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Monday, March 16, 2015

The Safest Prediction I'll Ever Make

The SOUTHCOM commander noted that Bolivia isn't helping us very much in the fight against cocaine production that ends up in America:

Yeah, we're supposed to -- the collective is supposed to get 40 percent. Somewhere in the past, someone said that if you took 40 percent of the cocaine flow, that something would happen. I don't know what. I wasn't here then. And I’ve asked 100 times. And I don't know what's supposed to happen at 40 percent, but it's a good number.

We're at about 15 to 20 percent. I mean, it's -- it's hard to ... In DEA, FBI, but particularly DEA and frankly CIA, do a very, very good job of doing the best they can to track the -- the amounts that are produced that gets into the transit, but it's a -- you know, it's a very decentralized production operation, and I think you all know this, but you know we -- we get all of our cocaine from Colombia, and they just do heroic things to -- to fight that battle for us.

Their number three used to be number one in the world. Number one today is Peru. Number two is Bolivia. Peru is terrific in terms of their cooperation with us. And we help them go after the cocaine. We get zero cooperation of any kind from Bolivia, and that's too bad, because we -- we certainly would like to help them deal with the -- with the problem that they have, because even though these countries are not user countries for the most part, the -- because they're production, the amount of money used for intimidation, murder, death, all that kind of thing, is astronomical really.

And then as the cocaine moves up, and heroin, moves up through the isthmus and into Mexico, it's just unbelievably violent, and really is -- has impacted these countries terribly in terms of their legal justice system, police, violence against everybody, women, kids, I mean, it's just really horrible.

There is a way for General Kelly to get to that interdiction level, I wrote recently.

But back to the issue of Bolivia's conscientious objector status in the war on drugs.

Colombia is fighting the problem. They've experienced the result of drug lords working with insurgents and terrorists. Colombia is winning, but the fight has been going on for decades and is still being waged.

But Bolivia won't help. They probably figure that they are not a use country so it is our problem. And they enjoy the cash running through their economy.

Bolivia should remember Mexico. I'm old enough to remember when Mexico dismissed our efforts to get their help in stemming the drug trade. It was our problem, they said, since our people bought the drugs that came from and through Mexico. Not their problem, they said.

Until it became their problem. Today Mexico fights narco-terrorists who behead like any proper Islamo-fascist and undermine the state of Mexico with their wealth and firepower fueled by drug money.

One decade, the drug trade will be Bolivia's problem.