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In recent weeks, units of the National Guard have been deployed along our southern border to assist in the war against drugs. Public support for an increased U.S. military presence there is growing. Members of Congress and drug czar William Bennett have joined the chorus calling for military force to secure our porous 1,952-mile border with Mexico.

Although it is viewed by many Americans as a “friendly” country, Mexico is the United States’s number-one source of heroin and marijuana and is used as a major supply route by Colombia’s cocaine merchants. Indeed, as Elaine Shannon details in Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win (Viking, $21.95), Mexico has become another Colombia. While Mexico City routinely promises to cooperate with U.S.-sponsored anti-drug efforts, Miss Shannon provides alarming documentation of official complicity.

WL

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Wayne Lutton

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In recent weeks, units of the National Guard have been deployed along our southern border to assist in the war against drugs. Public support for an increased U.S. military presence there is growing. Members of Congress and drug czar William Bennett have joined the chorus calling for military force to secure our porous 1,952-mile border with Mexico.

Although it is viewed by many Americans as a “friendly” country, Mexico is the United States’s number-one source of heroin and marijuana and is used as a major supply route by Colombia’s cocaine merchants. Indeed, as Elaine Shannon details in Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win (Viking, $21.95), Mexico has become another Colombia. While Mexico City routinely promises to cooperate with U.S.-sponsored anti-drug efforts, Miss Shannon provides alarming documentation of official complicity.