Down on the Border w/ Senator Kerry

Someone passed along this article from the El Paso Times.  Seems our Senator Kerry was down there yesterday and held a hearing on violence on the border and the drug war.

The conclusion of those testifying was interesting:

Speaking almost with one voice, police officers, politicians and border experts who testified at a Senate field hearing said a military buildup would be of no help as the United States tries to assist Mexico in its war against the drug cartels.

From this (and what his staff had told him before the hearing), Senator Kerry drew this conclusion:

"There has been an exaggeration," Kerry said.  "The spillover issue, from the facts and statistics I heard here today, it is very clear to me that El Paso is safe.  The idea of dispatching the National Guard to the border is premature and possibly counterproductive."

Kerry said the drug war seemed contained to Mexico.

"So far the United States has largely been spared. But it is in our national interest, and it is our solemn obligation, to take steps today to help curtail the killing in Mexico.

I wonder what "solemn obligation" means.  I will EMail the Senator's office here in the Commonwealth and ask.  (I am passing over the idea that the "drug war" is contained, even to Mexico.  "I don't need help here" isn't the same as it is good everywhere.)

The other thing I would like to know is what business it is of his if the National Guard is sent to the border?  Doesn't the National Guard belong to Texas Governor Rick Perry?

In related news, the Instapundit has this information on guns and Mexico.   The source for Instapundit is Fox News, so those of you who believe no truth comes through those microphones may stop reading at this point ⊗

Here is the report from William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott on Thursday.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

Expanding on that quote, we have this:

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing.  And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

The reporters then go on to talk about the other sources, including South Korea, China (one assumes that is not Taiwan), Spain (shouldn't we be indicting high officials in the Spanish Government?), Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

Like most things, what is happening in Mexico is complicated.  And, the good we are trying to do one place may be spilling over into bad being done somewhere else.  For example, as we succeed in drying up drug trafficking through Mexico, the dealers will go somewhere—they won't just go away.  There is this from someone who was just down in Hispaniola.  I have paraphrased.

The problem extends beyond Mexico.  In Haiti and the Dominican Republic the good guys are worried about the growing influence of Mexican and Colombian cartels.  Scary, they are asking for help, but it is not there.  The Caribbean is out third border, impossible to control, and often forgotten as other than a place Castro lives. Haitian needs more police presence in the south of the nation.  The Dominicans believe drugs are moving through their ports (including Caucedo that has pretty good security), and that there has been at least one execution style killing.  Jamaica believes that the cartels will move into the Caribbean even more as Mexico becomes more difficult.  Dare I suggest that Cuba is a possible ally?

Yes, you may!

And, isn't this just the wheel coming full circle?  Didn't drugs used to flow through the Carib, via airplane, but we shut that down through diligent effort and the river of drugs they shifted course to Mexico.

The first step is getting control of the market places in the United States.  Here is a first level view of the problem.

Regards  —  Cliff