http://www.dailybulletin.com/opinions/ci_4914735
Border threat: Leaders look the other way Daily Bulletin reporter Sara Carter's three-day installment of Beyond Borders was an unsettling way to end 2006. The increased smuggling of drugs, humans and who-knows-what-else through a burgeoning international trade route through Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and Laredo, Texas, is unsettling. So is the human carnage in the all-out battles among Mexican drug-smuggling cartels to control the Mexican trade route. Even more unsettling are the border crossings by "special-interest aliens" - persons from countries that sponsor terrorism - and the "culture of death" catching hold among drug smugglers, a culture that appears to share characteristics with terrorist fanaticism. But perhaps most unsettling is the disconnect between those on the border's front lines and the higher echelons of the U.S. government, where a seemingly willful ignorance persists. In 2005 the Border Patrol apprehended about 650 people in the U.S. illegally from special-interest countries - who knows how many weren't caught - yet Carter was told the FBI and CIA are not using information from Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration agents to make connections among the drug trade, illegal immigration and terrorist organizations. The DEA warns in an intelligence report that Asian narcotics traffickers, in collusion with Mexican drug cartels and terrorist groups, could use the so-called Gateway to the Pacific - a plan to expand border trade through the two Laredos - to bring contraband into the United States. "Contraband can be anything from narcotics, pirated videos, humans or weapons of mass destruction," said a DEA spokesman. Meanwhile, we can't take 4 ounces of shampoo on an airplane. Is that supposed to make us feel safer? Carter reported in January on repeated incursions by Mexican military personnel into the United States - 226 since 1996 - apparently to help cartels smuggle humans and drugs. Shortly thereafter, local law enforcement officials videotaped and photographed an incursion in Hudspeth County, Texas, and Sheriff Arvin West and others testified before a congressional committee with evidence in hand. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, told West and the others they were "lying or mistaken," West said, and Reyes, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other U.S. and Mexican government officials played down the incursion documents obtained by the Daily Bulletin as well as the Hudspeth County incident. (Reyes has since been appointed incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and promptly displayed his ignorance of Al-Qaida and Hezbollah. Will somebody please buy this guy a newspaper subscription before he takes over the committee known as "Intelligence"?) El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego told a House committee in August that terrorist organizations are probing the border with the help of Mexican smugglers. Webb County, Texas, Sheriff Rick Flores testified before Congress about the growing violence in Laredo, which is spilling over from Nuevo Laredo. But former Laredo Mayor Elizabeth Flores said the increasing cross-border trade is "about growth, not death." And that might be the crux of the official downplaying of the border violence and terror threat. There's a lot of money to be made. Wal-Mart, for example, and a Hong Kong-based company have invested $300 million to expand a Mexico container port that feeds the Gateway to the Pacific route. The plan is to get more goods from Asia into the United States, in the process redirecting half of the East Coast-bound Asian cargo from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to Mexico. More trade routes and competition among ports help Wal-Mart keep its prices down. But U.S. consumers might be paying a higher price in terms of lost security. At least the threat appears considerably greater than the one from that 4 ounce bottle of shampoo you had to leave at home. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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