Thread: To fight cartels, should U.S. militarize Mexico border?

To fight cartels, should U.S. militarize Mexico border?

BY GABE SEMENZA
November 23, 2008 - 10:30 p.m.

Deploying American troops to fight the drug cartels at the U.S.-Mexico border is a long overdue must.

Troop presence would slow the dangerous and well-equipped cartels, plug the continued leak into this country of Islamic terrorists who teamed with those cartels - and stop a brewing war on the border.

"We've guarded borders between East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Iraq, Iran and Syria," said Chris Farrell, director of investigations with Judicial Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group that examines and prosecutes government corruption. "The U.S. Army is quite proficient at securing borders."

To protect their billion-dollar industry, the cartels have begun stockpiling high-powered weapons, bulletproof vests and grenades in U.S. safe houses only four hours south of Victoria.

These weapons stashes will be used against U.S. law enforcement in an attempt to counteract a crackdown of drug trafficking routes, the FBI warned on Oct. 17.

Just weeks ago, Mexican soldiers seized the largest arms cache in that country's history. More than 500 guns, grenades, rockets and explosives were found in Reynosa, Mexico, a city also four hours south of Victoria.

Armed smugglers and big guns aren't the only concern. In late 2006, the Department of Homeland Security released a report detailing how Middle Eastern terrorists, violent Mexican drug cartels and sophisticated human smugglers regularly use the Southwest border to illegally enter the United States, according to Judicial Watch.

"It's a national security crisis. We don't know who is entering the country," Farrell said. "Therefore the Army should be told to secure the Southern Border. Once it's secured, we can have a reasonable discussion concerning immigration, who's here, who's going back, etc. But without the border secured, it's just nonsense, a Band-aid on a sucking chest wound."

The U.S. Border Patrol and Texas sheriffs are not equipped to fight the cartels. Increasingly, deputies and border agents are engaged in bloody gunfights.

Cross-border abductions and murders are on the rise. From 1996 to 2005, Homeland Security reports 253 cross-border incursions by the Mexican military and armed law enforcement. In 2006, the government confirmed 32 such incursions, Judicial Watch reports.

Chris Simcox is president and founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group that lobbies against illegal immigration and stands on the border to report sightings to border agents.

"This is no longer a local and state law enforcement issue. The cartels have machine guns and grenade launchers," Simcox said. "After Sept. 11, it was inevitable that it was going to get to this point. Everyone wanted to turn this into an immigrant and race issue. We tried to warn everyone about the cartels."

Simcox credits his group for embarrassing the federal government into increasing the number of border agents on the U.S.-Mexico land union.

Still, those agents are outmanned and outgunned in every way.

"The United States Border Patrol is designed to fail and has been given an impossible mission," Farrell said. "The Army would secure things and, perhaps, gradually turn over secured operations to the border patrol."

http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/lo ... 2644.html#

"There won't be a Shire, Pippen".

The traitors of the US will not war with these cartels until the North American Union is in place.

Makes good sense to me. We have a National Guard that should be there. Pull our military out of all of these foreign countries and put them on our borders as well. Having the greatest military in the world and all of the technology we have, protecting our borders should not be a problem.

Originally Posted by Rockfish

"There won't be a Shire, Pippen".

The traitors of the US will not war with these cartels until the North American Union is in place.

Nice LOTR reference Rockfish. I personally think that we sould militarize the border to stop illegal immigration AND to stop the cartels.

One of the main responsibilities of our federal government is to protect and secure the borders which we know they fail at. And yet they dabble and interfere in all kinds of areas they have no business getting into.

They need to militarize our border to just keep the moochers out not just the drug cartels!!!

Bring our troops home and put them on our border to stop the invasion of our country by Mexico.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Bring our troops home and put them on our border to stop the invasion of our country by Mexico.

Here, here!! Let's protect our own borders instead of Iraq's and Afghanistan's. The USA was never intended to be an empire. Bring our troops home.

Bush has surpassed Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Oh, yes! He did put National Guard on the border to back up Border Patrol for six months, and then pulled them back as if the problem was solved. But I guess the NG was needed in Iraq as their borders are more important than those of the US. After all, there are Halliburton interests to protect, not the peons that are American citizens.