A Nation In Distress

A Nation In Distress

Sunday, December 18, 2011

GOP Bill Considers Drug Cartels ‘Terrorist Insurgency’

From Newsmax:

GOP Bill Considers Drug Cartels ‘Terrorist Insurgency’




House Republicans are sponsoring a bill that would acknowledge Mexican drug cartels as a threat to national security and treat them as terrorists.



GOP Rep. Connie Mack of Florida introduced H.R. 3401, the “Enhanced Border Security Act,” in order to “secure the U.S.-Mexico border, stop criminal access to U.S. financial institutions, and work with Mexico to implement counterinsurgency tactics to undermine the control of the drug cartels in the country,” according to CNS News.



The bill would also double the number of Border Patrol agents and call for the construction of “tactical double layered fencing” to help secure the border.



“A terrorist insurgency is being waged along our Southern border,” Mack said on Thursday as the bill came before the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he serves as chairman.



“The term terrorist insurgency may be strong. But it is based upon unchallenged facts.



“Drug traffickers and criminal organizations have combined efforts to work across borders, unravel government structures, and make large profits from diverse, illegal activity. The near-term result: schools, media and candidates all controlled by criminal organizations. In other words, total anarchy.”



Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said: “I believe that the drug cartels are acting within the federal definition of terrorism, which basically says to intimidate a civilian population or government by extortion, kidnapping or assassination. That is precisely what the drug cartels do. They extort.



“They decapitate people on a daily basis. They burn people alive. Throw people in acid baths. If that’s not intimidation, if that’s not terrorizing a civilian population, I don’t know what is.”



Since 2006, 34,600 people have died as a result of Mexican drug cartel violence, the U.S. government reported earlier this year. But McCaul says the number is now higher, asserting that “50,000 Mexican people have been killed, brutally, at the hands of these drug cartels, more than the American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.”



According to CNS News, the Act’s counterinsurgency strategy would provide an assessment of the terrain, population, ports, financial centers, and income-generating activities of the cartels, evaluate the capabilities of Mexico’s law enforcement, and coordinate with relevant federal agencies to deal with the operations of the cartels within the United States.



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