Mexican drug violence spills over into the US

[lewisipso]

Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States.
U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.
Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing operations all over the U.S., in such far-flung places as Anchorage, Alaska; Boston; and Sioux Falls, S.D.
"The violence follows the drugs," said David Cuthbertson, agent in charge of El Paso's FBI office.
The violence takes many forms: Drug customers who owe money are kidnapped until they pay up. Cartel employees who don't deliver the goods or turn over the profits are disciplined through beatings, kidnappings or worse. And drug smugglers kidnap illegal immigrants in clashes with human smugglers over the use of secret routes from Mexico.
So far, the violence is nowhere near as grisly as the mayhem in Mexico, which has witnessed beheadings, assassinations of police officers and soldiers, and mass killings in which the bodies were arranged to send a message. But law enforcement officials worry the violence on this side could escalate.
"They are capable of doing about anything," said Rusty Payne, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in Washington. "When you are willing to chop heads off, put them in an ice chest and drop them off at a police precinct, or roll a head into a disco, put beheadings on YouTube as a warning," very little is off limits.
In an apartment in Columbiana, Ala., police found five men with their throats slit in August. They had apparently been tortured with electric shocks before being killed in a murder-for-hire orchestrated by a Mexican drug organization over a drug debt of about $400,000.
In Phoenix, 150 miles north of the Mexican border, police have reported a sharp increase in kidnappings and home invasions, with about 350 each year for the last two years, and say the majority were committed at the behest of the Mexican drug gangs.
In June, heavily armed men stormed a Phoenix house and fired randomly, killing one person. Police believe it was the work of Mexican drug organizations.
Authorities in Atlanta are also seeing an increase in drug-related kidnappings tied to Mexican cartels. Estimates of how many such crimes are being committed are hard to come by because many victims are connected to the cartels and unwilling to go to the police, said Rodney G. Benson, DEA agent in charge in Atlanta.
Agents said they have rarely seen such brutality in the U.S. since the "Miami Vice" years of the 1980s, when Colombian cartels had the corner on the cocaine market in Florida.
Last summer, Atlanta-area police found a Dominican man who had been beaten, bound, gagged and chained to a wall in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Lilburn, Ga. The 31-year-old Rhode Island resident owed $300,000 to Mexico's Gulf Cartel, Benson said. The Gulf Cartel, based in Matamoros just south of the Texas border, is one of the most ruthless of the Mexican organizations that deal drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin.
"He was shackled to a wall and one suspect had an AK-47. The guy was in bad shape," Benson said. "I have no doubt in my mind if that ransom wasn't paid, he was going to be killed."
In July, Atlanta-area police shot and killed a suspected kidnapper while he was trying to pick up a $2 million ransom owed to his cartel bosses, Benson said.
State and federal governments have sent millions of dollars to local law enforcement along the Mexican border to help fend off spillover drug crime. But investigators believe Arizona and Atlanta are seeing the worst of the violence because they are major drug distribution hubs thanks to their webs of interstate highways.
In fact, drug officials have dubbed Atlanta "the new Southwest border," said Jack Killorin, a former federal drug agent and director of the Atlanta region's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force.
El Paso, population 600,000, is only a quarter-mile away from Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, which has seen open gun battles and 1,700 murders in the last year. But El Paso remains one of America's safest cities, something Cuthbertson said is probably a result of the huge law enforcement presence in town, including thousands of Border Patrol and customs agents.
In the past year, more than 5,000 people have been killed across Mexico in a power struggle among Mexico's drug cartels and ferocious fighting between them and the Mexican government. The cartels have established operations in at least 230 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.
Payne said the U.S. and Mexico are working together to pressure the warring cartels. Payne cited the extradition of high-level drug suspects — four members of the Arellano Felix cartel in Tijuana were brought to the U.S. in December — and the capture or killings of several other top cartel leaders across Mexico in the past year.
"We have to make sure that we attack these criminal organizations at every level so that we are safer not only in Mexico and on the Southwest border, but here in the rest of the country," Payne said.
While some Americans may feel victimized by the spillover of violence, others are contributing to it. Americans provide 95 percent of the weapons used by the cartel, according to U.S. authorities. And Americans are the cartels' best customers, sending an estimated $28.5 billion in drug-sale proceeds across the Mexico border each year.

[BigDawg]

We all knew it was only a matter of time this was going to happen here. Unfortunately this is only the tip of the iceberg, its going to get much much worse before we can make it better. They are already here and entrenched with in our society.

[MacLean]

If they want to play war, we should play war.

[lewisipso]

If they want to play war, we should play war.

Now that's what I'm talking about. I mean no man unprovoked harm that walks this earth. However, I have devoted my life to standing in the way of men that do. You want war? Let's have war. Lives are being taken and I'm sure not all of them are tainted. Thank God this type of thing has not happened here. It would finish disolving our "Mayberry" attitude after a few heads went in the sand. If it ever did I would be a big fan of a saying an old friend of mine had. "Its time to take out the trash."

[CTR man]

Sounds good to me. Where you find illegal drugs, you'll find the cartels and the gangs. We do indeed need to take out the trash.

[Cidp24]

Decisive, harsh, and violent action immediately. Make examples and let it be known that what has been happening in Mexico WILL NOT happen here.

But, we all know that this will not happen in today's bleeding heart society.

[countybear]

Close the borders and deport the illegals. Now.

[CTR man]

+ infinity

[sgtbear111]

I do not have a shorted, stepped-on, faked 8-ball's worth of faith in the present Obama govt to respond effectively to these warring Mexican gangs. They already operate from a secure sanctuary across the border, and they laugh at our rules, laws and courts. Think of Mexico spelled C-A-M-B-O-D-I-A or L-A-O-S.

This drug war could be the perfect Trojan Horse for Obama & Holder et.al. to march a gun confiscation effort.

Narco cartels and terror Jihads want dominon, not treaties. Treaties are just paper. Together or separately, they are the enemy. Their boots on our necks.

As to war, when was the last US declaration of war? The "rules of war" right now get pushed aside to "rule by lawyer". The ability to campaign against a ruthless enemy is gone, when you are 2nd guessed by a hostile press, and those who do not care what the rules of engagement are on the bloody end. Those who decide are perfectly happy to reduce war to convenient business hours, on sheets of 8.5x14 bond legal paper, in a sanitary safe office. That is their reality, and our reality is they rule now, drawing convenient lines on new maps, and creating words in new books.

You can hang all the paper the worlds' paper mills can produce on these scum, they will wipe their butts with it, and use what is left over to fuse the Molotov cocktails delivered in reply. When does a criminal organization cease to be offered their rights and due process, and become a war-time target? No guessing, it'll never happen.

The US hasn't been hurt enough to react in the "fight to survive" mode, and keep going as in "total war" WW-2. We do not have sufficient memory space. Uhhhh 9-11...whazzat? Narco wars are just a "criminal" matter. National security issues do exist, like importing surplus ammo or WW-2 era gun parts for the civilian market.

The Russian lesson from the Nazis was brutality meeting brutality, to eject an invader known to wipe out your cities and people, kill your family, and enslave the survivors. The Red Army pursued them right to Berlin and settled on terms once the enemy was destroyed, by their definitions. They still remember, a sad lesson. The last time a US campaign ended with the sack of a city... was it the 'Civil War' ?

We would never reply in that form and with the sustained force to
eradicate an enemy. Maybe if they burn our homes.....but the govt will send FEMA and a new TV, all will be good. Bad memories are just bad, there are no bad people. Correct lessons are learned by living in harmony with those who differ from us, and believing what the media/govt tells us. May your worst memories of defeat be yesterday's sports scores..........

If the bad guys did us some serious harm, how long will we fight? The World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 are examples of the sanitized event, the process of propaganda, and erasure of public memory. Soon 9-11 will be denied, as never happening. just like the Holocaust is denied by some.

The Russians, and others, do not pander to foreign terrorists. The
response is quiet, covert, pro-active, and delivered in a way the bad guys do respect. At Mumbai, the Russian citizens were set free. Israel's response to those who murder their people comes in good measure from experiences of their people in the 1930's and WW-2 Europe, and over the decades since. Memory.

WW-2 Japan and Germany passed by mutual racial and cultural prejudices. Will there be an axis of narco cartels and terror organizations? Perhaps already done? They can share access to our heartland, profit, and feed off our remains while we wait until Monday for judges to rule. Later they will fight each other, right here, where we once were. We will be gone, no longer be there to nourish or entertain them, or remember. We will be a memory.

Gitmo gets closed. The only ones to benefit are the Casro regime and terrorists. I'm sure "negotiations" could be opened with the cartels for "reasoning" for the correct amount of appeasment or tribute, and a PR program to divert blame elsewhere. If the govt does wise up, a place like Gitmo, for long term. CNN will piously label it the "Gulag", no matter where. If we can fight, but cannot kill them, what the hell do we do with them?

There are a number of islands in the Pacific and Aleutian Island chain of far-west Alaska that have buildings, plumbing, power, and jet-capable runways in place. Adak, a Navy base there from WW-2 to the last decade. Shemya, former USAF base, now a weather outpost nearer to Siberia. Johnston Island is 800 miles SW of Honolulu, an isolated former USAF base with a warmer climate.

Memory: "....against all enemies, foreign and domestic........."

g-nite all

[pgg]

If they want to play war, we should play war.

I agree, there shouldn't be any hold back on this type of stuff. I'm tired of having to deal with this stuff with both of our arms tied behind our backs

[Five-0]

If we just legalized pot all of this would go away.

[Cidp24]

If we just legalized pot all of this would go away.

That boy ain't right.

[Big Sexy]

In the recent past, there was an incident in San Juan, Texas, which is located in the Rio Grande Valley. Think Brownsville, South Padre Island area.

In a nutshell, an individual threw a fragmentation grenade into a club, occupied by about 20 patrons, to include 3 off duty officers. The grenade was live, yet, malfunctioned and no one was injured.

[armsmaster270]

Close the borders and deport the illegals. Now.

But instead of deporting them to Mexico due to paperwork errors deport them to Iran.

[countybear]

But instead of deporting them to Mexico due to paperwork errors deport them to Iran.

I hear Cuba is really nice this time of year...

[MacLean]

Decisive, harsh, and violent action immediately. Make examples and let it be known that what has been happening in Mexico WILL NOT happen here.

This can be one way to play war, but I actually advocate something more surgical.

Sniper/spotter or LRP style teams would be far more effective.

Recreate "the men with green faces."

Not only would it keep Guard special forces units up to speed training wise, but it could be used to prep units rotating out to find a different kind of insurgent in the 'Stan.