted in Mexico as federal courts are saturated with bigger cases and local judges cannot interfere.

Let’s face it, our prohibition created the problem in Mexico, and our Prohibition is going to destroy Mexico. As a recent military retiree, I spent more than 7 years living in South America conducting foreign internal defense and anti-narcotic or eradication missions during the 1980’s and early 1990’s. This law will greatly improve the lives of the impoverished, and will “begin to take steps in a positive direction”.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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Mexico’s Gulf Cartel may have 40 bulletproof vests emblazoned with “FBI” and “DEA” to trick their drug-trafficking rivals, according to a new law enforcement advisory.

Baseball caps and T-shirts with the agencies’ names long have been a fad among everyday citizens, but ballistic armor raises the stakes and concerns, officials said.

Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Mike Sanders said that during his nearly 20-year career, he’s only heard of a handful of times when criminals imitated agents, but never by wearing vests.

While impersonating U.S. law enforcement officers would seem unusual in Mexico, drug cartel operatives there long have disguised themselves as Mexican federal agents, police and soldiers to carry out attacks or kidnap rivals.

via Mexican cartel upgrades with ‘FBI,’ ‘DEA’ bulletproof vests | Front page | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

It’s 11:30pm.  You and your wife are in bed, your infant daughter sleeps in the room next door.  You are working class and cannot afford any better place to live than your non-descript home in a bad part of town.  You hear shuffling outside, thinking you’re seeing shadows of men rushing past your property.  You’ve followed the terrifying news stories of home invasion robberies, so you purchased a handgun and keep it locked up in the nightstand.  You see another shadow, causing you to unlock the case and load the weapon.  You wake your wife and tell her to grab your daughter and head to the basement.  You get a robe on are about to investigate when the door bursts open.  You’re disoriented by the shouting of black-clad masked men commanding you to get on the floor.  Your wife and baby are screaming and the men with guns run toward them.  The men’s body armor has big FBI or DEA letters on them.

Did you shoot anyone?  Did they see your gun and shoot you?  Do your wife and child get hit in any crossfire?  Most of all, are those actually law enforcement officers with a mistaken address on a warrant, or Mexican cartel thugs who have the wrong address for a “hit”?  These are things most of us can only imagine, but something real people like Cory Maye suffer every year.

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Mr. Calderón and his security team argue that the violence shows the desperation of the cartels as the government dismantles them. The D.E.A. agrees that the cartels are in their death throes, but it says it expects the violence to get worse in the near future.

An effort is under way to change laws to make it easier to seize businesses that are linked to traffickers, but it has been bogged down by fierce political infighting. “We keep hearing we’re going to win,” Víctor Hugo Círigo Vásquez, the speaker of the Mexico City Assembly, said to a reporter recently. “That’s what the U.S. president said in Vietnam.”

There are calls for a completely new approach. One of Mr. Calderón’s predecessors, Mr. Zedillo, recently joined two other former heads of state from Latin America in pushing for a complete rethinking of the drug war, including the legalization of marijuana, which is considered the top revenue generator for Mexican drug cartels.

Mexico is nowhere near such a transformative step as legalizing drugs, which would cut drug profits but also might cause use to soar. Still, there are initiatives on the horizon.

Three years ago, the Mexican Congress passed a plan to decriminalize the possession of small quantities of cocaine and other drugs, but Vicente Fox, then the president, killed the bill after American officials raised an alarm. Mr. Calderón made a similar proposal last fall, albeit lowering the amounts still further, and this time American officials did not utter a peep.

via – The New York Times “In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself“

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Afghanistan South

Pat begins by making a bold prediction:

Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming north from the Maghreb and Middle East, sub-Sahara and South Asia.

So narco-traffickers are the same to him as Muslims “invading” Europe and destroying it’s culture. He then goes to the numbers: 6,000 drug related killings, 6,000 troops and police moved to the border. Recounting the story of Chief Roberto Oduna of Juarez and the killing of a retired army general sent to create an elite anti-crime unit in Cancun leads him to the conclusion that the Mexican government is corrupt.

Far be it for Pat Buchanan to be pollyanna-ish, he put his finger on the demand side of both the equation and the border. It is the US demand for drugs that is fueling this violence. Pat then boils down the responses to this crisis into the best description I have yet seen by a conservative.

There are two sure ways to end this war swiftly: Milton’s way and Mao’s way. Mao Zedong’s communists killed users and suppliers alike, as social parasites. Milton Friedman’s way is to decriminalize drugs and call off the war.

So, begrudgingly he chooses Milton’s Way, because we as a society cannot take the pain of our own government killing 30+ Million of it’s own citizens (by comparison the US lost 1/2 Million in all of World War 2).

Which is the greater evil? Legalized narcotics for America’s young or a failed state of 110,000 million on our southern border? Some choice. Some country we’ve become.

This isn’t a resounding call for the principals that Milton laid out, but a decision based on the fear of a Mexican narco state. So the conservative Republican “War on Drugs” dies a whimpering death in the mind of Pat Buchanan.

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[More fantastic reporting from MrSpof, especially below the fold.  -- "R"R]

WASHINGTON – Federal agents have rounded up 755 suspects in a wide-ranging crackdown on a Mexican drug cartel operating inside the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday.

The Justice Department said that as part of the 21-month-long investigation, DEA and other federal agents had seized $59 million in U.S. currency; 12,535 kilograms of cocaine; more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana; more than 12 pounds of methamphetamine; approximately 8 kilograms of heroin; approximately 1.3 million pills or 500 pounds of Ecstasy; approximately 120 kilograms of MDMA powder; and more than $6.5 million in other assets, including 149 vehicles, 3 aircraft, 3 maritime vessels and 169 weapons.

via MSNBC – U.S. arrests 755 in Mexican drug cartel raids

My presumption is that the DEA expects this will make us feel that they are being successful in their War on US Citizens. Maybe this lends credence to former Drug Czar John Water’s claim that:

“If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence,” a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence “because these guys are flailing. We’re taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”

via The Agitator – God Help Us If We Start “Winning” the Drug War, Too

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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EL PASO – Mexican cartels have taken over most of the drug trade in the United States, and are working with 20 gangs, including the Barrio Aztecas, according to a just-released report by the National Drug Intelligence Center titled “National Drug Threat Assessment 2009.”

It also said the cartels control drug distribution in most U.S. cities (230 cities have reported a presence of the Mexican drug groups), and “are gaining strength in markets that they do not yet control.”

Mexican, Asian, Colombian, Dominican and Colombian drug organizations work with at least 28 gangs in the United States, which insulate the drug cartel cells from law enforcement and act as retail distributors and enforcers. The gangs listed include the Barrio Azteca, Latin Kings, Maras (MS-13), Hells Angels, Mexican Mafia, Bloods, Crips and others.

via Mexican cartels run U.S. drug trade, report says – El Paso Times.

Upon learning that violent foreign criminal cartels are taking over the US drug trade and extending their control through recruitment of violent local gangs to handle the retail operations, the prohibitionists’ answer is to fight them harder.  Never does it occur to the prohibitionist that WE could take over most of the drug trade in the United States and cut 70% off the Mexican drug cartel’s bottom line!

People will always want to smoke marijuana – we have cannabinoid receptors in our freakin’ brains.  The money people spend on it could buy schoolbooks for kids, but our prohibition on marijuana guarantees it buys bullets for gangsters.  (Maybe if we bought more kids history textbooks, they’d grow up having learned the lessons of prohibition from 1920-1933.)

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