TheAgitator.com
America Still Supporting Torture . . . But in That Other War
Saturday, July 18th, 2009It’s Mexico’s drug war. And yes, you’re helping to pay for it.
The Mexican army has carried out forced disappearances, acts of torture and illegal raids in pursuit of drug traffickers, according to documents and interviews with victims, their families, political leaders and human rights monitors.
From the violent border cities where drugs are brought into the United States to the remote highland regions where poppies and marijuana are harvested, residents and human rights groups describe an increasingly brutal war in which the government, led by the army, is using harsh measures to battle the cartels that continue to terrorize much of the country.
In Puerto Las Ollas, a mountain village of 50 people in the southern state of Guerrero, residents recounted how soldiers seeking information last month stuck needles under the fingernails of a disabled 37-year-old farmer, jabbed a knife into the back of his 13-year-old nephew, fired on a pastor, and stole food, milk, clothing and medication.
In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, two dozen policemen who were arrested on drug charges in March alleged that, to extract confessions, soldiers beat them, held plastic bags over their heads until some lost consciousness, strapped their feet to a ceiling while dunking their heads in water and applied electric shocks, according to court documents, letters and interviews with their relatives and defense lawyers.
None of this is particularly new. The tactics between the Mexican army and the drug cartels have grown increasingly brutal since 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon quite literally made the drug war a military operation.
So far, he’s won nothing but praise and continued funding from American politicians.
How can one tell the Army from the cartel members? This is 1930’s Chicago on a larger scale.As we all know,black markets breed corruption because of the large sums of money involved.Any product people want that is banned,or made scare, by government will produce these results.Drugs,alcohol,tobacco and food all have been cause for this activity.
Prohibition is morally wrong. Here’s another example of why.
Gee, if they’d slapped ‘em upside the head with a phone book. cuffed ‘em to hot radiators, and hooked field telephones to their testicles, it’d be just like Chicago. Besides, the CIA is the bigtime dealer. Read narconews and none of this stuff will surprise you next time.
I’m talking ’70’s -’80’s Chicago.
I don’t know how you do it, Radley. Just looking at this stuff makes me want to run and hide.
Very glad you’re at it, though. Peace.
“Read narconews and none of this stuff will surprise you next time.”
I prefer Alex Jones for my batshit crazy conspiracies. He’s much more entertaining.
Mexican government torturing people to get confessions?
Wow, I wondered what kind of policy-making job W had taken up now that he has all this spare time…
ALEX, I could understand it’s hard to grasp authentic journalism with your lips glued to your boss’s ass. The view must be rather limited.
Yes, time to just put heroin in high school vending machines and solve the drug crisis.
thorn,
Kids in high school get all the drugs they want without vending machines, right now! Dealers don’t card. You know?! And the color of your kids’ money is no different than any other “customer”. Keeping it the way it is guarantees fresh meat for the dealers at the local schools!
Talk about the drug war failing the kids! But what kind of message do you want to send the kids?!! Sorry, kids. We just don’t care enough about you to change failed drug war policy!
Michael,
I’m a bit confused… so are you for or against affordable narcotic distribution for 8th graders?
kt, I don’t have a boss. I used to, but I chose a career I enjoy and worked to develop the skills and reputation that now afford me the ability to work when and where I want. I thought that was an easier route than joining some Zapatista revolution hoping an anarcho-communist (or whatever they’re calling it now) regime would fill the world with fairies and unicorns.
Yep, Thorn, we’ll put them right beside the vodka machines that are already in every hallway due to its legal status. That’s not cheap, stupid reductionism at all.
I assumed thorn was parodying drug warrior logic. Oh well, it’s funny either way.
Torture in Latin American Police is a standard practice. The army? The hell, Army is not police, it´s even worse.
Thorn, is it really your proposal that if massive numbers of people are NOT tortured, we’ll have vending machines full of heroin in grade schools?
So, please allow me to torture everyone in your family (and make some just vanish) and you’ll just have to trust me that it is for…I don’t know…clearer cell phone reception. Yay logic!
While many politicians avoid talking about the failed war on drugs at all, others occasionally slip up and say some remarkably stupid things.
Such is the case with this state senator from Texas when he responded this spring to citizens protesting the violence in border cities during a Fox News interview.
The good senator then proceeds to launch into several minutes of self promotional bloviation.
There’s just plain dumb.
There’s dumber than a fence post dumb.
And then, there’s Drug Warrior Dumb™
The sad thing is that this dude is smart enough to know what’s really happening and why, but chooses instead to pander to the ignorance of his social conservative immigrant hating base.
There’s just plain dumb.
There’s dumber than a fence post dumb.
And then, there’s Drug Warrior Dumb™
And all three of the members of Congress from my district/state are the latter.
So when Prez.Calderon is gone ,will the Merida Plan die from lack of support? My guess is YES, even though the cartels and the USA /UN actually support it’s continuation.
[...] The article mentions that the report could endanger U.S. funding but Radley Balko notes that the crackdown has been praised and funded by U.S. [...]
Considering that in this economy it seems only Uber-bankers and drug cartels are the ones truly prospering, you have to ask why would we want to bail out banks that are up to their hair follicles in laundered drug money…which further services the cartels? The billions they make far outstrip anything Uncle sends by way of ‘foreign aid’. And considering the double hit the US taxpayer is taking (the ‘aid’ and the cost of inflating the currency supply via the Fed Reserve/Treasury two-step) it becomes even clearer that we’re only feeding a beast we’re supposed to be starving.
Prior to 1914 and the first Federal anti-drug laws, there were no cartels worth mentioning. After the laws came the crime, corruption, and sundry evils associated with the illegal drug trade. And now, the government is in effect bankrupt, so why do we keep acting as if it wasn’t and send billions down another black hole; wasn’t Plan Colombia enough of a failure? How many times must we lead with the chin before we realize that this is just what the opposition wants?
Legalize the crap and let the idiots kill themselves, just as we let alcoholics do with booze. The rest of us can use them as object lessons for kids to ponder. This idiocy has gone on long enough…
Sorry Alex, — re you’re having no boss— I’d forgotten you’re a libertarian, which means trust fund baby who wants to be liberated from any taxes on the loot mummy/daddy ripped off from the masses._