Perry backs sending U.S. troops into Mexico to quell drug violence

DMN 11/19/10
Perry backs sending U.S. troops into Mexico to quell drug violence

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday he would support sending U.S. troops into Mexico to fight the drug war.

The Republican has long urged beefed-up security on the American side of the violence-plagued border, but he said stronger tactics are needed to defeat the drug cartels.

"You have a situation on the border where American citizens are being killed, and you didn't see that back when George Bush was the governor," Perry said in an interview with MSNBC.

Asked whether the U.S. should consider deploying troops inside Mexico, Perry said the federal government should consider all options "including the military."

NPR 11/14/10
U.S. Guns Blamed For Fueling Violence In Mexico
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At the chamber of the Mexican Senate, Sen. Sebastian Calderon Centeno says the United States hasn't done anything to curb demand for drugs or to diminish the flow of guns into Mexico. He says the drug war is actually increasing weapons trafficking.

The criminals are getting desperate, he says, and are trying to get more and more guns to attack the Mexican government. The senator says most of the guns in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers are bought legally in Texas, Arizona and California. And, he says, the U.S. has little incentive to stop the smuggling.

"This is a growing business in the U.S.," Calderon says. "They are in the gun sales business, and it doesn't benefit them to stop."

Global Post 4/3/09
Investigation: US retailers fuel Mexico's drug wars
US officials visit Texas in hopes of clamping down on the cross-border weapons pipeline.

McALLEN, Texas — In the graceless Mexican border town of Reynosa, just a few miles over the Rio Grande from here, federal police were stunned by what they found in a Gulf Cartel safe house last November.

Before them lay more than 500,000 rounds of every type of ammunition, sticks of dynamite, 165 hand grenades, tear gas launchers with plenty of shells, handguns and 540 assault-style rifles. It was billed as the largest seized weapons cache in Mexican history. (Click here for a guide to Mexico's leading drug cartels.)

This week, GlobalPost learned the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has traced the majority of those assault-style rifles, by serial number, straight to licensed Texas dealers.

The finding underscores the reasons why U.S. Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano will end her trip to Mexico this week with a stop in Laredo, Texas. She will visit border security systems — through which many of these weapons were no doubt smuggled south after purchase.