Are we paying attention to our Southern Border?

[Mr. T]

3,000 Mexican Soldiers Arrive By Convoy, Planes

Juárez city officials said that within two weeks the anti-crime patrol force will number 8,000 -- including 5,000 soldiers, 1,600 city police and 1,000 federales.

"We need the support of citizens united," Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, who has received death threats, said in a statement. "This is a fight of Juárez against crime. It is everyone's fight."

The violence, which has claimed more than 300 lives this year in the Juárez area, continued during the weekend with at least nine homicides since Friday, including two police officers slain Saturday morning in the town of Praxedis G. Guerrero in the valley east of Juárez.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_11815696

A side of Cancun not seen during spring break

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/f...0,7050382.story

Will the Mexican drug war run over into america? And if so will we send troops to our southern border?

[PBJ]

It seems as if it has already spread into the United States. I saw on The News Hour a few weeks ago that there have been several hundred abductions in the US by the cartels. Pheonix has been hit really hard by it already.

Here is an article and video with Gates on the subject of sending military aid:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7918101.stm

I really think a big help would be to just legalize marijuana, I read an article earlier that said legalizing would cut the funds to the cartels in half. Does anyone think this could turn into some kind of 21st century Pancho Villa situation, with US troops chasing around the cartels around northern mexico?

[Mr. T]

@pbj said:

It seems as if it has already spread into the United States. I saw on The News Hour a few weeks ago that there have been several hundred abductions in the US by the cartels. Pheonix has been hit really hard by it already.

Here is an article and video with Gates on the subject of sending military aid:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7918101.stm

I really think a big help would be to just legalize marijuana, I read an article earlier that said legalizing would cut the funds to the cartels in half. Does anyone think this could turn into some kind of 21st century Pancho Villa situation, with US troops chasing around the cartels around northern mexico?

We have enough other social ills in our country before we start to legalize another substance that can be abused we should take a look around at what is going on with our youth. What we have in Mexico (drug cartel)is Greed taking advantage of our youth sucking the life out of them.

[mz.]

@mr.-t said:

We have enough other social ills in our country before we start to legalize another substance that can be abused

Name a few...

[Kosar_For_President]

@mr.-t said:

We have enough other social ills in our country before we start to legalize another substance that can be abused we should take a look around at what is going on with our youth. What we have in Mexico (drug cartel)is Greed taking advantage of our youth sucking the life out of them.

LOL, you think your son is NOT smoking weed because it's illegal? Come on your not that nieve?

[PBJ]

Thank you, President Obama, for keeping your campaign pledge to end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries that are legal under state laws in California and elsewhere.

Thank you for reversing an inhumane policy established by the Clinton administration and continued by the Bush administration.

Given the experience you and other elected officials have had with illegal drugs and your willingness to challenge the status quo, now is the time to reconsider decades of prohibitionist drug policies that have succeeded only in massively increasing the toll of human misery, violence, and hypocrisy. As with alcohol prohibition, the drug war intensifies and exacerbates every negative outcome it is ostensibly designed to combat.

President Obama, do the right thing and end the war on drugs.

"Obama, You're No Stranger to the Bong" was written, performed, and edited by Paul Feine; special thanks to Alex Manning.

http://reason.com/blog/show/132010.html

[choco]

them bad bad drugs hurtin the kids.....

protect the children!

[Mr. T]

EXCLUSIVE: 100,000 foot soldiers in cartels

Numbers rival Mexican army

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/m...ers-in-cartels/

EXCLUSIVE:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico

The U.S. Defense Department thinks Mexico's two most deadly drug cartels together have fielded more than 100,000 foot soldiers - an army that rivals Mexico's armed forces and threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.

"It's moving to crisis proportions," a senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Times. The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of his work, said the cartels' "foot soldiers" are on a par with Mexico's army of about 130,000.

The disclosure underlines the enormity of the challenge Mexico and the United States face as they struggle to contain what is increasingly looking like a civil war or an insurgency along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past year, about 7,000 people have died - more than 1,000 in January alone. The conflict has become increasingly brutal, with victims beheaded and bodies dissolved in vats of acid.

The death toll dwarfs that in Afghanistan, where about 200 fatalities, including 29 U.S. troops, were reported in the first two months of 2009. About 400 people, including 31 U.S. military personnel, died in Iraq during the same period.

The biggest and most violent combatants are the Sinaloa cartel, known by U.S. and Mexican federal law enforcement officials as the "Federation" or "Golden Triangle," and its main rival, "Los Zetas" or the Gulf Cartel, whose territory runs along the Laredo,Texas, borderlands.

The two cartels appear to be negotiating a truce or merger to defeat rivals and better withstand government pressure. U.S. officials say the consequences of such a pact would be grave.

"I think if they merge or decide to cooperate in a greater way, Mexico could potentially have a national security crisis," the defense official said. He said the two have amassed so many people and weapons that Mexican President Felipe Calderon is "fighting for his life" and "for the life of Mexico right now."

As a result, Mexico is behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern, ranking above Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense official added.

[DieHardBrownsFan]

Drop a couple of nukes, end of problem.

[mz.]

@mr.-t said:

We have enough other social ills in our country before we start to legalize another substance that can be abused

Come on, T. You cannot make a statement like this and not name those other "social ills." So I ask again for you to name them.

[Mr. T]

mz. said:

Come on, T. You cannot make a statement like this and not name those other "social ills." So I ask again for you to name them.

Social Ills..... well how about this Star Trek Freaks

[mz.]

I'm serious.

The only reason I ask is because what some "hyper-moral" people find to be social ills is nothing more that bigotry wrapped with a cute red bow.

[Westside Steve]

mz. said:

I'm serious.

The only reason I ask is because what some "hyper-moral" people find to be social ills is nothing more that bigotry wrapped with a cute red bow.

But there is a line somewhere that seperates particular amounts of one's life spent getting high or drunk no?

At some point it becomes "immoral" even to you no?

WSS

[Mr. T]

Being responsible for one's self is important, you must know your limitations. And with some people booze or dope dosn't mix well at any level.

[calfoxwc]

Social ills aren't bigotry, that's way, way unnecessary.

Abuse of alcohol, teen age pregnancies, gangs, illegal drugs, abuse of

prescription drugs, sloth, apathy...

in any society there are social anomalies to proper and self-edifying behavior

[Pumpkin Eater]

Why care if someone else chooses t ospend their life drunk and high? That's just less competition in the game of life for the rest of us.

[AdaM]

@pumpkin-eater said:

Why care if someone else chooses t ospend their life drunk and high? That's just less competition in the game of life for the rest of us.

True 'stoners' are a lot more rare than you think. Most smokers are perfectly normal people and quite happy.

[Kosar_For_President]

AdaM said:

True 'stoners' are a lot more rare than you think. Most smokers are perfectly normal people and quite happy.

Agreed.

[choco]

righties dont acknowledge that, though....

drugs are bad....cause the gov't told me. pot will kill your neighbor and rape your wife....

those that i talk with, that seem to have strong opinions against drug use, have never tried what they condemn. they base their beliefs from hearsay and propaganda....

[Legacy Fan]

@choco said:

those that i talk with, that seem to have strong opinions against drug use, have never tried what they condemn. they base their beliefs from hearsay and propaganda....

I'm not sure I see what is wrong with this practice.... I know that eating arsenic will kill me, so I don't. I know that calling a black man an n-word will get me punched in the face, so I don't (not to mention a myriad of reasons I don't use the word). I know that exposing skin for extended periods of time when it's in the teens will get me frostbite, so I don't.

In fact, just as the "true stoner" is a rarer entity than many might anticipate, the "reefer madness" set is even less common. A lot of people just don't like the lack of control they feel when under it's influence (or by observing others under its influence), so they don't.