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For the second day in a row, CBS altered the normal structure of its newscast by running an extended feature after its first commercial and relying on anchor Katie Couric alone with no correspondent in its penultimate segment. Monday, Armen Keteyian Byron Pitts aired a seven-minute investigation into the specialty chemical company Rohm & Haas. Now Bill Whitaker files a six-minute Exclusive from Tijuana on the "orgy of violence" that is afflicting Mexico.

Narcotics gang wars have accounted for 5,000 murders this year since Mexican federal authorities decapitated the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix Cartel. Its boss Eduardo Arellano is under arrest and the unintended consequence is "this bloodbath, as the next generation of gangsters battles to become the new, undisputed power cartel." The combat to control $14bn in annual cocaine-marijuana-methamphetamine smuggling pits Arellano Felix against the "brutally aggressive" western Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel in the east and the Juarez Cartel in the north.

Using genuinely graphic images, Whitaker demonstrated that Juarez is the narcowar's epicenter. He showed us the "grisly new tactic--beheadings. This headless corpse hung above a busy highway almost two hours before police covered it with a sheet."

Andrew Tyndall 12/17/08 9:06:27 pm

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