Why are American cops in Honduras conducting drug raids???
Why are American cops in Honduras conducting drug raids???It's time to end the unconstitutional and illegal American "drug war", which sadly the American government has exported to the rest of the world.
Video Adds to Honduran Drug Raid Mystery
By THOM SHANKER and CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: June 22, 2012
WASHINGTON — Aerial surveillance video of a fatal shootout during a counternarcotics mission in Honduras last month shows a long, dugout-style boat ramming a smaller canoe carrying Honduran and American agents — and a seized cocaine shipment — followed by a brief but furious round of gunfire.
The video answers some questions while raising new ones about a mission that put a spotlight on intensifying American involvement in counternarcotics operations in Central America.
The incident unfolded on a river near the town of Ahuas after a drug smuggling plane being tracked from Venezuela landed at an airstrip and its cargo was unloaded and taken to a boat. American helicopters carrying Honduran police officers and a commando-style squad of agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration swooped in and seized the cocaine.
Shortly thereafter, a firefight erupted in which four Hondurans in another boat were killed. Officials in both countries have insisted that no American agent fired a weapon in the exchange, but there have been differing accounts about whether the casualties were bystanders or were part of the smuggling operation.
It has not previously been reported that the matter began with one boat ramming a second one. Still, the video does not resolve the identities or motive of those aboard the boat that collided with the vessel carrying the agents, and who may have fired upon them. Nor does it explain the otherwise contradictory statements of some survivors of the shooting that they were innocent villagers attacked without cause.
But the video appears to have satisfied Congressional staff members that the American agents on the raid did not fire their weapons.
“There was no issue that made us think that D.E.A. had done something that was questionable,” said a senior aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who watched the video.
The video was taken from a United States Customs and Border Protection P-3 surveillance aircraft, and has been circulating among government agencies — and shown in briefings to Congressional aides — for the past several weeks. The New York Times was allowed to view the video by a person who was not officially authorized to release it because it remains evidence in a sensitive law enforcement inquiry.
It shows that within minutes after the cargo was loaded onto the canoe-style boat on the river at a communal dock, four helicopters appeared above the village, kicking up clouds of dust. They dropped flares, and Honduran and American drug agents dropped by rope to the ground.
The smugglers scattered, abandoning the boat, which began to drift. Three figures, identified by officials as two Honduran policemen and one D.E.A. agent, boarded the boat. One, identified as the American agent, moved to one end of the craft and began working to get the motor started.
As the surveillance aircraft and the helicopters circled, a similar but larger river craft approached and was the only other vessel that can be seen along that swath of river. Several people were standing in the front and back. There was a shadowy place in the middle, which could have been a tarp covering people or cargo, a bench or an empty space.
The second boat, clearly under power, cut a zigzag course along the river toward the boat carrying the Honduran and American agents, ramming one end.
In the seconds before contact, there were some flashes in the video, which American officials said were indications that the occupants of the larger boat had fired. After the ramming, a brief but ferocious flurry of shots from the boat carrying the agents was clearly visible.
As the larger boat slid alongside and then moved away, there also appeared to be a spray of bullets across its middle, said by officials to be a volley of machine-gun fire from the Honduran door gunner aboard one of the helicopters.
Later that day, Honduran security officials announced the raid, saying that two drug traffickers had been killed in a shootout and that three other men had escaped by leaping into the water from a canoe carrying cocaine. They apparently omitted any mention that Americans were involved.
But that account soon came under question when the mayor of Ahuas told Honduran reporters, and later repeated to The Times, that helicopters carrying Honduran and American drug agents had been pursuing a boat with smugglers when the government forces mistakenly opened fire on another boat carrying villagers who were fishing, killing four, including two pregnant women.
Disputing the mayor’s version, American and Honduran officials briefed on the matter said that after a joint team had landed and taken control of a boatload of drugs, a second boat approached and fired upon them. The Honduran police and a helicopter door gunner returned fire and the second boat withdrew, they said.
Another account was provided to a Times reporter who visited Ahuas and was shown a long blue boat with about half a dozen bullet holes. The reporter talked with three witnesses, including a woman in the local hospital with bullet wounds in both legs, Hilda Lezama, who identified herself as the owner of the boat.
Ms. Lezama said she and her husband were running a river taxi service, bringing 11 passengers on a six-hour boat ride from a larger town on the coast upriver and traveling at night because it was not as hot. Just before 3 a.m., they went ashore and had begun to climb onto land when four helicopters appeared overhead and they came under gunfire, she said.
Damien Cave contributed reporting from Vero Beach, Fla.
Maricopa County sued for dragging feet i medical marijuana licensing
Source
Medical-marijuana dispensary applicant sues Maricopa County
County refuses to act, company claims
by Michelle Ye Hee Lee - Jun. 25, 2012 09:55 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
An applicant for a medical-marijuana dispensary and cultivation site has sued Maricopa County, accusing the county of purposely stalling action on its application to prevent it from seeking a state operating license.
The lawsuit by White Mountain Health Center Inc. alleges the county would not certify or reject its registration certificate, one of the Arizona Department of Health Services' first requirements for obtaining a dispensary license.
The White Mountain Health Center wants to open a dispensary and cultivation site in Sun City, which is in an unincorporated part of the county and therefore requires county zoning approval.
Maricopa County last year decided not to allow county employees to accept, process or issue permits for medical-marijuana dispensaries or cultivation sites on county unincorporated land unless marijuana becomes a federally-approved drug.
However, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, which voters approved in November 2010, allows qualifying patients with certain debilitating medical conditions to use marijuana. It allows local jurisdictions to impose "reasonable" zoning restrictions for dispensaries, and requires local zoning approval before a permit is processed by the state.
The county Board of Supervisors nonetheless opted out of the program after County Attorney Bill Montgomery, named as defendant in the lawsuit, advised the board not to participate in the medical-marijuana program. He said county employees may be subject to federal backlash, and it may make them accomplices in committing a federal offense because marijuana is not an approved drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act.
That is why no county employee has acted on dispensary applications, Montgomery said: To avoid "having to argue the fine details of whether even a denial" of a permit application could be considered a violation of federal law.
In its lawsuit, White Mountain Health Center claims the DHS rejected its application for a registration certificate because the center could not obtain documentation from Maricopa County or from Montgomery showing there are no zoning restrictions that prevent a dispensary from opening in Sun City. DHS and its director, Will Humble, are also named as defendants.
In a letter to Jeffrey Kaufman, attorney for the health center, Montgomery explained the county will not issue zoning verification for medical-marijuana dispensaries "until the threat of federal prosecution is conclusively removed."
After applicants receive their registration certificate from DHS, they must get approval from their local jurisdiction to operate. Cities and towns across the Valley have different requirements for potential dispensary or cultivation-site owners.
A dispensary applicant must meet local zoning requirements.
If a local government rejects the application, the case would need to be handled in the courts, Humble said.
"Each jurisdiction handles it a little differently," Humble said. "Some, you just march into the office and they sign it. Others ask for some more information."
Ken Strobeck, executive director of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, said he was not aware of any city or town in the state that has disallowed medical-marijuana dispensaries or cultivation sites, as Maricopa County has.
Based on his analysis, Montgomery said, other local jurisdictions that allow medical-marijuana dispensaries should be subject to federal prosecution.
"You can't enforce the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act," Montgomery said. "I don't care if it passed with 90 percent of the vote. Voters are no more entitled to pass something that's unconstitutional than the Legislature, and that's just a legal fact. If it's against the law, you can't enforce it ... The medical-marijuana act is not even protected by the Voter Protection Act because it can't protect something that's unlawful."
Kaufman said the White Mountain Health Center is the only applicant for a medical-marijuana dispensary in Sun City.
"Obviously there are a lot of people in Sun City with serious medical conditions that we believe would benefit from medical marijuana," Kaufman said. "The voters in the state have approved medical marijuana, and I think it would be very unfair for the people of Sun City to travel outside of Sun City to go and get medical marijuana."
On the other hand this guy probably also drank tap water and ate sliced bread recently. You could just as easily use this case to demonize tap water and sliced bread and say they make people go insane.
Tests find only pot in face-chewer's system
Jun. 27, 2012 04:28 PM
Associated Press
MIAMI -- Lab tests detected only marijuana in the system of a Florida man shot while chewing another man's face, the medical examiner said Wednesday, ruling out other street drugs including the components typically found in the stimulants known as bath salts.
There has been much speculation about what drugs, if any, would lead to the bizarre behavior that authorities said Rudy Eugene exhibited before and during the gruesome attack that left the other man horribly disfigured. A Miami police union official had suggested that Eugene, who was shot and killed by an officer, was probably under the influence of bath salts.
The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner said in a news release that the toxicology detected marijuana, but it didn't find any other street drugs, alcohol or prescription drugs. Eugene also tested negative for adulterants commonly mixed with street drugs.
The department ruled out the most common components found in bath salts, which mimic the effects of cocaine or methamphetamine and have been associated with bizarre crimes in recent months. An outside forensic toxicology lab, which took a second look at the results, also confirmed the absence of bath salts, synthetic marijuana and LSD.
Messages left with the medical examiner's office for comment were not immediately returned.
An expert on toxicology testing said that marijuana alone wasn't likely to cause behavior as strange as Eugene's.
"The problem today is that there is an almost an infinite number of chemical substances out there that can trigger unusual behavior," said Dr. Bruce Goldberger, Professor and Director of Toxicology at the University of Florida.
Goldberger said that the medical examiner's office in Miami is known for doing thorough work and that he's confident they and the independent lab covered as much ground as possible. But it's nearly impossible for toxicology testing to keep pace with new formulations of synthetic drugs.
"There are many of these synthetic drugs that we currently don't have the methodology to test on, and that is not the fault of the toxicology lab. The challenge today for the toxicology lab is to stay on top of these new chemicals and develop methodologies for them, but it's very difficult and very expensive." Goldberger said. "There is no one test or combination of tests that can detect every possible substance out there."
It's not clear what led to the May 26 attack on Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man who remains hospitalized. Eugene's friends and family have said he was religious, not violent and that he didn't drink or do drugs harder than marijuana.
"There's no answer for it, not really," Eugene's younger brother, Marckenson Charles, said in an interview. "Anybody who knew him knows this wasn't the person we knew him to be. Whatever triggered him, there is no answer for this."
Surveillance video from a nearby building shows Eugene stripping Poppo and pummeling him, before appearing to hunch over and lie on top of him. The police officer who shot Eugene to death said he growled at the officer when he told him to stop.
Charles, Eugene's brother, said the family does not plan to pursue any legal action against the police for shooting Eugene.
"They used the force they felt was necessary, even if we don't agree with that,' he said.
He said that Eugene has been buried.
Shortly before the attack, a person driving on the MacArthur Causeway told an emergency dispatcher a "completely naked man" was on top of one of the light poles on the causeway and "acting like Tarzan." Still, police have said little about what may prompted Eugene to attack Poppo.
Poppo has undergone several surgeries and remains hospitalized. His left eye was removed, but doctors said earlier this month they were trying to find a way to restore vision in his right eye. He will need more surgeries before he can explore the options for reconstructing his face, doctors have said. A message left with the hospital was not immediately returned.
Poppo's family has said it had no contact with him for more than 30 years and thought he was dead.
Eugene's girlfriend, meanwhile, has said he never showed any signs of violence. Yovonka Bryant said she and Eugene often read the Bible and the Quran together, and often watched a religious television program in the mornings. She said she never saw Eugene drink and only saw him smoke marijuana once at a party.
Marijuana made the face chewer do it???
I suspect the government nannies who profit from the "war on drugs" will use this to demonize marijuana users.
The Spanish which says:
¿Por qué la pose?That roughly translates to
¿Por qué tan feliz?
Why are they posing?
Why are they so happy?
Of course the Feds say that the "interstate commerce" clause of the constitution gives them the power to do anything they damn well feel like doing. Of course if that is they case why did they jump thru all the hoops of passing the 18th Amendment to make booze illegal. Something which the legal scholars says must be done to make any Federal laws criminalizing drugs constitutional.
Cities Balk as Federal Law on Marijuana Is Enforced
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: June 30, 2012
ARCATA, Calif. — Faced with growing chaos in the state’s medical marijuana industry, this city in Northern California passed an ordinance in 2008 that meticulously detailed, over 11 pages, how the drug could be grown and sold here.
Medical marijuana at the Humboldt Patient Resource Center in Arcata, Calif. Officials in Arcata and other cities that have ordinances regulating the industry are now at odds with federal prosecutors, who began shuttering dispensaries in October.
Humboldt Medical Supply, a dispensary here in Humboldt County regarded as a law-abiding model that has given free cannabis to elderly patients, became the first to obtain a permit in 2010. The Sai Center, whose owner has a history of flouting city regulations and was described by the mayor as running his business “purely for profit,” was rejected last year.
Humboldt Medical quickly closed shop after federal prosecutors began shuttering hundreds of dispensaries in October in one of the biggest crackdowns on medical marijuana since its legalization in California in 1996. The Sai Center’s owner moved locations and has defied the authorities by continuing to operate, most recently out of his mother’s house. City officials, afraid of becoming targets themselves of the prosecutors, have suspended the applications of two other dispensaries that were expected to be approved.
“We feel the federal government’s actions have had a very negative effect,” said Mayor Michael Winkler. “We’re very upset with their actions.”
Like their counterparts in many other municipalities that have regulated medical marijuana on their own, Arcata officials say the federal offensive has brought renewed chaos to the medical marijuana industry. The federal authorities, their critics say, have indiscriminately targeted good and bad dispensaries, sometimes putting the best ones out of business. The crackdown, the critics say, has made it difficult for qualified Californians to obtain marijuana for medical use and is just pushing buyers into the black market.
Acting on federal law, which considers all possession and distribution of marijuana to be illegal, California’s four United States attorneys, working with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service, have shut down at least 500 dispensaries statewide in the last eight months by sending letters to operators, landlords and local officials, warning of criminal charges and the seizure of assets. The United States attorneys said the dispensaries were violating not only federal law but also state law, which requires operators to be primary caregivers to their customers and distribute marijuana only for medical purposes.
“We’re not concerned in prosecuting patients or people who are legitimate caregivers for ill people, who are in good faith complying with state law,” said Benjamin B. Wagner, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of California. “But we are concerned about large commercial operations that are generating huge amounts of money by selling marijuana in this essentially unregulated free-for-all that exists in California.”
Because of the lack of regulation, it is difficult to know precisely how many dispensaries have shut down or even how many were in operation before the start of the current crackdown. But figures provided by three of California’s four United States attorneys totaled more than 500: “dozens” in Mr. Wagner’s district; 217 in the Southern District, in San Diego; and more than 200 in the Central District, in Los Angeles. Officials in the three districts say they have succeeded in putting out of business more than 90 percent of the dispensaries they have identified so far.
Declining to release figures was the United States attorney for the Northern District. The district includes San Francisco and Oakland, the two cities that have led the fight against the current federal offensive, as well as Arcata and other municipalities long known for their tolerance of marijuana.
Dan Rush, an official at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said about 650 out of the 1,400 marijuana dispensaries that existed last October have ceased operating. The union represents between 600 and 800 members working in statewide dispensaries, he said.
Except for San Francisco and Oakland, the roughly 50 municipalities with medical marijuana ordinances have suspended the administration of dispensaries, said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, a group that promotes access to medical marijuana. Though federal authorities have periodically gone after dispensaries since California became the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use, Mr. Hermes described the current crackdown as “unprecedented” because of its “intensity” and because of the number of dispensaries closed and federal agencies involved.
Prosecutors denied that legitimate patients were being driven to illegal sellers.
“Most often the individuals who are visiting these places have obtained sham doctor recommendations for really no purpose other than to engage in the recreational use of marijuana,” Laura E. Duffy, the United States attorney for the Southern District, said of the dispensaries.
[Sorry madam, in California all it takes to get a legal medical marijuana prescription or recommendation as it's technically call is to says you have a headache. That meets all the legal requirements of the medical marijuana law and certainly isn't a sham doctor's recommendation. ] “To the extent that blatant distribution of marijuana is not available in commercial businesses throughout California, certainly in this district, I think that’s a good thing.”
Here in Arcata — a city of 17,000 people in a region of the state known as the Emerald Triangle, where the illegal marijuana trade has long been tolerated and is a pillar of the local economy — government officials worried that counterparts in neighboring communities had received letters warning them against regulating the medical marijuana industry.
“They said they could prosecute city officials and staff,” said Larry Oetker, a city official who oversaw the regulations on the dispensaries. “That was a dramatic change.”
Under the ordinance here, the city approved the permit of Humboldt Medical Supply, an “exemplary” dispensary according to Mayor Winkler. Greg Allen, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who represented the dispensary, said its staff included a nurse and rigorously screened customers to ensure that they had legitimate conditions that required treatment with marijuana.
By contrast, the city rejected the application of the Sai Center, which has violated city regulations, including advertising its services and letting customers mill around its premises. Its owner, Stephen Gasparas, exhibited “an extremely hostile attitude” at city hearings for his application, the mayor said.
“He was very contemptuous of any government regulation of this at all,” the mayor said. “He seemed really to be in it for the money. If he also had any commitments to patients, I wasn’t aware of that.”
But federal prosecutors sent warning letters to the owners of the two dispensaries, as well as their landlords, citing their proximity to a ballpark, city officials said. Humboldt Medical Supply, which had been struggling financially, ceased operating. But Mr. Gasparas moved five blocks away to a house owned by his mother and quickly resumed business.
On a recent afternoon, an employee was working out of a single room in the back of the blue, single-story house, sitting behind a large desk, surrounded by marijuana plants and three large safes. Through the employee, Mr. Gasparas declined to be interviewed.
The employee, who declined to give his name but said he was majoring in botany at Humboldt State University here, said the federal offensive was “all political.” The dispensary, he said, was helping the ill who would otherwise buy marijuana from “an unsafe source.” He said he himself first obtained a doctor’s approval to use medical marijuana because he had anxiety.
At the Humboldt Patient Resource Center, one of the two dispensaries whose application was delayed because of the federal crackdown, a steady stream of customers — young men but also middle-aged men and women — came in to buy various strains of marijuana, including those called Blue Dream, Lemon Diesel and Oh Sour Head, at $40 for an eighth of an ounce.
Mariellen Jurkovich, the dispensary’s director, said she had spent $200,000 to comply with the city’s marijuana ordinance. Federal prosecutors had not sent her a warning letter, but she remained worried.
“Even if I eventually get a permit from the city, I don’t think I’m protected as long as the federal law doesn’t change,” she said. “I don’t know who they’ll go after and why.”
The drug war corrupts cops by letting them make huge sums of money to allow victimless drug war crimes to happen.
Of course the "drug war" cops say I am full of BS and that drug war crimes are not victimless and that the people that take drugs are the victims of their own crimes.
I think that logic is 100 percent BS. If it was true that means we should make steaks and ice cream illegal to prevent people from over eating getting fat. And of course throwing these same people in prison for getting "fat" from indulging in illegal fattening foods.
Former ICE agent gets prison for information leak
by Daniel González - Jun. 29, 2012 10:00 PM
The Republic | azcentral
TUCSON -- A former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent from the Nogales office was sentenced Friday to 3years in prison for using her work computer to access classified information without authorization and leaking it to a sister in Mexico who investigators say had ties to violent drug cartels.
Jovana Deas, 33, a former special agent with ICE Homeland Security Investigations, may have jeopardized national security and put at risk the lives of fellow agents and confidential government informants by leaking the information, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Lacey said at the close of a two-day sentencing hearing.
Calling Deas a "spy in the U.S. camp," Lacey urged U.S. District Judge Cindy K. Jorgenson to exceed the guidelines and sentence Deas to 10years in prison to reflect the damage she had caused to ICE's operations and to deter other agents "from even thinking about" leaking confidential information.
Lacey said one of the people who Deas researched using her work computer as a favor for her sister was later assassinated in Juarez, Mexico, though Lacey could not link his death directly to a photo of the man Deas provided her sister, Dana Maria Samaniego Montes, 40, a former Mexico federal police officer.
"We are not saying she caused his murder. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn't," Lacey said.
A copy of the photo was later discovered in the computer of Samaniego Montes's ex-husband, Miguel Angel Mendoza Estrada, when he was questioned by federal police in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as part of a drug-trafficking investigation, ICE investigators said during the hearing.
The former agent's actions seriously compromised ICE's operations in southern Arizona and exposed the country to the possibility of a terrorist threat, Lacey said.
"It only takes one person to come in," Lacey said.
In February, Deas pleaded guilty to a 21-count indictment.
On Friday, she apologized for her actions but denied knowing her sister or ex-brother-in-law had ties to drug cartels or that she was trying to help drug cartels.
She said that only in one instance, the one involving the photo, had she accessed confidential documents on her work computer as a favor for her sister. She said that in the other instances she was using tips provided by her sister to try and build cases against people possibly involved with drug cartels.
"I feel like I betrayed my country and the agency that gave me so many opportunities," Deas told Jorgenson. "But I would never do anything to jeopardize the lives of agents."
Jorgenson rejected Lacey's recommendation that Deas be sentenced to 10 years in prison. But she said that as a law-enforcement officer, Deas should be held to a higher standard. She also rejected Deas' request for a more lenient sentence and noted that the 3-year sentence was at the top end of the sentencing guidelines.
Samaniego Montes also was indicted as part of the scheme, but she remains a fugitive in Mexico.
Calderon reportedly plans to leave Mexico
President worries that cartels may go after him
Jul. 2, 2012 12:00 AM
Washington Post
MEXICO CITY - In meetings, President Felipe Calderon has been telling guests that he and his family are likely to leave Mexico to live abroad after his term expires in December. It will be too dangerous to remain, he warns in private conversation, because powerful drug mafias might come after him.
For the commander in chief of Mexico's U.S.-backed drug war to suggest he has not provided enough security to live in his country is a stunning revelation -- and may be seen as either an admission of failure or evidence of just how hard he has fought and how far Mexico needs to go.
Limited to a single six-year term, Calderon remains personally popular, with his ratings hovering around 50 percent. Yet two of every three Mexicans recently surveyed say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
The toll of Calderon's drug war -- the sensational violence, the 60,000 dead, major cities occupied by masked soldiers -- appears also to have exhausted the patience of Mexican voters.
While an overwhelming majority of Mexicans, some 80 percent, back the continued deployment of the military in the drug war, almost the same number describe violence and human-rights violations by the army as their major concerns.
Less than half think Calderon is making progress against the cartels, according to the Pew Research Center's most recent survey in Mexico.
Last week, in a ceremony attended by the U.S. ambassador and Calderon's top drug warriors, Calderon pleaded with the next administration to continue his fight against organized crime.
"We cannot throw away everything that has been done," he warned.
Mexico winner Enrique Peña Nieto to fight cartels
Peña Nieto tells U.S. drug war will go on
by William Booth - Jul. 2, 2012 11:03 PM
Washington Post
MEXICO CITY - The newly elected president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, is a mostly unknown figure in Washington, D.C., but he is moving aggressively to assure his northern neighbor that he will fight hard against Mexico's drug lords and continue to pursue warm relations with its top trading partner.
The outreach is necessary because Peña Nieto is an enigma to many in the United States, as even his closest aides concede. As a comfortable front-runner during the presidential campaign, he kept his policy pronouncements vague, and as a former governor, he has no track record in foreign policy.
Peña Nieto, who won the election Sunday, will face immediate scrutiny as he begins to select his Cabinet, especially his law-enforcement and military ministers, who will inherit a brutal, complex war against wealthy paramilitary crime groups that have terrorized Mexico for six years and left an estimated 50,000 people dead.
A top Peña Nieto campaign official, Emilio Lozoya, said in a statement Monday, "Some may wonder what a Peña Nieto presidency will mean. The answer is simple. It will mean a stabilization of the situation in Mexico and advancement on many of the issues Americans care about."
Peña Nieto, who assumes office Dec. 1, orchestrated a remarkable political comeback of his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ran Mexico for more than 70 years until its defeat in 2000. But he knows that many people remain skeptical that the PRI has truly transformed itself from its older, autocratic and venal version.
His party has a reputation for cutting deals with drug cartels and allowing narcotics to move north as long as crime syndicates avoided public violence and attacks against civilians. Three of the past PRI governors in the bloodied border state of Tamaulipas are under investigation, suspected of aiding cartels.
"There is no going back to the past," Peña Nieto assured his audience here and abroad in a victory speech Sunday night.
The United States and Mexico have a lot more than cocaine kingpins on their agenda. As top trading partners, the economies of the two countries are deeply integrated.
Mexico is a top producer of the automobiles, flat-screen TVs and winter vegetables consumed in the United States. More than $1 billion in goods cross the border daily. There are 33 million people of Mexican descent in the United States, including an estimated 6 million illegal immigrants.
Although he is the first Mexican president in 30 years who did not attend an elite U.S. university such as Harvard or Yale, Peña Nieto hasn't waited for introductions.
After Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., questioned the PRI's crime-fighting resolve at a recent House subcommittee hearing, Peña Nieto dispatched envoys to the congressman's Capitol Hill office to insist that Sensenbrenner was mistaken, according to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, one of the few U.S. lawmakers who has a relationship with the newly elected Mexican president.
"He was very concerned. He said to me, 'Why are they saying this?' " said Cuellar, who traveled to Mexico to observe Sunday's vote and attend the president-elect's victory party. Peña Nieto has reached out to Cuellar and other U.S. lawmakers from districts along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Speaking on national television Monday, Peña Nieto said he had received congratulatory phone calls from President Barack Obama and other world leaders.
Obama shared "an interest in seeing the relationship between our countries expand," Peña Nieto said, adding that the American president told him that the U.S. considers the relationship with Mexico "one of most important in the world."
With nearly 100 percent of ballots counted, Peña Nieto had won 38 percent of the vote, giving him a 6-point advantage over former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had yet to concede defeat.
Exit polls and pre-election voter surveys had given Peña Nieto a double-digit advantage, and the narrower margin of victory on Sunday suggested that many undecided voters did not back him. Nearly 62 percent of voters cast their ballots for Peña Nieto's rivals in the four-way race, leaving him with less than a clear mandate.
Josefina Vazquez Mota, candidate for President Felipe Calderón's ruling National Action Party, or PAN, finished a distant third, with 25 percent of the ballots. PAN leaders acknowledged Monday that voters had delivered the party a resounding defeat with a loss "written in capital letters."
The turnout was the largest in Mexico's history, with more than 49 million Mexicans, a rate of 63 percent, casting ballots. The number exceeded projections and matched voter participation in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Mexican election officials said incidents of violence, vote-stealing and other irregularities Sunday were "isolated," and observers from the Organization of American States praised the "calm, respectful, orderly" vote.
Peña Nieto's PRI fared well in state and local races but did not win enough votes to give him a majority in Mexico's Congress. Instead, analysts said he will have to reach out to members of other parties to push through the ambitious reform package he has promised to modernize Mexican labor laws, energy policy and tax codes.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday: "President-elect Peña Nieto has a full plate, and he deserves our help, not just our congratulations."
"We've got to break the crippling cycle of violence and corruption, or no leader can succeed in Mexico," Kerry said. "And we've got to make a long-term commitment to ensure that drug-related violence does not become even more dangerous tomorrow."
Robert Pastor, a Mexico expert at American University, said Peña Nieto will pursue a "wider agenda" than Calderón, who "allowed himself to be compartmentalized" as a drug-warrior president.
U.S. must boost drug-war aid to stop the cartels
by Robert Weiner and George Clingan - Jul. 3, 2012 12:00 AM
Our Turn
With the Mexican presidential election concluded Sunday and the ruling party's candidate coming in third, the country finds itself at a crossroads against the drug cartels. New President Enrique Peña Nieto will choose whether to continue the fight or make the more popular decision to strike a deal.
Peña Nieto's decision will bear significant consequences for the United States. The Mexican drug cartels are not just gangs that can be easily sacked; they are sophisticated, transnational criminal organizations that threaten Mexican sovereignty and U.S. security.
The cartels control 980 local governments in Mexico and have distribution networks in 230 U.S. cities, according to the Department of Justice National Intelligence Center. There are seven Mexican supercartels that dominate supply, trafficking and distribution of most illicit drugs in the United States
Arizona in particular is increasingly threatened. Phoenix and Tucson are major distribution centers for the United States. Half of all marijuana seized at the border goes through Arizona. Last November, in one bust, Arizona and federal border agents cracked the Sinaloa cartel's Arizona arm, which had moved nearly $2 billion of marijuana, cocaine and heroin into the United States over a five-year span.
A White House report of President Barack Obama's call to Peña Nieto on Monday cites a discussion of "common goals, including democracy, economic prosperity and security," but does not mention fighting drugs.
It is critical that we reaffirm our commitment to weaken the supercartels by sending a strong message to the new Mexican president, whose position on the drug war has been vague. Peña Nieto wants "better regulation of the military" and stated that Mexico "should not subordinate to the strategies of other countries."
Mexico receives too little credit for fighting this war. The drug kingpins have caused 55,000 deaths in Mexico since 2006. "Mexico has eradicated more drugs than any nation on Earth," former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey says.
Calderon reformed government institutions that had been unreliable and corrupted by the cartels. After indicting over 20 percent of federal police (their FBI) for corruption, Calderon disbanded the force in favor of a new 35,000-officer force with anti-corruption training and standards.
The United States would do well by doubling anti-drug aid to Mexico, but contingent on Peña Nieto's continued efforts to win the drug war. However, we don't even give them what we promise. Of $1.4 billion authorized since 2008 under the Merida Initiative, we shorted Mexico by a third in real dollars. The least we should do is "fully fund" our cooperation. Mexican officials assailed our "slow deliveries while the bodies kept building up in Mexico."
Mexico itself has spent $35 billion on the drug war while we've given them less than $2 billion to solve our main crime and social problem. More than two-thirds of U.S. arrestees test positive for illegal drugs.
Still, President Felipe Calderon made remarkable inroads by intercepting cartel communications, disrupting distribution networks and targeting leadership. Mexico killed or incarcerated 40 cartel leaders in the past three years.
However, Mexico's top cop, Genaro Garcia Luna, estimated that the cartels invest $100 million to bribe state and municipal police officers each month -- $1.2 billion every year. The Mexican army will need to remain on the streets until the government is actually in control.
Since 9/11, the U.S., understandably at first, has dropped the ball. We have given Mexico drones as requested by the government for drug surveillance and intelligence. But, unlike Afghanistan and Pakistan, where we target al-Qaida for kills, the drones are not taking out the mass-murdering cartel leaders.
The U.S. should give a far more realistic dollar support level to Mexico's anti-drug efforts and far more focus to the effort. It will take the combined efforts of Mexico and the United States to deal a fatal blow to these too-big-to-fail cartels who threaten us daily.
Robert Weiner was the spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Policy and the U.S. House Committee on Narcotics. George Clingan is Latin American policy analyst at Robert Weiner Associates.
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on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
More
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
Cities Balk as Federal Law on Marijuana Is Enforced
A number of respected legal scholars will tell you that ALL the Federal laws criminalizing marijuana and other drugs are unconstitutional per the 10th Amendment. And that all the state laws criminalizing marijuana are unconstitutional per the 14th Amendment.
Former ICE agent gets prison for information leak
Here is another one of those articles which I hope make you realize that the drug war is impossible to win.
Felipe Calderon's to flee from Mexico???
Felipe Calderon's "war on drugs" has caused 60,000 people to be murdered in Mexico. Of course don't just blame the murders on Felipe Calderon, his "war on drugs" was done at the request of American President's George W. Bush and President Barack Obama who are just as much as responsible for those murders.
Will another 50,000 die at the hands of Enrique Peña Nieto
Will Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto murder another 50,000 Mexicans in implementing American's insane "drug war" in Mexico???
Emperor Obama wants 6 more years of "drug wars" in Mexico!!!!
And sadly the American taxpayers wills spend billions financing Obama's drug war in Mexico, which has caused the murder of 50,000 to 60,000 Mexicans depending on which numbers you think are correct.