Mexican Drug War

Between now and the seating of a new Congress after the 2012 elections, drug reform is going to be a tough slog on Capitol Hill. But that doesn't mean reformers are going away, or that there aren't battles to be fought and won.

The Mexican president gave his annual state of the union speech last week, but that had no impact on the killing.

Along with the usual carnage and corruption, suspected Zetas killed 52 casino goers in a gasoline/fire attack, teachers skipped school following extortion threats, authorities bust a Sinaloa Cartel "cell" in Utah, and one cartel has put up "wanted" posters targeting leaders of another cartel and offered rewards for them.

We review John Gibler's To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War and find it very powerful and disturbing indeed.

The University of Texas-El Paso Border Security Conference saw a shift announced in Plan Merida priorities and a lot of happy talk about defeating the cartels, but little discussion of ending the drug war.

CIA agents and US mercenaries stationed at a military base in northern Mexico are helping fight the drug cartels. And the killing continues...

You know things are messed up when the federal police are shooting at the head of the Ciudad Juarez police. Oh, and 216 more people were killed there in the drug wars last month.

The violence rages unabated in Mexico...

Weak Central American states are hard-pressed to go up against the Mexican cartels, and now, Guatemala's president wants to build a NATO-style regional military force to go up against them. And for the US to pay for it.

The drug czar has released the 2011 National Drug Control Strategy, and there's little new there but a renewed attack on medical marijuana and legalization. Otherwise, it's pretty much business as usual.