Need to legalize drugs!
(David P.)
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: April 20, 2009
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- An escalating arms race
among Mexico's drug cartels casts doubt on
whether Mexico or the U.S. can stop the flow
of weaponry, despite renewed vows last week
from presidents of both countries.
Stockpiles captured by Mexican soldiers show
that warring traffickers are now obtaining
military-grade weaponry such as grenades,
launchers, machine guns, mortars and
anti-tank rockets.
Some drug gangs have even sought explosive
material that some experts worry could be
used in car bombs and improvised explosive
devices of the kind used in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Soldiers found 14 sticks of TNT
among an arsenal of hundreds of rifles and
grenades seized in November from a house in
Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
But so far, attempts at using bombs have been
unsuccessful as drug gangs haven't yet
developed the skills to build effective ones,
said Stephen Meiners, a Latin America analyst
with Stratfor, a private U.S.-based group.
Authorities suspect the Sinaloa cartel tried
to kill a Mexico City police officer last year
with a homemade bomb that killed only the attacker.
''Once you have a bomb maker that has mastered
that skill, unless that bomb maker is caught,
he can keep constructing those devices and send
them out to be deployed,'' he said.
One of the most worrisome weapons yet was seized
this week just south of Nogales, Ariz.: a powerful
gun mounted on the back of an SUV and protected
by a thick metal shield. Police said it belonged
to one of the Beltran Leyva drug gangs.
Mexican and U.S. authorities disagree on just
what type of gun it was. Federal police
coordinator Gen. Rodolfo Cruz maintains it was
.50-caliber anti-air craft machine gun. ATF,
the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives, said it was an unmodified
.50-caliber semiautomatic rifle made by TNW,
a U.S. firearms manufacturer.
ATF investigators traced the gun -- along with
seven others seized at a house in Sonora state
on Monday -- to suppliers in the United States,
said Bill Newell, special agent in charge of the
ATF in Arizona and New Mexico.
While crudely built, the truck-mounted rifle
would give traffickers a powerful advantage
against lightly armed police, Newell said: A
gunman could protect a whole convoy with sweeping
fire while protected by the metal shield.
''Imagine being a two- or three-man police team
at a rural checkpoint and these guys roll up with
this thing,'' Newell said. ''You'd be slightly
intimidated, wouldn't you?''
President Barack Obama says he will crack down
on the smuggling of weapons easily purchased
lawfully in the United States and then taken
to Mexico, which has strict gun-control laws.
But Mexico's drug gangs are clearly digging in
for this war, which has already claimed more
than 10,670 lives since Calderon deployed
45,000 troops to confront the cartels at the
beginning of his presidency in December 2006.
Even as the governments try to choke off the
U.S. weapons supply, the gangs are clearly
trying to expand their arsenals beyond the
assault rifles and semi-automatics they can
get in the United States.
These and other, much heavier weapons are
readily available on the global black market,
particularly from stockpiles left over from
Central America's civil wars.
Civilians are increasingly being targeted.
In October, assailants hurled a grenade at
the U.S. consulate in the northern city of
Monterrey. In January, a TV network's offices
in the same city were attacked.
The grenades used in both attacks were similar
to one thrown into a nightclub in Pharr, Texas,
in January, according to the ATF. That one
didn't explode.
The agency suspects they came from a Monterrey
warehouse where the Gulf cartel had been stock-
piling weapons, including South Korean-made K75
fragmentation grenades.
The cartels are still far from obtaining enough
arms & training to overpower Mexico's military,
which is much better weapons coordination,
Meiners said.
On Wednesday, only hours before Obama's visit,
15 gunmen were killed but only one soldier died
when a convoy of armed men fought with troops
patrolling a drug trafficking hotbed in remote,
mountainous Guerrero state.
But local police are outgunned and have left
the battle to the military -- showing how hard
it will be to achieve what Mexican President
Felipe Calderon & Obama agreed will be success --
a drug war which local police can handle without
military help.
''We only have 20 police, and we cannot risk
entering in operations against the narcos,''
said Santiago Bustos, the second-in-command of
the police in San Nicolas del Oro, where
Wednesday's shootout happened.
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--
Vend
Kent Paul Dolan
> "(David P.)" <imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> <snip off topic>
> Nothing left.
>
It helps to remember that
1) Pollutka is a pure-bred troll
2) Pollutka is insane
3) Pollutka just a day ago was
whining about "meth face",
today he is whining that drugs
should be legal, tomorrow he'll
be whining that vaccination
should be illegal. See #2.
HTH
xanthian.
Desertphile
<imb...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Mexican Arms Race: Bigger Guns for Drug Cartels
Are you claiming this is evolutionary in nature?
--
http://desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"Why aren't resurrections from the dead noteworthy?" -- Jim Rutz
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com
William Morse
Granted the above, that does not mean that drugs should not be legal. The
evidence is clearly that they should be (We can start with the 1973
Consumer Unions book "Licit and Illicit Drugs"). The difficult question
is how to do so in a fashion that minimizes the adverse impacts and
maximizes the benefits.
But as a cautionary tale to those who think legalizing drugs will solve
the Mexican problem with drug gangs - how long did it take the US to
minimize the protection rackets of the Mafia spawned by the monumental
stupidity of prohibition?
Now let us be clear - making drugs illegal is and always has been
monumental stupidity. However, while making them legal will remove the
stupidity it won't solve the problem, it will only keep from
unnecessarily making the problem worse.
>
> xanthian.