The Next War – Mexico? by US Borders

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January 14th 2012

The Next War – Mexico ?

January 14th 2012

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Jeffrey Prather is a former DEA special agent and intelligence officer with 7th Special Forces and the DIA. He spent nearly two decades on the southwest border, in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Bolivia and South America.

Predictions of an Escalated Border War
By Jeff Prather

The Next War

In July 2010, less than an hour’s drive from the Mexican border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested one of their own special agents for selling the home addresses of her fellow agents to the Sinaloa cartel. Last May, instead of arresting drug traffickers, a Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputy was busted for becoming one. FBI agents arrested Deputy Jesus Contreras, a six-year veteran of Customs and Border Protection, and another man, Ernesto Castro. The FBI arrested Contreras while on the job after 
Contreras actually used his own squad car to transport 5-kilograms of cocaine past the I-19 checkpoint while in uniform.The real statistics are anybody’s guess. Nobody knows how many moles are dug into departments, how many bribed inspectors, how many paid officers are still on the job, quietly looking the other way. Or for that matter how many times out in the bush, a Border Patrol or sheriff’s deputy runs into a drug squad who heavily outnumbers and outguns them, and they simply, as ranchers have for decades, ride on.

American police are the finest in the world. But they are simply unprepared to deal with the tactics, techniques and procedures of professional spies and trained soldiers.

The examples of espionage and corruption may have touched my own career as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. In Tucson 2002, immediately after being assigned the extradition of a major Mexican cartel leader I tried to meet with the Assistant United States Attorney assigned to the case but couldn’t. 
It was Friday and the gray, middle aged, divorced lawyer informed me he was jetting off to Mexico City to meet up with his young, leggy Mexican girlfriend–who also just happened 
to work for the Mexican Attorney General. He was removed from the case. But that was that. Case closed.And that is precisely the point. 
No one followed up on the questionable relationship because there was and still is no mechanism 
to do such things in law enforcement. In police bureaucracies, intelligence is limited to tactical information. The bad guys will be crossing this much dope at this place at this time. Real analysis of trends and predictions is rare.In U.S. Military parlance, it’s all about OPSEC (Operational Security) as in, ‘loose lips sink ships.’ Our intelligence agencies have entire departments devoted to CI (Counter Intelligence). But in law enforcement circles, OPSEC is often considered a nicety, not a necessity, and CI is simply unheard of.It’s basic human nature–people do what they are good at and comfortable with. Cops chase crooks, and they’re very good at it. Past experience has taught them how to handle “traditional” criminal enterprises, including mafia and gang activities. Unfortunately, those days are past.Today’s Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) are multi-billion dollar outfits that have the resources to outspend entire nation-states, much less the overwhelmed law enforcement agencies tasked to stop them. They have professional militaries and intelligence organizations: in many cases, former national military or intelligence officers 
who have traded in their meager government paychecks for something more lucrative.American police are the finest 
in the world. But they are simply unprepared to deal with the tactics, techniques and procedures of professional spies and trained soldiers.To understand the problem, you have to understand the history. Twenty years ago Columbians made a choice. They decided to fight for their country, forgo the easy money of drugs and challenge the drug lords. And they paid the price in blood: thousands of Columbian soldiers killed in action, hundreds of cops—along with scores of judges and attorneys—murdered.But then something happened. The Columbian cartels 
lost their monolithic status. Killed off, bought off, run off, or brought to justice, by 2009 many of Columbia’s most powerful drug lords were either dead or on trial, some even here in the United States.As a result the Columbian cartels were forced to rely 
more and more heavily on their Mexican counterparts for transportation, security and distribution. And, gradually, the Mexican cartel snakes ate their South American predecessors. The hyper violence and lavish excess of the South America drug lords gave way to their Central American cousins.The results have been horrific. Mexico is at war. Rival cartels and the Mexican military units are battling for control of the country—and for tens of billions of dollars worth of narcotics income. A process that began in Columbia decades ago has now culminated in civil war and the very real possibility that Mexico will become a failed state. In the last five years alone, more than 40,000 Mexicans have died in this internecine conflict. Tens of thousands more have been tortured, raped and maimed. The numbers are staggering and horrific.

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Stands with you to Secure Our Border. President Obama and the federal government has failed to do its job so we must stand united to protect America!

So how do we fight a war our law enforcement agencies cannot win?

One nation south, Guatemala is even worse. Guatemala’s murder rate is three times higher than Mexico’s. The drug cartels are completely entrenched; less than one percent of crimes are punished. The remorseless violence raging in Mexico and Guatemala can be laid squarely at the feet of the drug cartels and their puppets in both governments, governments that have been thoroughly infiltrated and corrupted by drug cartels dispensing billions of dollars worth of blood money.In Mexico, drug cartels are now in charge of huge swathes of territory, including large cities like Ciudad Juarez. Within their strongholds, cartels own the police, judiciary and prison system. They’ve bought, murdered and tortured government officials, police officers, journalists and citizens into silence. It’s an old choice in Mexico: Ploma or Plata–lead or silver. Take my bribe or my bullet.And in this sea of uncontrolled violence and blood, one Mexican drug cartel rose above all the rest: Los Zetas. Founded by former members of Mexico’s elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (Special Forces Airmobile Group), Los Zetas also drafted-in former federal, state, and local police officers as well as “ordinary” Mexican soldiers. They also formed alliances with groups South of the Mexican border, including Guatemala’s jungle warfare specialists Los Kaibiles.Unlike American mafia and gangs, Los Zetas and their allies have the organization, training and discipline to destabilize an entire hemisphere. They have unlimited funds, unlimited access to weaponry and an army of more than ten thousand loyal members. And their ambitions know few limits. Already we are seeing their efforts to disrupt and influence Mexico’s national elections in 2012. Guatemalan elections are also in 2012, and in both Guatemala and Mexico there’s a very real chance that Los Zetas can stage a successful coup d’état.Los Zetas have continued to grow and expand even in the face of active U.S. government involvement in Mexico’s fight against the cartels. In 2010 the State Department sent nearly five hundred million dollars worth of weapons and equipment to the Mexican military. The crisis is so bad in Mexico that, just as in Afghanistan after 9-11, the CIA has quietly inserted paramilitary teams from their Special Activity Division in country and began training those who, they hope, are and will remain the good guys.But again, the problem comes back to the fact that our domestic law enforcement agencies are simply unprepared and unequipped to handle a threat of this magnitude and sophistication. The FBI has a long tradition of Foreign Counter Intelligence (FCI) and has, more than any other agency, been successful in sorting out and sifting through embedded cartel spies and corrupt cops. But, infamously tight lipped about internal operations, it’s impossible to tell how effective they’ve actually been and what and whom they’ve missed.It’s the classic problem when law enforcement tries to do intelligence work, or when an intelligence organization delves into police work; a conundrum I saw repeatedly while working in U.S. embassies throughout Central and South America the last twenty years: Evidence versus intelligence. Evidence is based upon fact. Intelligence is best guess. Evidence is presentable in court. Intelligence is not since it gives away your hand and endangers valuable, vulnerable and limited sources of that intelligence.So how do we fight a war our law enforcement agencies cannot win? And remember, this is just the beginning. Act one, scene one. Like a wolf pack tearing at a carcass, international cartels are aiming to create a corridor of violence from Columbia up through Central America and on into the U.S.. Drugs and slaves go north, guns and cash go south.Like chemotherapy, the cure may well be worse than the disease. How can the U.S. successfully fight gang infiltration, cartel espionage, and cartel armies? How can agencies with limited focus and resources fight organizations with unlimited ones? There is only one coherent answer, one clear way. Besides surrendering our border as the cartels want. And after 10 years of hard fighting in the Mideast, American veterans would never countenance it. The answer, the only solution is inevitable, unpleasant and unthinkable. But already the Pentagon is quietly planning for it.Our next war is Mexico.

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Mexican Drug Cartel Beheadings Come to US

See Video

Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico.

Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year.

A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man’s hands and feet were reportedly missing, too.

Ex-DEA Agent: Mexican Drug Cartels Beheaded Three Victims On U.S. Soil In Last Year

Although the Obama Administration cynically insists for political gain that there is no evidence of drug cartel spillover violence from Mexico into the United States a former DEA supervisor begs to differ, and he insists that their most gruesome tactics including beheadings are occurring on American soil.

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