Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojkt
The NYT’s is reporting that the drug cartels are building submarines.
This is the new challenge faced by the United States and Latin American countries as narcotics organizations bankroll machine shops operating under cover of South America’s triple-canopy jungles to build diesel-powered submarines that would be the envy of all but a few nations.
This reminds me a bit of Medicare fraud. It’s a game of whack-a-mole. Here, however, it seems like we’re wasting resources. If you can not stop the demand isn’t it better to spend the time and resources on treating the fallout from a health perspective. Instead, we’ve got the Coast Guard chasing more and more capable and advanced semi-submersible crafts and submarines loaded with drugs.
In the movie, Run Silent Run Deep, an American Commander, portrayed by Clark Gable, puts his crew at risk because he is blinded by the need to avenge a lost sub. Here we seem incapable of considering other options, even when those conducting the anti-sub/trafficking operations all but admit defeat.
From the Times:
Even so, three-quarters of potential drug shipments identified by the task force are not interdicted, simply because there are not enough ships and aircraft available for the missions. “My staff watches multi-ton loads go by,” Admiral Michel said.
Filed under: War on Drugs |
All Things in Moderation 
Dumbass War on Drugs.
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As noted, the War on Drugs is also acting as a subsidy to build a smuggling network that could one day be used by terrorists.
Tom Clancy had a similar premise in “The Sum of All Fears”. As an aside, the movie was horrible after they totally butchered the plot of the book.
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While I agree with Mark, it seems to me that this is a naval exercise just waiting to happen. It’s not like our subs have a whole lot to do right now, so why not use the Navy rather than the Coast Guard and treat them like pirates?
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When I was in the Navy, we would get assigned to do 3 month law enforcement operations, where we would hang out off the coast of Mexico and have a Coast Guard junior officer on board with intel regarding potential drug shipments. We never found any drugs or anything. We basically made lives miserable for the fishermen out there and that was it.
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In this vein, bad news for some of you guys out there. . .
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The drug submarine story has been around for a few years. Someone found a ‘shipyard’ a while back and captured one. It was barely seaworthy but much more sophisticated than previous generations. The cat and mouse interdiction game is literally an arms race.
As porous as our border is, I cannot see how we could possibly defend ourselves against a backpack nuke. Back in the 70s I read a thiller about a group which set off a bomb during the State of the Union speech. The last page promised a sequel which never happened.
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I hate to be the bearer of bad news here but drugs are coming through the border in tractor trailors. The way it often works is the Customs agent is contacted and told that either he doesn’t inspect trucks with, say, a Mickey Mouse sticker in the window and maybe makes some cash or he, and everybody he’s ever known will be killed. Everything else, drug mules backpacking across the border, submarines, planes, is all about other cartels trying to encroach or small time operators looking to make some money. We can all acknowledge that the cost of drugs continues to decrease while the quality continues to rise. There is only one explanation for that, a massive and uninterrupted importation stream. Right now, that can only be done by tractor trailer (via Mexico).
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Drug cartels started building narco-subs when the CG started getting good at interdicting the fast boats (like the cigarettes in Miami Vice) — early 1990s or so. There are tunnels under the border (both Mexico and Canada) as well, some built by the major MX cartels (Sinaloa, Golfo, etc.).
I have to say though that some of the improvement of quality for marijuana in CA is due to the medical marijuana industry. You can get all sorts of different varietals with more or less THC. Probably not quite as extensive as going to Amsterdam, but pretty darn close.
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