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Clinton: U.S. can do more to help Mexico fight drug cartels
Mexico could do more to fight drug cartels ...
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. can do more to help Mexico battle drug cartels that have started operating more like terrorists and insurgent groups.

"It is one of my highest priorities," Clinton said Friday during a speech in San Francisco at the nonpartisan Commonwealth Club. "This is one of the most difficult fights that any country faces today. We saw it over the last couple of decades in Colombia."

"We are watching drug traffickers undermine and corrupt governments in Central America, and we are watching the brutality and barbarity of their assaults on governors and mayors, the press, as well as each other, in Mexico," she added.

Clinton said the U.S. can do more than sending the Blackhawk helicopters it promised Mexico.
Done that. Blackhawks were used in the air/ground assault that killed 22 Los Zetas in Tamaulipas last month.
She said the U.S. is helping Mexico create an anonymous tipline to report drug cartels.
Done that, too. Nearly every state attorney general has an anonymous hotline; some even for cattle rustling which is a huge problem in rural Mexico, as do most police corporations.
However, she said, it can also help Mexico rebuild its criminal system and train its police force.
Doing that now, except I would argue it's the wrong thing to do: further central police functions, as they already are.
The Mexicans know what to do. Mexico lacks the political will to do it. The Mexican 'Forty Families' like Mexico the way it is.
We've done the training thingy. I think they're now called Los Zetas.
She likened recent drug cartel violence to terror groups. "For the first time, they are using car bombings," Clinton said. "You see them being much more organized in a kind of paramilitary way."
Posted by: Steve White 2010-10-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=307771