Is the CIA a drug cartel? Mexican official blames CIA for drug war

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
7/26/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Regardless of the claim, the US is largely responsible for the bloody conflict.

A Mexican government official has told reporters that the CIA and other international security forces are not fighting drug traffickers, but rather they are managing the trade. This is the latest astounding claim about violence that has lasted more than six years and claimed more than 55,000 lives.

How much of this is the US really responsible for? The picture provides a clue.

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JUAREZ, MEXICO (Catholic Online) - Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico, made the claim which has people in Washington upset. While Villanueva is not the first person to make such claims, he is the highest-ranking official to do so thus far.

Villanueva told a reporter for Al Jazeera, "It's like pest control companies, they only control, if you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs."
Villanueva's superiors and the mayor of Juarez, are repudiating his claims.

Juarez Mayor, Hector Murguia, said, "I think the CIA and DEA are on the same side as us in fighting drug gangs. We have excellent collaboration with the US." Al Jazeera noted he made those comments in the safety of his SUV.

While US law enforcement and security agencies might well be doing their best to fight the cartels, the reality is America is very much to blame for the violence in Mexico. The United States is the destination for virtually all of the drugs smuggled across Mexico, which are paid for with dollars. And flowing south across the border are guns, obtained through the US - guns that often end up killing people.

Meanwhile the US has funneled more than $1.4 billion in aid to the Mexican government to provide training and equipment for the drug war, but that doesn't mean all efforts have been helpful.
Certainly, efforts like Fast and Furious, an infamous debacle where US supplied arms were deliberately placed in the hands of the cartels, by government agents, no less, have harmed the image of the US as an ally. In Fast and Furious, the weapons were "lost" and subsequently used to kill a untold number of Mexican civilians and at least one US border patrol agent.

A number of Mexicans blame the CIA for making the problem worse, rather than better. They see in the current war, the machinations of powerful, secretive agencies whose agenda is more about enrichment and empowerment, than justice.

There is a history. The CIA has been linked to drug trafficking for decades, with the money often used to finance clandestine operations around the world. At one time, US senator and former presidential candidate, John Kerry said, "There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with or on the payroll of, the CIA were involved in drug trafficking." In addition to Senator Kerry, a number of other sources, including media sources have occasionally done expos�s on inappropriate, clandestine CIA activity.

It is difficult to disagree with Villanueva and others who share his view, especially when considering the dissonance between known capabilities and actual results. For example, the US is able to track down terrorists in the most inhospitable regions of the Earth (or in their urban lairs) and strike them either using special forces, specially trained local police, or even with unmanned predator drones. Yet, in Mexico, it is proving impossible to intercept high-profile drug lords who live in palatial mansions in full view of the world.

How do these evil men escape justice without the complicity of the government and agencies that are charged with bringing them to justice?

While the quality of the involvement of the CIA and other security agencies may be debatable, it is impossible to excise the blame from America. The United States is the market and the source of the money and the guns that have spread so much death and destruction across Mexico. If the CIA is part of the problem, then it will only be one more sign of the corruption and evil that pervades American and Mexican politics and holds hostage millions of innocents.
� 2012, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Mexico, drugs, war, CIA, cartels, illegal, crime, clandestine, trafficking

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1 - 3 of 3 Comments

MIchael
9 months ago
There is no way to eliminate the drug trade in the world. The CIA uses its trade for gathering of information. The deaths in Mexico are considered collateral damage but the CIA or the US Government will never admit to that. They realize that if the drug trade is legalized their gravy train stops. The DEA gravy train stops as well. If legalization takes place they lose their leverage. So what do you do?

Every country in South America should legalize limited amounts of Marijuana, Cocaine and Heroin. If you do Half the war will go away immediately because you can tell the Americans to get out of your country and go back to theirs. Then you should ban together with other countries throughoutr the world and put pressure on the USA over human rights violations (the 21 million Americans they have jailed and ruined their lives) to legalize the very same way.

All problems will not end with the abolition of prohibition, but they do become manageable and many many people will not be murdered anymore..
Thats all you have to do..
Blair T. Longley
9 months ago
As this article states, the only novelty is that, while "not the first person to make such claims, he is the highest-ranking official to do so thus far."

The more one studies the drug wars, the more obvious it becomes that they were deliberately designed to backfire in the way that they have. Drug wars segued from slavery and racism, and mostly accomplished the same purposes, only with a new, cleverly coded, language to justify their deceit and destruction. The government and supporting cast of actors in this play are professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. Most critics of the government policies take for granted, at face value, what the government, and its supporting players in their play say about what they are doing and why. However, deeper historical analysis will reveal that what actually happens is what was intended to happen. Namely, constantly having more excuses to build a bigger fascist police state, to protect the fascist plutocracy that is actually dominating our civilization.

One wonders how far better liberation theology would go, IF allowed to go there? That is like asking how far down the rabbit hole does Alice need to go, or how far up the tornado does Dorothy need to go, to understand the nature of the infinite tunnel of deceits that is really controlling our society? Welcome to the Bizarro Mirror World Fun House folks, the CIA has long been known to be the biggest drug smuggling operation in the world, and the DEA routinely has agents retiring rich, for facilitating that. There is nothing new about this, except for who says it, and whether they will dare to, or can survive doing so?

As this article emphasized in the introductory line, regardless of subtler issues, the plainly obvious bottom line is that the drug wars were imposed on Mexico by the realities in the USA. The worst of the worst, of course, was when the single best plant on the planet for people, for food, fibre, fun and medicine was renamed "marijuana" and asserted by the government to be "almost as bad as murder." That social insanity of triumphantly enforced lies was what got the Mexican drug cartels going in the firsts place, and subsidized them with billions and billions of dollars, decade after decade. Those cartels have now become monsters, and the most monstrous appear to work hand in glove with the CIA, DEA, and the rest of the alphabet stew of crazy corruption that is the USA. Of course, meanwhile, it has also been discovered and proven that some of the biggest banks have been routinely laundering the profits, and so skimming the cream off the top of the drug wars.

Fortunately, I am not a journalist writing in Mexico, or else I would already be dead for pointing out those social facts. It remains to be seen whether any other officials will point out the obvious ... I suppose they are waiting to see what happens to the life and career of those few who may risk stating what is perfectly clear to anyone who bothers to actually investigate these issues. The problem with discovering that the real world is controlled by huge lies, backed by violence, is that one then might stand in the way of that juggernaut. In that case, it would appear to me that a Christian resistance is the only feasible response left. One can NOT defeat this by becoming even more dishonest and violent, that only makes things worse. It has been proven over and over again that more enforcement results in only one thing for sure, and that is more homicides. It is an extremely delicate and problematic predicament to point out that the society one is inside of is being controlled by huge lies, backed by violence. For a couple thousand years, Christianity, in its better forms, has been developing ways to attempt to do that. However, so far, that has not worked too well ... the real world continues to be controlled by bigger lies, backed up with more violence.
Michael M
9 months ago
Call the CIA a "cartel" if you like... the truth is even uglier.

The CIA is only *one* of a very large number of agencies (agencies of many, many governments, worldwide) who depend on the massive traffic in untraceable cash from the *incredible* profit margins possible in the drug trade.

Cannabis and cocaine, for example: neither of these drugs costs even a five-thousandth as much to produce as they eventually sell for on the street. The resulting (prohibition-controlled) markets make so much "anonymous" money available that it would be stupid for a government in need of "black-ops" funding to ignore that cash-cow as a means to fund business that would make taxpayers would revolt if they knew what their taxes paid for.

Add also the number of law-enforcement jobs paid for indirectly (through taxation) generated by trying (by means of guns and prisons) to prevent ordinary people doing what they enjoy.

Governments and the industries they spawn *need* the trillions of dollars in both direct and spinoff profit created by drug prohibition: without government intervention, cannabis would sell for pennies per ounce and cocaine would sell for less than $1 per gram. The rest of today's price gets divided up carefully between the "illegal" producers/suppliers and the "legal" agencies who both support and prosecute them.

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