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Old 07-19-10, 04:51 PM   #1
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Post After Car Bomb, Mexico Braces for An Even More Deadly Drug War (Time.com)

Time.com - A 2009 episode of the award-winning TV drama Breaking Bad depicts a scene in Mexico's bullet-ridden border town of Ciudad Juarez: police are lured to a location to find an informant's severed head stuck on a turtle which turns out to be a booby trap that explodes, killing and maiming the law enforcers after they approach it. Seasoned correspondents of the real drug war in Mexico thought the sequence was an over-the-top depiction of gang tactics - until last week.

In the real Ciudad Juarez on Thursday, gangsters kidnapped a man, dressed him in a police uniform, shot him and dumped him bleeding on a downtown street. A cameraman happened to film what happened after federal police and paramedics got close. The video shows medics bent over the dumped man checking for vital signs. Suddenly a bang rings out and the image shakes vigorously as the cameraman runs for his life. The gangsters had used a cell phone to detonate 22 lbs of C4 explosives packed into a nearby car. A minute later, the camera turns back round to reveal the remains of a burning car, smoke over screaming victims and charred corpses. Three people including a federal police officer were killed, and several others injured. (See the siege of Ciudad Juarez.)

Mexico's drug war has become so brutal that nothing now seems off-limits to the criminal imagination. It is as if rival cartels are competing for ever more shocking methods of execution. Killers first beheaded two policemen in April 2006. The following September, a gang threw five severed craniums onto a disco dance-floor. In 2008, a rival cartel decapitated 12 victims, filmed the craniums and stuck the video on the Internet. The same year, gangsters threw grenades into a crowd of revelers celebrating Independence Day, killing eight. Now, there is the corpse-decoy and car bomb. (See how the drug war may become Mexico's Iraq.)

Mexican officials blamed the Juarez incident on La Linea, a gang who kills and enforces for the local drug smuggling cartel. The bomb, they say, was reprisal for the arrest of alleged La Linea commander Jesus Acosta, alias "El 35." Federal police had released an interrogation video in which Acosta describes La Linea's tactics. It was the latest of several videos of captured cartel members describing how they allegedly set up murders and carved limbs and heads off victims. Critics accuse the police of obtaining the videos under torture; they also say that the videos fail to provide clear evidence and may serve only to provoke gangsters to retaliate.

"A car bomb on our southern border is a wake up call to how sophisticated and ruthless, these guys have become," said a U.S. law enforcement official involved in combating Mexican cartels. "We are dealing with narco-insurgents." Set off by cell phone rather than a fuse, the car bomb is called a "command detonated device," the official explained, akin to many IED's used in Iraq. The bomb could have been made from improvised materials brought in stores, although it may have had parts cannibalized from military equipment, he said. (See photos of the drug wars in Culiacan.)

American agents have been concerned about military weapons and explosives falling into the hands of Mexican cartels for some time. A report by the United States Bomb Data Center obtained by TIME describes how, in February 2009, Mexican gangsters stole a large quantity of explosives and detonators from a site owned by a Texan manufacturer in Durango state, Mexico. There were 15 to 20 assailants, "armed with guns and machine guns, face cover and similar military wear," who overpowered security, the report said. "This incident has the potential for giving rise to further explosives related incidents in the region."

Firefights and massacres are now weekly occurrences in Mexico. On Sunday, gunmen interrupted a late-night party in the city of Torreon shooting dead 18 people. So far, barely seven months into the year, officials report 7,048 drug-related killings, making 2010 likely to top the 9,635 such murders recorded in 2009. But even for Mexicans numbed to the relentless reports of bloodshed, the Ciudad Juarez car bomb sparked shock and fear. While such tactics have long been used in Iraq and Colombia, this was the first effective car bomb strike against police in Mexico. It has had a terrifying effect on Juarez and the rest of the country simply because bombs are more likely to kill bystanders uninvolved in the drug wars. In a bad year, the potential for more carnage just got worse.


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Old 07-20-10, 07:28 AM   #2
Marty Cortez
 
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Default Re: Mexico's Drug War Gets Worse with Killings in Ciudad Juarez (Time.com)

I've been reading a few of this guy's articles. Interesting fellow.

An engineer from Russia who emigrated here at the fall of the Soviet Union, he travels back frequently and comments on similarities and differences between their collapse and our impending one.

He had one particularly disturbing observation relating to security:
Quote:
"...Security in post-collapse Soviet Union was, shall we say, lax. I came through unscathed, but I know quite a few people who did not...

...Empires are held together through violence or the threat of violence. Both the U.S. and Russia were, and are, serviced by a legion of servants whose expertise is in using violence: soldiers, policemen, prison wardens, and private security consultants. Both countries have a surplus of battle-hardened men who have killed, who are psychologically damaged by the experience, and have no qualms about taking human life. In both countries, there are many, many people whose stock in trade is their use of violence, in offense or defense. No matter what else happens, they will be employed, or self-employed; preferably the former.

In a post-collapse situation, all of these violent men automatically fall into the general category of private security consultants. They have a way of creating enough work to keep their entire tribe busy: if you don't hire them, they will still do the work, but against you rather than for you. Rackets of various sizes and shapes proliferate, and, if you have some property to protect, or wish to get something done, a great deal of your time and energy becomes absorbed by keeping your private security organization happy and effective. To round out the violent part of the population, there are also plenty of criminals. As their sentences expire, or as jail overcrowding and lack of resources force the authorities to grant amnesties, they are released into the wild, and return to a life of violent crime. But now there is nobody to lock them up again because the machinery of law enforcement has broken down due to lack of funds. This further exacerbates the need for private security, and puts those who cannot afford it at additional risk.

There is a continuum of sorts between those who can provide security and mere thugs. Those who can provide security also tend to know how to either employ or otherwise *dispose of mere thugs. Thus, from the point of view of an uneducated security consumer, it is very important to work with an organization rather than with individuals...

...one must learn how to make strange new friends, and keep them, for life..."
There are quite a few reports of gang infiltration into our armed services for the express purpose of being trained.

A more cynical person might wonder who all that training will later be trained on.


*a few years back there was some commotion about death squads in the favelas of Brazil targeting street thugs.
Old 07-20-10, 07:34 AM   #3
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Default Re: After Car Bomb, Mexico Braces for An Even More Deadly Drug War (Time.com)

The US has also been changing the training of its police forces as well to a more military style over the last 30 years. Remember when we were kids and it was no big deal to just walk up to a cop and talk to them or ask questions? You rarely see that anymore - most folks just try to avoid them nowadays...
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Old 07-20-10, 02:30 PM   #4
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Default Re: After Car Bomb, Mexico Braces for An Even More Deadly Drug War (Time.com)

Quote:
Originally Posted by BajaGringo
The US has also been changing the training of its police forces as well to a more military style over the last 30 years. Remember when we were kids and it was no big deal to just walk up to a cop and talk to them or ask questions? You rarely see that anymore - most folks just try to avoid them nowadays...
Or vice versa!





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