Eighty-Year-Old US-Mexico Drug Program is Far Over Budget
A DRCNet member who blogs at the Daily Kos, among other places, sent me a fascinating article he found recently in the New York Times web archive about the US-Mexico drug war. According to the article, titled "US to Join Mexico in Fight on Drugs" and published in May 1925:
The drug treaty which will be formulated in El Paso by the Commissioners of the United States and representatives of the Mexican Government Is expected to achieve two results -- elimination of the constant stream of drugs which Is pouring into the United States through Mexico and helping to clean out from the border towns several groups of American and foreigners who 'have made large sums of Money through the drug traffic.Eight two and a half years later, President Bush has proposed spending another $1.5 billion on the drug war south of our border. But according to the US General Accountibility office:
According to the US interagency counternarcotics community, hundreds of tons of illicit drugs flow from Mexico into the United States each year, and seizures in Mexico and along the US border have been relatively small."Can we agree at a minimum that this project is far over budget?
Location:
United States
See map: Google Maps
Looking for the easiest way to join the anti-drug war movement? You've found it!
Budget go's on and on and...
Thats 100's of billions over budget, so far. As to this 1.5 billion, it go's ,in a round about way,after wetting the beaks of politicos, into the pockets of private companies hired to fight this neverending,violent thing. Flushing sound once again.Prohibition is a waste of revenue and a waste of lives.
The Mexico Address
Four score two-and-one-half years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new party drug, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created to enjoy life.
Now we are engaged in a great drug war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great cannabis field of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might party. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men and women, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under Pot, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Giordano
(with due acknowledgement to Abraham Lincoln)
"The Mexico Address" ---
"The Mexico Address" --- Indeed.
Post new comment