Why Is the US Still Spending Billions to Fund Mexico's Ongoing Drug War? Jesse Franzblau - The Nation
go to original March 2, 2015

Former president Bill Clinton apologizes to Mexico for the 'U.S. War on drugs' which he blames for fueling violence in the country. (AOL)

By February 2010, US consulate officials in Monterrey, Mexico, had long connected Héctor Santos Saucedo, then head of Coahuila’s state investigations, to the Zetas. This was at a time when the Zetas - the notorious criminal drug organization formed by soldiers who had defected from an elite army unit - had consolidated control over much of the political and security apparatus in Mexico’s northern region. According to internal US government reports from around that time, Zeta influence was “longstanding and widespread throughout local and state government,” and cartels were operating “with near total impunity in the face of compromised local security forces.”

Despite US knowledge that Santos was part of the Zetas’ sphere of influence, he continued to hold central positions in the counter-drug effort; he was named director general of investigations in the State of Coahuila in January 2010 after being dismissed from his post as head of the state investigative unit in Nuevo León.

The following year, the town of Allende, Coahuila, became the site of one of the drug war’s worst massacres - one that is just now coming to light after years of cover-up.

Read the rest at The Nation

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