Clinton, Gates to Mexico to talk about drug fight

[cory777]

Source: Reuters

Wed Mar 17, 2010 9:05pm EDT

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a top-level delegation to Mexico on March 23 to discuss efforts to fight drug cartels, 10 days after three people linked to a U.S. consulate were killed in a border city.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Clinton would be accompanied by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair as well as other senior national security officials.

They will be meeting to discuss the U.S. Merida Initiative, a 2007 plan to give Mexico $1.4 billion to help fight the country's powerful drug cartels. Crowley said the meeting had been in preparation for several months.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN17178275

[Fumesucker]

1. Every time they ramp up the drug war things just get worse..

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -Albert Einstein.

How long has it been since we saw shootouts between alcoholic beverage distributors?

[TheWraith]

4. Bingo.

People insisted that if prohibition were repealed, the murder rate in this country would skyrocket. In fact, it dropped by two thirds almost overnight, because the bootleggers no longer had a black market to drive their conflicts.

90% of all murders have prior criminal records--so do 75% of all murder victims. That's how large the gang wars in this country are. Chicago alone is estimated to have 100,000 gang members, and all paid for thanks to the black market. I'll bet you good money that if we legalized and regulated drugs tomorrow, we'd see a massive drop in violence in this country by next Thursday.

[NinjaguyDan]

2. Alcohol Prohibition caused the EXACT SAME problem!

What was the solution?

[abqmufc]

3. Interesting reminds me of the 80s all over again.

Tucson Weekly did a great 2 part story back in 1996 (when I first moved to town). It shed a new light on the 'arms for hostages'. I'd see those white unmarked CIA planes all the time flying over Tucson in the late 90s and even up to this day.

Interesting enough in New Mexico the drug war is over heroine. The pot war is all but over with so many States having medical laws contiguous. Meth is also coming over the border...but that is only b/c they've not banned the cold medicine like we have here.

So why is heroine coming up from Mexico? Or is really coming from the bases on the border who see so many planes come back from the War on Terrorism in the land of Poppies?

Ollie North all over again?

"WANDA PALACIO WATCHED the Hercules cargo plane roll to a stop on the tarmac of Baranquilla International Airport, located in the Andean foothills just off the azure Atlantic waters of Colombia's northern coast. According to Palacio, the aircraft bore the markings of Southern Air Transport, a private airline once associated with retired Vietnam-era Air Force Gen. Richard Secord, who would later purchase a security fence for the home of contra point man Lt. Col. Oliver North.

Palacio was in Baranquilla that day to arrange a cocaine deal with her host, Jorge Luis Ochoa, at the time Colombia's most ambitious druglord. As she watched two men in green uniforms remove two green military trunks from the plane, her host explained his operation: "Ochoa told me the plane was a CIA plane and that he was exchanging guns for drugs." The crew, he said, were CIA agents, and "these shipments came each Thursday from the CIA, landing at dusk. Sometimes they brought guns, sometimes they brought U.S. products such as washing machines, gourmet food, fancy furniture or other items for the traffickers which they could not get in Colombia. Each time, Ochoa said, they took back drugs."

In her 1987 sworn testimony before U.S. Sen. John Kerry's Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics and International Terrorism, Palacio acknowledged she could not confirm the operation was being conducted by the CIA. But, she added, "Obviously, what I saw raised many questions about the source of the U.S. weapons which I know Ochoa has obtained."

That was not the only time such an exchange was witnessed by the Puerto Rican-born Palacio, a former airline employee whose cocaine trafficking career lasted as long as her marriage to an upper-class Colombian whose social circle included "people deeply involved in the drug trade." Concerned for the safety of her 4-year-old daughter, she eventually volunteered to work with the FBI because, she said, "I was angry about what drugs were doing to the people I knew and to the United States government itself." "

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/11-21-96/cover.htm

The Second Of Two Parts On The U.S. Intelligence Community's Drug-Dealing Treason.
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/11-28-96/cover.htm

[ixion]

5. The best way to beat drug cartels: End the so-called 'war' on drugs.

Problem solved.