Bush stonewalls on Mexican military aid

The White House and State Department are refusing to answer key questions WND has asked about the $500 million military assistance program proposed for Mexico and $50 million proposed for Central America.

As WND reported Tuesday, President Bush sent to Congress this week an Iraq Supplemental Funding Request that included a proposal for $500 million in military assistance for Mexico and $50 million for Central America to help them fight the international drug war raging across our border with Mexico.

For the past two days, WND has made repeated calls to the White House and State Department, asking key questions by phone and email.

So far, no responses have been received.

Instead, the White House press office has begun referring all questions about the Mexico military aid package to the State Department.

WND has repeatedly asked if the delivery of these military assistance programs will be accomplished through private contractors, along the model in which companies such as Blackwater have been issued contracts by the Pentagon to provide security services in Iraq.

The question is important since the White House and State Department have insisted no U.S. troops will be placed in Mexico.

The White House has told WND that managing the Mexican military aid package through Congress is the job of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon.

Yet, the State Department says Shannon is unavailable for comment because Congress is only now being briefed, after the military aid program was announced to the public.

In a press briefing Tuesday, Shannon again promised the program would not involve sending U.S. military forces to Mexico, saying, "We are very aware of issues of Mexican sovereignty."

A joint statement issued Tuesday by the State Department and by Mexico repeated the pledge that we "do not contemplate the deployment of U.S. military personnel in Mexico."

But a State Department fact sheet indicates a wide range of military equipment is going to be provided to Mexico and the countries of Central America under the plan. The equipment includes ion scanners, canine units for Mexico, boats, helicopters, and surveillance aircraft, as well as a wide range of communications technologies.

Still, the State Department fact sheet neglects to explain how the training to use this equipment will be provided to Mexico and the countries of Central America, especially if the commitment is to avoid placing U.S. military boots on the ground in these Latin American countries.

Nor will the White House or State Department answer WND questions about why the Department of Transportation is continuing to allow Mexican trucks across the border, when the severity of the drug war requires U.S. military aid intervention.

As WND has reported, commercial trucks remain the predominant way drugs are smuggled from Mexico into the United States.

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Since introducing the program earlier this week, the State Department has fought to avoid calling this military aid program the "Mexican Plan," seeking to avoid identification with the "Colombia Plan," a much criticized earlier anti-drug initiative that also involved a package of U.S. assistance.

Instead, the White House and State Department are fighting to call this the "Merida Initiative," seeking to identify this plan with the summit President Bush and Felipe Calderon held in the Yucatecan city of Merida in March 2007, where the idea of U.S. military assistance to help Mexico fight the drug war was first proposed.

The Colombia Plan was begun as a Clinton administration plan to reduce cocaine production in Colombia, but it has been criticized in South America as a covert U.S. military program whose real purpose was to fight growing leftist guerrilla insurgency.

Asked this question in the press briefing, Shannon tried to distinguish that while Mexico is faced with fighting three insurgencies, the government of Mexico is fighting organized criminal drug trafficking, not political insurgency.

Shannon did not address the concern that leftists in Mexico might not be impressed with the distinction.

Shannon was also asked how the United States would prevent the military aid being used by rogue criminal elements in the Mexican military to actually assist the drug lords, rather than combat them.

The question focused on another failed 1990s U.S. effort to support paratroopers from an elite Mexican air-mobile military unit (GAFE, according to the Spanish acronym), only to have the units turn and form "Los Zetas," a paramilitary group now active in Mexico in support of the drug lords.

Shannon answered, "Well, you know, I guess the best way to respond is that human nature being human nature, these things can happen."

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