Yeah, the Cartels Are Terrible, But at Least It’s Only Mexico’s Problem . . .
The house on Knightner Road is small, blue and white, with a stone front porch and a string of Christmas lights still hanging. Here, crack cocaine was sold to drive-up customers a few miles from the state Capitol in Columbia.
The one on Pound Road in rural Gaston, just south of Columbia, is a brown-and-white trailer, with a gravel driveway and woods out back. Here, federal law enforcement officers surprised Frediberto Pineda, who had 10 kilos of cocaine worth $350,000 in his possession.
Six months went by between the first FBI inquiries into cocaine trafficking at the house on Knightner Road and Pineda’s arrest. But for the bureau, he was a prize worth waiting for. A member of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, he had quietly settled in central South Carolina, put down roots and began managing one of the gang’s new outposts in the United States.
As the cartels expand up and out from the Southwest border, they are sending waves of men like Pineda, many of them trained in Mexico, to run their U.S. operations. In the last few years, they have established a prosperous retail industry, with cartels staking out “market territories,” lining up smuggling routes, and renting storage bins and drug houses.
Coming soon: displays of dead bodies and severed heads, in your hometown!
Twice deported after less serious convictions…
And yet here he is. That says it all to me.
Dana (4eca6e) — 4/18/2011 @ 6:54 pmthe cocaine should be legal I think cause we suck balls at the drug war
happyfeet (760ba3) — 4/18/2011 @ 7:04 pmWhile the government was busy patting itself on the back for, along with the Columbian government, getting Pablo Escobar, we paid little attention to a man named Amado Carrillo Fuentes.
Fuentes was reported to be the wealthiest drug lord in the world, but he wasn’t part of the Columbian cartels, he was Mexican, running drugs to El Norte from Mexico.
And when the Columbia drug cartels were broken up, everyone was paying attention to the big dogs, but little interest was paid to the lower level lieutenants who knew the business like the backs of their hands. They had already established the drug routes into El Norte, had made the contacts and were prepared to move right into Mexico, unimpeded by a corrupt Mexican government. Oh, yeah, they were illegals in Mexico, but the greasing of palms in Mexican government allowed for a blind eye to be turned toward them.
Nobody on our side of the border paid attention. No one. Oh, yeah, a few agents rang the warning bell, but the meme how Mexico was our good friend and neighbor had to be protected at all costs.
Remember, the two biggest suppliers of our oil comes not from the Middle East, but Canada, and Mexico.
Now, we have an idiot (just one of many) running the DoHS. We are being told that our southern border is safer than ever as border patrol agents and ranchers are being murdered with guns the AFT allowed to be walked into Mexico. Again, the powers thought they could track those weapons once they landed in Mexico. Just another example of the idiocy that dwells in Washington, D.C.
Two years ago, Congressman Mike McCaul did an excellent report on the border. Nothing has changed unless you can count as change the fact that the border is currenly even more porous, there are even more drug runners pouring across our borders and now they are setting up shop in our own neighborhoods.
Somehow, I don’t think that is the kind of change we can believe in.
retire05 (2d538e) — 4/18/2011 @ 7:08 pmhappyfeet, you want to legalize drugs? Fine. As long as you do not get to collect a welfare check and if you O.D., hospital ERs are not required to treat you if you can’t pay for that treatment.
Anyone living in public housing, receiving any kind of welfare from food stamps to TANF, should be drug tested and if found to have drugs in their system, all welfare should end immediately.
retire05 (2d538e) — 4/18/2011 @ 7:11 pmand this will be soon to follow
Between 2006 and 2010, nearly 1,000 of the victims murdered by drug cartels were under the age of 18. Recently, many of these child victims have been toddlers and infants.
One infant was shot and killed while strapped into a car seat, while another was murdered while his grandmother cradled him in her arms.
In Chihuahua, a state police commander and her 5-year-old daughter were walking to school when both were shot dead by cartel gunmen.
In another case, three young girls between the ages of 12 and 15 were executed in their home in Ciudad Juarez when assassins showed up at their home to kill their father. When they realized he was not home, they killed his three young daughters instead.
Another savage murder involved a 4-year-old girl found dead with a bullet to the chest, slumped over the body of her murdered, bound, and gagged mother.
In these cases, it appears that the children were not victims of circumstance, but were actually targeted by the assassins. A message is being sent: no one is safe, no one will be spared from the violence. The murder of a rival or a law enforcement official is no longer enough; they now will kill children to reinforce fear.
while janet sleeps this storm is comming….
rumcrook (4a9bee) — 4/18/2011 @ 7:43 pmSometime early in the Palin presidency, she’ll be confronted by the complete collapse of social order in Mexico. The Mexican government will have failed and individual drug gangs will rule in their areas.
At that point it won’t much help Mexico if we legalize drugs. Our options will be a really big wall or Manifest Destiny.
We probably don’t want to wait that long.
Kevin M (298030) — 4/18/2011 @ 7:47 pmAlso, see Harold Coyle, Trial by Fire (1993)
Kevin M (298030) — 4/18/2011 @ 8:00 pm“the cocaine should be legal I think cause we suck balls at the drug war”
Mr. Feets – If we can be good at killing fetuses, no reason we can’t be good at a drug war.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 4/18/2011 @ 8:39 pmYou hate black people for reals Mr.retire
/happyfeet
DohBiden (15aa57) — 4/18/2011 @ 8:50 pmAs big median would note, this is proof that you hate Mexicans.
JD (318f81) — 4/18/2011 @ 8:51 pmDoes feets maintain that only blacks partake in coke, and other recreational pharmaceuticals?
AD-RtR/OS! (47c5c8) — 4/18/2011 @ 8:58 pmWanna solve the drug problem? Three steps:
1) The drug cartels being a clear and present danger to the US sovereignty are hear by classified as multinational terrorist organizations engaged in biological and chemical warfare on the US. They, and their supporters, financial and materiel, are unlawful combatants under the Geneva Convention, and thus are not subject to civilian trials.
2) The drugs that the federal government confiscates, instead of being destroyed, should be mixed with some persistent, fatal toxin and then re-released into the drug pipeline. If you have no drug users, you have no drug trade. State and local confiscations would still be destroyed.
3) Any addict wishing treatment will be treated, at taxpayer expense, provided they complete the course of treatment. Those opting out before completion will have to repay taxpayers. Relapses are not indications of failure to complete treatment.
MunDane (54a83b) — 4/18/2011 @ 9:18 pmNot to mention that our national park system is already under cartel control.
Patricia (0131bf) — 4/18/2011 @ 10:44 pmYeah, I’d be cool with that. After all, I don’t use drugs. Essentially all of the threat drugs pose to me is a result of their illegality producing a violent black market, and cops getting all militaristic in response.
See, I don’t give a fig about what happens to people who use drugs, as a result of that usage. They’ve signed up for that. What pisses me off are all the sensible, responsible people who get to be collateral damage in the War.
Brett Bellmore (6652c2) — 4/19/2011 @ 4:12 am#12, Mundane, Congress Mike McCaul (Tx-R) has been trying to get the Mexican drug cartels listed as terrorist organizations for some time now. It would allow the U.S. LE agencies far more latitude when dealing with those cartels, both here at home and internationally.
McCaul has been getting the cold shoulder from not just the DoJ, but the White House as well. And Calderon of Mexico is against that move (I wonder why).
retire05 (2d538e) — 4/19/2011 @ 7:45 amWell, if Mexico is so bad, it’s a good thing we’re such a good safety valve.
Arizona Sheriff Cites Flood of Border Agents Confirming Feds’ No-Apprehension Policy
Kevin M (73dcc9) — 4/19/2011 @ 5:59 pm