Death on the border But Washington refuses to act

A war is raging in Mexico, yet Washington still refuses to make securing the border a priority: It's more interested in bashing Arizona's immigration-enforcement law. Yet it's not hard to see why Arizonans are afraid. No, the ongoing Mexican drug wars haven't crossed seriously into the United States yet. But Mexico has seen some 22,743 people killed in drug-related violence since December 2006. And things aren't dying down. After one recent bloody attack, Mexico City's La Reforma newspaper reported, "The situation is becoming more and more like all-out urban warfare." The violence is getting closer to us, too. Three people linked to the US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez (just over the border from El Paso, Texas) were shot to death on March 13. An explosive device was used in an attack on the US consulate in Nuevo Laredo earlier this year. Cartel gunmen have stepped up direct assaults on Mexican military squads sent to police the border. And on March 27, an American rancher, Robert Krentz, was murdered on his Arizona property by someone local law enforcement describes as "a scout for a [Mexican] drug-smuggling organization." The FBI now calls the Mexican drug cartels the most important organized-crime threat to the United States. The feds can't even promise to secure the border. At a recent Senate hearing, the best Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin could say was, "We are geared to deter the impact of the increased violence in Mexico."...more