{"id":10111,"date":"2011-06-15T10:38:44","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T18:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=10111"},"modified":"2011-06-15T10:39:08","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T18:39:08","slug":"drug-war-wreaking-havoc-in-latin-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/15\/drug-war-wreaking-havoc-in-latin-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug War Wreaking Havoc in Latin America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two recent congressional reports highlight the violent, unintended (?) consequences of America&#8217;s drug war in Central and South America.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate report <a href=\"http:\/\/feinstein.senate.gov\/public\/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Files.View&amp;FileStore_id=beaff893-63c1-4941-9903-67a0dc739b9d\">Halting U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico<\/a> finds that up to 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico from 2009-2010 came from the United States. The investigation came out of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2011\/06\/10\/earlyshow\/main20070475.shtml\">reports<\/a> that the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2011\/6\/15\/new_report_us_encouraged_gun_sales\">encouraged gun shops to sell thousands of military-style weapons to various Mexican drug cartels<\/a> in an attempt to accrue intelligence via a controversial tactic called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2011\/02\/23\/eveningnews\/main20035609.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody\">letting the guns walk<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The other report out of the Senate, <a href=\"http:\/\/mccaskill.senate.gov\/files\/documents\/pdf\/CNReportFINAL.pdf\">New Information About Counternarcotics Contracts in Latin America<\/a>, investigated the State Department and the Defense Department policies in delivering what are essentially military contracts to Latin American governments, including Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti,\u00a0Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. Excerpt:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The analysis finds that from 2005 to 2009, the federal government\u2019s annual spending on\u00a0counternarcotics contracts in Latin America rose by 32%, from $482 million in 2005 to $635.8\u00a0million in 2009. \u00a0In total, the government spent more than $3.1 billion on counternarcotics\u00a0contracts during this period. \u00a0Key findings in the analysis include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>From 2005 to 2009, the majority of counternarcotics contracts in Latin America went to\u00a0only five contractors: DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT, and ARINC, who\u00a0collectively received contracts worth over $1.8 billion.<\/li>\n<li>The State Department and the Defense Department spent nearly $2 billion on\u00a0counternarcotics contracts in Colombia alone from 2005 to 2009.<\/li>\n<li>More than half (52%) of counternarcotics contract dollars during this time period were\u00a0spent to acquire goods and services related to aircraft, which are used for drug location\u00a0and eradication. \u00a0In total, the federal government spent approximately $1.6 billion on\u00a0aircraft-related services, maintenance, logistics, support, equipment, and training from\u00a02005 to 2009.<\/li>\n<li>Neither the State Department nor the Defense Department has adequate systems in place\u00a0to track counternarcotics contract data. \u00a0Testifying before the Subcommittee on\u00a0Contracting Oversight in 2010, Defense Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for\u00a0Counternarcotics and Global Threats William Wechsler called the Defense Department\u2019s\u00a0processes for managing counternarcotics contracts \u201cinconsistent,\u201d \u201ctime-consuming and\u00a0error prone.\u201d \u00a0The State Department simply does not have a centralized system to collect\u00a0or track this type of information.<\/li>\n<li>While spending on counternarcotics contracts increased by 32% over the five year periodunder review, contract management and oversight has been insufficient, and has not kept\u00a0pace with the government\u2019s increased reliance on contractors.<\/li>\n<li>The federal government does not have any uniform systems in place to track or evaluate\u00a0whether counternarcotics contracts are achieving their goals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We&#8217;re either arming the gangs or the governments and its causing terrible havoc in the region. <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2011\/06\/15\/the-price-of-prohibition\">All for a lost &#8220;War on Drugs.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two recent congressional reports highlight the violent, unintended (?) consequences of America&#8217;s drug war in Central and South America. The Senate report Halting U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico finds that up to 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico from 2009-2010 came from the United States. The investigation came out of reports that the Alcohol [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10113,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10111\/revisions\/10113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10111"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}