Posted on 09/26/2006 10:46:48 PM PDT by Kitten Festival
The Border: It takes a lot of nerve for a chief of state to criticize another nation's crime rate. It takes even more nerve to ship one's own criminals there and then complain about the crime rate.
Two weeks ago, when U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza warned tactfully about an explosion of crime on the Mexican border and urged U.S. citizens to be cautious there, he was only doing his job.
But it didn't take long for Mexican President Vicente Fox and Foreign Minister Ernesto Derbez to jump all over the U.S., piously claiming that crime at the border is a "shared" responsibility.
Garza's warning was "not well considered," said Derbez, adding that such remarks "unfortunately make a lot of noise in Mexico."
Both Fox and Derbez implied that the U.S. and Mexico had an equal hand in the emerging wave of drug violence in northern Mexico, where the spillover effects into the U.S. are considerable.
Fox even claimed U.S. crime rates were higher than Mexico's, ignoring the fact that fear is so high on the border that Tijuana's restaurants are going empty and Nuevo Laredo's tourism is down 60%.
Fox's claim is both ridiculous and counterproductive.
The U.S. and Mexico may share a common victimhood, but there's only one source of this crime, and the Mexican government is unwilling to treat it as the national security threat it is. Fox has sent a few hundred troops to Nuevo Laredo, but they've been largely ineffective, and the problem has spread much farther.
That's obvious from the statistics. Drug traffickers have slaughtered 1,500 people in Mexico this year.
In Nuevo Leon state, three police chiefs have been shot dead. And only last Saturday, 50 Mexican federal agents fought traffickers in a pitched military-style battle.
In Michoacan, traffickers are beheading rivals.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Hey, watch how you talk about W's good bud. /sarc
Well he's had it up to here with us, when we cruelly urge Americans to stay out of his dope-heaven country.
I thought W's good bud was the one who showed up in the gallery of the House of Representatives, his pockets full of brass knuckles and all ready to go to war, on September 12th, when the fires were still burning in the ruins of the World Trade Center.
All those other cats suddenly remembered their dental appointments, when things got ugly.
That's exactly the way Mexico wants it, all of their problems to be a shared responsibility.
ping
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