In what officials caution is now a dangerous and even deadly crime wave, Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone. But local authorities say Washington, DC is too obsessed with al Qaeda terrorists to care about what is happening in their own backyard right now.
Two men with a gun grabbed the 34-year-old from his van and dragged him 50 yards to a waiting SUV. His wife threw rocks at the car, then gave chase in her own SUV. Neighbors in northwest Phoenix called police. Yet when police found her later, she at first denied there was a problem.
A major U.S. city long known as an illegal immigrant sanctuary has the nation’s highest rate of ransom kidnappings, virtually all of them connected to Mexican drug cartels that have penetrated the area in the last few years.
Federal law enforcement officials have crowned Phoenix the country’s kidnap-for-ransom capital, according to a news report published this week. Arizona’s largest city, also the nation’s fifth most populous, by far has more ransom kidnappings than any other U.S. municipality and most every victim and suspect is connected to Mexican drug smugglers from Sinaloa which is located along the Pacific Coast several hours south of Arizona.
As our operations wind down from the successes in Iraq, and the National Command Authority is ramping up our presence in Afghanistan with an additional 17,000 combat forces, little has been addressed in the mainstream policy wonkery about Mexico’s instability and brush with Civil War between the brave, but by all measures ineffectual, Mexican security and law enforcement forces, and the ruthless, well funded, well equipped, and increasingly brash Drug Cartels. I have been monitoring this for several weeks, and there are those within the periphery of National Strategy and Policy that recognize this as a serious emerging problem, but is just now getting some greater play within the Mainstream Media. What coverage it does get focuses on the crime and corruption aspects and doesn’t link the severity and scope as a National Security issue for the US. I am more and more convinced that this is in fact a serious challenge to US national security, and three recent reports substantiate my position.
The first of these predictions that got considerable play back in January came from the outgoing Director of the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden. He commented in numerous interviews that the CIA concluded that after a potential development of a nuclear weapon from Iran, the possibility and ramifications of Mexico failing as a state as a result of the inability of the Federal government quelling the violence perpetrated by the Cartels in their continued fight for smuggling routes and market share was the second most threatening issue to US National Security. With Al Qaeda lurking around, having found proof of their desire to weaponize a biological or chemical agent to unleash on innocent Americans, let alone a dirty bomb, that is quite a statement on Hayden’s part…and ominous.
Who was it on the last post. Texas Fred that said none of the prez. of the past since Reagan have done anything about the border. I agree, and we are suffering for it. This will spread like wildfire into our country and with the socialist leader in place now, what a better time. COuple this with Sharia law down the pike and we have one heck of a mess.
I don’t really see anyone with guts on the horizon who WILL take these issues by the horns and just do the right thing.
That is why I am liking Glenn Beck more and more lately. I am definately not a Republican anymore, but a conservative period. I want a straight line conservative or forget it. I am tired of the ‘polticians’. . We need a “Joe” For prez.
I have friends and family in CA, AZ, and TX. The situation is approaching anarchy and is taking down local budgets (law enforcement, education, health care).
What’s happening in certain locations in those states never makes the news and cannot be even adequately catalogued by organizations in the collection of such data.
The situation is that bad. And not only in the border states, either. These invaders are scattered all over the United States. Some locales are worse than others — right now. Given time, the entire nation will be in serious trouble with the kinds of items mentioned in this post.
In fact, unless I miss my guess, the fellow who rear-ended me back in 2005 and did permanent damage to my body was such an illegal. Good luck collecting via a law suit! I haven’t seen one thin dime yet, never mind how many high-powered attorneys I have on the case.
What this wave of “immigrants” amounts to is this: An invasion!
A nation cannot stand if she doesn’t exert sovereignty and protect her borders.
Just look at Bosnia, for pity’s sake. The same principle.
Since 1986 Congress has lied to the American people about ‘doing something’ about the US southern border. It was a ‘cross-your-heart-hope-to-die’ sort of affair with the Amnesty. I called those Incumbistanian Emirs seatwarmers at the time, and that is just what they are. A few of the herd have been culled, but they are still a large contingent in Congress: those that see no need to keep their word to the American people.
It was just a little over a year ago that I looked at the criminal cartels and their incoming supply lines for cash and expendibles. Even worse is that a 2003 Congressional Research Service report cited the following groups as active with criminal gangs south of the border: al Qaeda, Hezbollah, HAMAS, and Red Mafia groups… and fun guys like FARC which is still around with many having taken their money and run elsewhere to get their own narco-terror groups going. Really, when you catch a Hezbollah agent carting a few tons of pseudoephedrine from Canada to Mexico to get it made into meth, you do have a problem. And you don’t need to invoke conspiracies to get to mayhem in Mexico, either, just flat-out folks doing what they say they will do.
I can also easily name one Red Mafia group that has: 1) $10 billion/year in swindled cash from Russia, 2) deep investments in the natural gas and petroleum sector, and, 3) willing to play hardball with Iran… as in ‘cut off your supplies’ hardball. Since its MO is to insert itself between a poor, resource rich country and a relatively rich neighbor and chisel out a payment in the billion per year and strong-arm one of the nastiest Nations on the planet, I can see a great field of opportunity for just a bit of cash to pay big rewards in Mexico. Perhaps we will soon be paying extortion fees to them… while the cartels operate to destabilize, the sharp operators can move in to pick up the pieces. And these guys make the cartels look like kindergartners in the crime realm.
So with money, narcotics and lovely weapons flowing in illegally to put a hurt on the northern mark, just how is that different than what we are seeing now? You do need to build up the mayhem before it can ‘spill over’… and it doesn’t take a ‘conspiracy’, just shrewd operators doing the exact, same thing they have done before elsewhere.
We will soon have the next COIN deployment for the US military and it will be exactly where I predicted it would be a year ago: the US desert SW and northern Mexico. COIN is war.
And this Administration isn’t ready to fight it… they want us to succumb to it as a perfect ‘opportunity’ to put the screws on via their Leftist agenda. War in Iraq? Cheap and easy.
War in Phoenix, San Diego, and who knows where else? Lethal, expensive and the blood will run. Time has nearly run out. And nothing will stop this slide save fighting through it. And like Iraq and Afghanistan there will be no ‘front lines’.
The storm front is nearly here.
And hell will follow.
We are on the brink of a civil war with these illegal immigrants. They truly are insulting with their idiotic belief system that America is theirs and that we owe them.
It is pathetic what has gone on over the last decade to date. The economy suffers not because of bad or poor judgment of presidents, but because judges refused to enforce the laws we so proudly claim to honor.
Al-Qaeda is planning via the southern border to send in more terrorists, and they are not just Arabs, they are Iranians, Turks, Indonisians, and many South Americans. Mexicans are the least of our problems.
“War in Phoenix, San Diego, and who knows where else? Lethal, expensive and the blood will run. Time has nearly run out. And nothing will stop this slide save fighting through it. And like Iraq and Afghanistan there will be no ‘front lines’.
The storm front is nearly here.
And hell will follow.”
Words of shock, words of wisdom. We are placing our OWN heads on the veritable chopping block, willingly it seems.
BZ
And yet we ignore this presence.
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No, WE don’t ignore it, our Texas Governor has asked for the Guard to be deployed, he was turned down…
Obama ignores the border, and no one is taking him to task for it.
George W. Bush ignored it, and the Bush Bots kept right on giving him head, all Bush needed was 28% of the nation to approve of him and that was OK, he was doing it RIGHT. Bush IS a wetback loving asshole!
Clinton?? He had NO idea past cigars and fat gals.. Illegal?? Bubba didn’t think anything was illegal…
Bush 41?? As useless as his son…
Even the great Ronald Reagan messed it up, he was the father of amnesty.. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
We got trouble in River City, and it sure ain’t POOL…
And the purple lipped Obamessiah doesn’t give a DAMN!
And Rivka, it was none since Eisenhower… Reagan was a screwup on this topic too…
The only silver lining (for now – no telling when this will change) is that it is the cartels executing this violence on illegals. It never makes the news because illegals are afraid of telling the cops there is a problem, for fear that the ones reporting the problem will be deported.
Well, freaking duh! If all the illegals were deported, the kidnappings would not be happening here in Phoenix – they would be Mexico’s problem alone, instead of dragging the US into this mess.
I, for one, will not tolerate this. When the tide shifts and the kidnap targets shift to legal citizens, then the invaders are going to wish they DID have civil rights. Invaders, as far as I am concerned, are begging to be shown who has the biggest stick, and I will show them the size of my stick. Once I get arrested, my lawyer will be defending me on Constitutional grounds – that is, I took an oath to defend the country and the Constitution and I have not been released from that oath.
Hey, wetbacks! You been warned!
I hear and read, right here, comments of unrest and disgust. Not America — but America’s POLITICIANS — are you LISTENING?
In the not too distant future, you will HAVE to.
BZ
Under our current Democratic leadership (oxymoron) a comprehensive US response to the unrest on our southern border will no doubt be late in coming. In addition to that, since democrats seem incapable of doing a dynamic analysis of any crisis, they will no doubt fail to take into account how radical chicano groups (such as La Raza and MEChA) operating within our borders, will respond, both to the unrest and our response to it.
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I just briefly mentioned this subject on one of my posts and a liberal came in to inform me that the media is exaggerating the situation when in actuality they aren’t covering it half enough!
As Always says, the situation is indeed approaching anarchy, and as I posted on my last post, Houston has a liberal Mayor who want’s to put the responsibility of illegal drug-running killers off on the Federal Government while he smugly ignores the problem, not wanting to offend Hispanics for fear of losing votes! GAG! I’m not so far from Houston but even if I lived in Alaska this would make me just as angry. This is America but our elected officials refuse to defend it’s legal citizens. It’s not only Democrats who are at fault either. You and I both know that President Bush very effectively skirted around the problem too. It’s disgusting!
Gayle: you and TF are diametrically opposed but, I submit, you are not. Bush set the tone for Republicans. It was a tone that should NEVER be replicated. Repeat: NEVER.
Yet it was, again and again by ass-sucking sycophants who totally abandoned Conservatism for votes under a true RINO banner.
And where did, let’s postulate, a RINO position get “OUR” GOP candidate?
Yeah, that’s right:
UNELECTED.
BZ
…..I took an oath to defend the country and the Constitution and I have not been released from that oath…..
Cary, that is just what I have been saying!
I live in New Hampshire and we don’t have nearly the problem with our northern border, but IF we did, I really believe us “damned yankees” would be handling it. I know that the southern states have plenty of patriotic Americans who also took that oath and it probably isn’t very long before they will act. NObama had BETTER do something soon, OR ELSE!!
Mr. Z – I was not joking a couple of years ago when so many were running around declaring Iraq doomed… that the trendlines for Iraq were good and getting stronger, and those of the US were weakening and that was getting worse. Soon we might be needing Iraqis to come to America to teach us about COIN and having a representative democracy that is accountable to the people…
War waged by individuals respects no borders, no established citizenry, and innocents can and will die so those seeking their own ends via warfare can threaten and take what they want. Private War in the hands of criminals is no better than in the hands of terrorists: it kills just the same. When man descends into the pit of reclaiming that liberty which we vest into society’s organs to hold it accountable, you then get unaccountable Private War run by animals that have human form. And if our society and its organs cannot protect us, then it is up to each individual to reclaim their total freedom of defense by all means necessary until society comes to its senses… or falls and is rebuilt anew.
I am siding with the defenders and future rebuilders: they know the spirit necessary to keep people civilized. Those wishing to disarm their fellow citizens in the face of savagery are no better than the savages, and I reclaim my right to defend myself against that, too.
And as every front door can turn into ‘the front’, well is it time for all good citizens to come to arms and defend themselves when our society is feeble and cannot do that for us. That is our right, in a responsible and citilized way, to keep the savages at bay. Soon we will learn about Art. 1, Sec. 10 and see if some State will do as it is allowed to protect itself when the federal government is unable or unwilling to defend its citizens.
And when that happens, we have no Nation under the Constitution any longer.
Hell is coming to a front door near you.
Yet it was, again and again by ass-sucking sycophants who totally abandoned Conservatism for votes under a true RINO banner.
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Bush Bots… And we ALL know one…
What we seem to have here is a war that has spilled over on US soil. Can we not respond accordingly? Exactly what would Mexico do in response anyway that we really need to worry about?