Pubdate: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 Source: Long Beach Press-Telegram (CA) Copyright: 2010 Los Angeles Newspaper Group Contact: http://www.presstelegram.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/244 THE OTHER WAR Drug Cartels Are Murdering Each Other - and Americans Are Not Immune. The murders Sunday of three American consular workers in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border town, are an outrage and another indication that the war on drugs is a dismal, violent failure. The situation is so bad that reports of assassinations by the two main drug cartels don't even make it into Mexican newspapers. Reporters and editors are fearful that they, too, will be targeted. by gangs. More than 2,000 people have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez alone, according to The New York Times. Thousands more have been murdered throughout the country. Last weekend 50 more murders were reported around the country. How many more that went unreported is not known. The murders of the three Americans should give pause to parents whose children are heading to Mexico for spring break. Americans are an especially easy - and lucrative - target for ransom and worse, which is why the State Department has advised against travel to Mexico. As it is, families of consular workers (two children were wounded in Sunday's attack) are sending their families back to the States for safety. It's puzzling that any American workers would stay in Mexico while the war rages. The U.S. has given Mexico $1 billion in the past three years to help fund the war on drug cartels, whose murder methods include brutal torture and beheadings. Critics on both sides of the border have concluded - with Advertisement Quantcast good reason - that the drug war has been a tragic and dismal failure. Worse, that war has made its way across the border into American cities, as the cartels vie for territory. California prisons have a huge population of gang members, many of whom are involved in cross-border trafficking. There is no solution to the drug war as long as Americans' appetite for illicit drugs makes importing them to the U.S. hugely profitable. While we think legalizing marijuana would help lessen the drug war, the other cash cows - cocaine, heroin and ectsasy - will still fuel outright warfare on Mexican streets. Meanwhile, our advice to vacationers is to find another place to go - especially college kids who think they are immune to a kidnapping or a bullet. They should be reminded of the massacre of 16 people last January. At first it was thought that the murders were a settling of scores between the two cartels. In fact, the 16 were Mexican students at a birthday party. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake