Mexican cartels on the terrorist list? http://justf.org/blog/2011/04/19/mexican-cartels-terrorist-list?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JustTheFactsBlogs+%28Just+the+Facts+blogs%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

In late March Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee for Oversight, Investigations and Management, penned a Houston Chronicle column with a new proposal for the U.S. role in Mexico’s fight against violent organized-crime groups. McCaul called for Mexico’s drug “cartels” to be added to the U.S. State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations.Classifying Mexican drug cartels in the same manner as al-Qaida, the Taliban or Hezbollah would make them a higher priority for American law enforcement and would subject them to laws that target their finances and networks in the United States.

Elsewhere in Texas, McCaul’s “terrorist list” proposal was echoed April 7 by Dallas Morning News editorial writer Tod Robberson, whose column got a quick response from Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan. The ambassador’s letter to the editor said that calling Mexico’s cartels “terrorists” was a bad idea.Misunderstanding the challenge we face leads to wrong policies and bad policy making.If you label these organizations as terrorist, you will have to start calling drug consumers in the U.S. “financiers of terrorist organizations” and gun dealers “providers of material support to terrorists.” Otherwise, you really sound as if you want to have your cake and eat it too.Sarukhan’s point deserves more attention.

Adding Mexico’s Sinaloa, Gulf, Zetas, Beltran Leyva, Tijuana and La Familia cartels to the U.S. terrorist list might give an impression of U.S. resolve. But that resolve would likely disintegrate the moment that the U.S. government would have to apply the law – in this case, the PATRIOT Act – against a powerful U.S. constituency that, through negligent behavior, finds itself accused of “aiding and abetting terrorists.”Second, if Mexican organized crime groups were suddenly to become the equivalent of Al Qaeda under U.S. law, the greatest impact would likely be felt by U.S. gun dealers and U.S. banks – two sectors that strongly support Rep. McCaul’s political party.

A U.S. gun dealer is in huge trouble today if it negligently sells a weapon to a suspicious buyer who turns out to be linked to Al Qaeda. If Mexican cartels are added to the terror list, the same trouble would apply to U.S. gun dealers or gun shows if a weapon confiscated from one of Mexico’s “Al Qaeda equivalents” should be traced back to them. Such tracings involving Mexican cartels are commonplace today, as 10 percent of U.S. gun retailers are located near the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. banks would also be in much larger trouble if they stood accused of laundering money not for drug traffickers, but for terrorist groups in the same legal category as Al Qaeda. Currently, when U.S. banks launder drug profits, whether knowingly or through lack of due diligence, the U.S. Justice Department prefers to negotiate plea deals instead of carrying out criminal prosecutions under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.

[Certainly these mexican cartels are more terrorist then even the fake alqaeda groups,after all they chop hundreds of heads a year!!!!but whats interesting is why people are against it,because it would implicate those banks laundering money,and also it would make those weapons dealers, and dea running arms to them as terrorist enablers..also it would make those who trained some of these cartels(us gov)like los zetas terrorists as well..ahh i love the smell of hypocrasy in the late morning...