Grisly slayings brings Mexican drug war to US

[babylonsister]

Grisly slayings brings Mexican drug war to US
By PAULINE ARRILLAGA Associated Press Writer


Apr 18th, 2009 | COLUMBIANA, Ala. -- Five men dead in an apartment.

In a county that might see five homicides in an entire year, the call over the sheriff's radio revealed little about what awaited law enforcement at a sprawling apartment complex.

A type of crime, and criminal, once foreign to this landscape of blooming dogwoods had arrived in Shelby County. Sheriff Chris Curry felt it even before he laid eyes on the grisly scene. He called the state. The FBI. The DEA. Anyone he could think of.

"I don't know what I've got," he warned them. "But I'm gonna need help."

The five dead men lay scattered about the living room of one apartment in a complex of hundreds.

Some of the men showed signs of torture: Burns seared into their earlobes revealed where modified jumper cables had been clamped as an improvised electrocution device. Adhesive from duct tape used to bind the victims still clung to wrists and faces, from mouths to noses.

As a final touch, throats were slashed open, post-mortem.

It didn't take long for Curry and federal agents to piece together clues: A murder scene, clean save for the crimson-turned-brown stains now spotting the carpet. Just a couple of mattresses tossed on the floor. It was a typical stash house.

But the cut throats? Some sort of ghastly warning.

more...

http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/us/2009/04/18/D97L0UPG1_drug_war_the_fight_at_home/index.html

[Common Sense Party]

1. Another stupid headline. "Brings" the drug war to the U.S.?

It's BEEN here. For quite some time. The late-to-the-party media is finally noticing it.

[babylonsister]

2. Have Mexican drug king pins been going after people for years,

people from places like Alabama? I wasn't aware of that.

[SharonAnn]

4. yes.

[Common Sense Party]

6. The kingpins themselves don't have to. That's what the cartel is

for. You have lower-level hitmen and assassin lackeys that do the dirty work. And, yes, they have been killing people inside our borders for years.

[sixmile]

3. The mexican border drug war is a smokescreen to waste more money

We'll give huge contracts to corporate campaign donors causing a bigger boondoggle with no longview; it is a red herring.

[lunatica]

5. This reminds me of No Country For Old Men

which is set in the US.

[PufPuf23]

7. Old but Richard Shelby is slime

'KINGPIN' BILL IS LOBBYISTS' TARGET

Senate Aide Says He Was Fired For Refusing To Back Changes

A fired Senate intelligence committee aide said yesterday that powerful Washington lobbyists representing foreign businesses are attempting to undermine legislation that would require U.S. officials to designate foreign "drug kingpins" and freeze their holdings in the United States.

The aide, Jim Stinebower, who helped draft the drug-trafficking bill, said he was fired 13 days ago at the behest of Sen. Richard C. Shelby ( R-Ala. ), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, for refusing to back changes sought by business interests in Mexico and Aruba. Several Republican sources also said Shelby's insistence on amendments had led to the firing of Stinebower, the panel's chief drug analyst.

Stinebower's concerns were echoed by Rep. Bill McCollum ( R-Fla. ) Tuesday in debate on the House floor. "Sadly, we have discovered in this Congress that we are not insulated from efforts of the kingpins to buy influence and corrupt our political institutions," McCollum said. "Their narco-lobbyists were paid well to try to shape and gut this bill through this process. Well, they have not succeeded, fortunately."

more (originally posted in WAPO)

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1196/a01.html

[dkofos]

8. I will begin to worry when innocents are being killed. Until then

it's just the cartels thinning the heard.

[jbnow]

12. They say the cartels are hiring teens. That money that buys

cops and politicos can certainly lure innocents...

[Warpy]

9. Drug gangs in Mexico are into beheadings

and finding headless bodies all over the place was the wakeup call for the Mexican cops that they had a real war on their hands.

Once the gangs got into meth, it was all over as far as any sort of hidden struggle over territory was concerned.

Now it's right there in the open and it will get worse.

I'm not surprised it's in Alabama. I'm not surprised it's anywhere, any more.

The only thing that will end this is ending the drug war, undercutting the black market, and driving the gangs out of business.

[PufPuf23]

10. Does the drug war include pot?

heroin, cocaine, meth = severe social problems

Pot is less socially and medically harmful even recreational than tobacco and alcohol.

I am a child of the 60s in N CA and have never even seen heroin, crack, meth, nor a needle and have no experience with other mind expanding drugs for almost 30 years. My most heavy years of recreational drug use was when I was an under grad at UC Berkeley where I graduated with highest honors when Reagan was guv in the early 70s. His signature slimes my diploma.

I haven't smoked Mexican pot for over 25 years and most of my social peers are the same, we joke about hiding pot from our parents and now adult children.

The litmus test is if the real time "War on Drugs" makes a demon of marijuana.

[Warpy]

13. Heroin and coke didn't cause severe social problems

until they were declared illegal in the early years of the last century.

Meth is a bad drug. Nobody will deny that, least of all people addicted to it. However, meth heads serve as the best warning there is to stay away from the stuff. One meth head will educate people a lot better than a platoon of cops going out to schools to scare the kiddies with their DARE lectures.

Some people want to sleep their way through lives. Others want to get wired and end up on the edge of psychosis. This is why we need rehab.

However, the war against drugs has been much worse than the use of drugs in all cases.

We lost. The drugs won. It's time to end it.

[Fumesucker]

11. The "drug war" fucking STARTED in the USA...

We bribed and blackmailed the rest of the world into going along with our idiocy..

Now, after well over seventy years, the drug war is so culturally ingrained that the great majority of Americans simply cannot imagine things any other way.