Although voters are stepping into the voting booth, to try and strip our tax dollars,
local resources and destruction of lives away from the drug war, our nation's military is amping those actions WAY UP!
Over the last fifty years, even casual observers of our military strategy understand that this nation always has ships in the seas surrounding, and boots on the ground, in those places where drugs are available. For instance, over the past thirtyyears, the USA has had a covert presence in the nation of Columbia, with one of our major "war Pivateers," DynCorp serving to "aid" the government there. In fact, I first wrote about this back in August of 2001 - http://www.coastalpost.com/...
Today, I opened my web browser to note how Yahoo News is touting a story on our increasing militarized efforts of "stopping" the Drug Wars" as these actions take place off the shores of Latin America. Funny that no matter how much our local economies are suffering, there is always money to stay involved in stopping what hasn't stopped yesterday, and what won't be stopped today or tomorrow.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
The crew members aboard the USS Underwood could see through their night goggles what was happening on the fleeing go-fast boat: Someone was dumping bales.
When the Navy guided-missile frigate later dropped anchor in Panamanian waters on that sunny August morning, Ensign Clarissa Carpio, a 23-year-old from San Francisco, climbed into the inflatable dinghy with four unarmed sailors and two Coast Guard officers like herself,
carrying light submachine guns. It was her first deployment, but Carpio was ready for combat.
Fighting drug traffickers was precisely what she'd trained for.
In the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War, the U.S. has militarized the battle against the traffickers, spending more than $20 billion in the past decade. U.S. Army troops, Air Force pilots and Navy ships outfitted with Coast Guard counter-narcotics teams are routinely deployed to chase, track and capture drug smugglers.
The sophistication and violence of the traffickers is so great that the U.S. military is training not only law enforcement agents in Latin American nations, but their militaries as well, building a network of expensive hardware, radar, airplanes, ships, runways and refueling stations to stem the tide of illegal drugs from South America to the U.S.