Drug cartels run wild in Mexico

The big Mexican city on the border -- in fact that country's entire northern region -- has become an anarchic site of murder, mayhem and viciousness. It is a huge mortuary of a city where no one is safe and the silence is broken only by the sound of gunfire. Northern Mexico is the Somalia of the Western Hemisphere with killing fields cultivated and sustained by an enormous flow of cash and weapons from the United States, a steady revenue produced from this nation's huge appetite for drugs. In Monterey recently, U.S. State Department officials there were told to evacuate their children after a private school came in harm's way amid signs the drug cartels now have control of the city. The unstable situation now is threatening to spill over into resort areas, adversely impacting Mexico's vital tourist industry already suffering from fears generated by the constant news of slaughter. Next to the economy, the escalating death and destruction toll in Mexico linked as it is to escalating alarm over immigration is increasingly becoming America 's leading domestic issue. It has serious political ramifications for the Obama administration, which is faced with mounting questions about how to keep the violence from spilling into U. S. border cities and to curtail the mass of money headed south every day...more