WikiLeaks has dumped another batch of State Department cables, and among them are communications which shed some light on a number of controversial issues involving the drug cartels on the south side of the border as reported by Mariano Castillo from CNN.
The cables reflect the U.S. understanding that:
the January 2010 murder of so-called human rights activist Josefina Reyes was done by the Sinaloa cartel because her son was a Juarez cartel hitman;
the Mexican military is not engaged in human rights abuses in its charge against the drug cartels;
the deserters from the Mexican Army Special Forces who founded Los Zetas in the late 1990s received no earlier miltary training in or by the United States;
the December 2008 disappearance of kidnapping expert Felix Batista for which Los Zetas has been blamed was "a game-changer" where American citizens were no longer exempted as targets by the drug cartels;
some of the hand grenades used by the drug cartels likely originated from a cache sold by the United States to El Salvador in the early 1990s;
a mayor suspected of cutting a deal with the Arturo Beltran Leyva cartel was denied entry into the United States in late 2009 after customs officials found drugs in the purse of his lady companion; and
state police in Baja California rejected a U.S. request in June 2009 to arrest an American citizen wanted on drug trafficking charges after he entered a racetrack in Tijuana owned by the city's former mayor.
Perhaps the most disturbing cable reveals an effort by the United States to keep the border violence out of the American press. On Feburary 15, 2010 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended a ceremonial event on the international bridge between the sister cities of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Laredo, TX which was hit with stray bullets during a gun battle the prior evening, and although U.S. authorities considered cancelling the joint ceremony decided to go forward because "a change would make Texas headlines and bring attention to the shootout."
Of course, the Obama Administration long has been blatantly lying to the American people by insisting that there is no evidence of any spillover violence from the drug wars on the border, and its effort to keep a story out of the press dovetails with the denial strategy.
Further reading that may be of interest:
Border Lawmen: Obama Administration Is Lying On Drug Cartel Spillover Violence
Once again, the best advice is to NEVER trust a politician.
Posted by: LeChat | 09/11/2011 at 02:50 PM