Mexican Drug Gangs Target Military

President Tries To Regain Territory Lost To Cartels As Bloodshed Increases

(AP)  Mexican drug cartels armed with powerful weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are striking back, killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that threaten the one force strong enough to take on the gangs.

The daily bloodshed includes an ambush that killed five soldiers this month, a severed head left with a defiant note outside a military barracks on Saturday and the slaying Monday of a top federal intelligence official who was shot in the face in his car outside his office in Mexico City.

Mexicans were particularly shocked last week by televised images of kindergartners fleeing their school during a grenade-and-gun battle between traffickers and soldiers that lasted for nearly two hours in this small town in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan.

The unrelenting bloodshed has forced a change in strategy for Calderon, who sent more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers out in December to reoccupy territory from Michoacan's poppy-dotted mountains to the tourist-packed port of Acapulco.

Now, to supplement the massive presence of soldiers and tanks in small towns, he's ordered the creation of an elite military special operations force capable of surgical strikes.

"We are not going to give in," Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said. "In the states where there is most violence, we will be right there to confront the phenomenon."

The drug trade is all-powerful in Mexico. Analysts estimate that cartels here make between $10 billion and $30 billion selling cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine to the U.S. market, rivaling Mexico's revenues from oil exports and tourism. The gangs also make billions through robbery, kidnapping and extortion of businesses and would-be migrants.

The Calderon administration insists the crackdown is working — the government has already detained more than 1,000 gunmen and burned millions of dollars in marijuana plants. Traffickers are being extradited to the United States more rapidly than ever before, and police recently made the world's biggest seizure of drug cash, $207 million neatly stacked inside a Mexico City mansion.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials say it's too early to judge the crackdown's success. Seizures at the U.S. border indicate the flow of drugs north may actually be increasing — 20 percent more cocaine and 28 percent more marijuana has been seized in the past six months, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Violence nationwide in Mexico seems to be increasing. The country's three leading newspapers estimate shootouts, decapitations and execution-style killings have claimed the lives of about 1,000 people this year, on track to soar past last year's count of 2,000. The government doesn't count drug-related killings, and a top federal police official, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, has referred to the newspaper figures as the best numbers available.

This month's death toll for soldiers and sailors is the worst for the military in more than a decade, violence that shows the gangs' desperation, officials say.

[reel-crazy]

I agree with lestb35, but I believe the problem is already here. Law enforcement here in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas can't keep up with the urban gang violence now.

With the added ILLEGALLY TRESPASSING IMMIGRANTS from Mexico our country's elected officials seem to be so sympathetic to with their INSANE AMNESTY legislation, every current LEGAL citizen's welfare is now further jeopardized.

Since our law enforcement agencies can't keep up with their current irrationally-motivated violence now, what other possibilities do we have but military intervention in the future?

All of you amnesty for illegal aliens folks had better wake up now before it's too late. These Mexicans are HERE in our back yards now and it needs to be dealt with like any other criminal activity.

I say send these ILLEGALS back to Mexico and NO AMNESTY... PERIOD

[reel-crazy]

I agree with lestb35, but I believe the problem is already here. Law enforcement here in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas can't keep up with the urban gang violence now.

With the added ILLEGALLY TRESPASSING IMMIGRANTS from Mexico our country's elected officials seem to be so sympathetic to with their INSANE AMNESTY legislation, every current LEGAL citizen's welfare is now further jeopardized.

Since our law enforcement agencies can't keep up with their current irrationally-motivated violence now, what other possibilities do we have but military intervention in the future?

All of you amnesty for illegal aliens folks had better wake up now before it's too late. These Mexicans are HERE in our back yards now and it needs to be dealt with like any other criminal activity.

I say send these ILLEGALS back to Mexico and NO AMNESTY... PERIOD

[peaceforusa]

Why has it taken Mexico so long to take care of its own business? How do drug cartels gain so much power that the government can't get control? I want a wall built so high and so wide that these criminals will never get into our country and the only way to get here is the legal way. LA is a big joke anymore for its last episode of demoting and firing the riot police.. the very people that are supposed to protect us from this ***. The criminality has spilled over to our government when the rest of the country can see that Border agents are being imprisoned and cops are fired because the west coast wants the drugs to flow because it is a source of income for those criminals that made it into our governments.

[gogam]

I wonder when US citizens will start trying to illegally enter Mexico for the better job security and wealth afforded by Mexico's drug cartels...now that'll be ironic.
My previous post got censored...cr ap and s e x were deleted.

[gogam]

People who smoke weed or take drugs are frickin' losers who aren't able to enjoy life without putting *** in their own bodies. You can get same high with some exercise or ***...since the former is practically blasphemous (for most Americans) and the latter is usually accomplished with one hand the drug trade in Mexico will survive and thrive. What a country!!

[mdc76082]

Hunt'em down. Kill'em all. Let God sort'em out. The police are out gunned, so let the military make the Cartel Killing Fields. I hope the Mexican military makes progress. Get rid of the Cartel families. Death to all Cartels!

[xzavierbrown]

this is what happens when criminals has more rights than the rest of society. These bloodsucking liberals prefer to make these cartels into LEGAL CARTELS just for the sake of them to smoke thier drugs. Oh well I guess they need another "tobacco industry' style business to battle..

[pollroller1]

Pot should be made legal. Sell it in the ABC stores. This so called "war on drugs" is a big joke.

[lestb35]

Take a good look, folks. The future of America is what you're seeing. It's going to take the US military to deal with the Mexican gangs in this country before long.

[myidoncbs]

This whole "war on drugs" is a stupid failure. If people didn't want drugs, we'd have no problem with drugs. If drugs weren't illegal, we'd have no problem with illegal drug trafficking and traffickers, and many other crimes (thefts to get money for drugs, and murders between rival gangs, etc.) would be substantially reduced.

Why don't we spend a bit more time and energy dealing with the causes of drug use/abuse, and spend less time and energy and lives on fighting wars that can't be won?

(And, don't anyone take this to indicate any support whatsoever for the drug gangs.)

[wogerwabbit]

Jeeze... no wonder you can't get any good weed around here!