| | |  Editorials | Opinions | July 2008 
Drug War Folly
 Trevor Bothwell - D.C. Politics Examiner
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| In this video still taken from the web site of the El Heraldo de Leon on Tuesday July 1, 2008, a policeman undergoes a torture session by fellow officers during a training session for an elite unit in the city of Leon, Mexico. Several videos, first obtained by the Heraldo de Leon newspaper, have created an uproar in Mexico as police struggle with recent scandals over abuses.
Click HERE to view the videos | | |
Well, it looks like American torture techniques are coming in pretty handy in places other than the American gulag at Gitmo. Television networks south of the border have released videos showing U.S. security contractors teaching Mexican police how to torture, ostensibly so they can learn how to withstand capture by rival drug gangs.
One of the videos, first obtained by the newspaper El Heraldo de Leon, shows police appearing to squirt water up a man's nose - a technique once notorious among Mexican police. Then they dunk his head in a hole said to be full of excrement and rats. The man gasps for air and moans repeatedly.
In another video, an unidentified English-speaking trainer has an exhausted agent roll into his own vomit. Other officers then drag him through the mess.
"These are no more than training exercises for certain situations, but I want to stress that we are not showing people how to use these methods," Leon city Police Chief Carlos Tornero said.
Hey, if government agents want to torture each other, who am I to oppose it? But I'll caution all readers to note that they're merely performing these acts on themselves for now.
And if Mexico wants to hire private American firms in the name of free international trade, I'm all for that, too. But there always seems to be a catch. Mentioned in this same report is the fact that President Bush has already redistributed at least $400 million from U.S. taxpayers to the Mexican government in the name of fighting its "drug war," so where to you think the funding for these security companies is actually originating?
It's bad enough that the U.S. has become a police state largely due to its prosecution of non-violent drug users; now its taxpayers apparently are responsible for subsidizing Mexican fascism, too (with little to no oversight as to how this money is spent).
There's a simple solution to ridding the streets of drug cartels: legalize all drugs. But then, what excuse would the state have to terrorize us into compliance? |
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