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By coincidence, ABC and CBS chose the same day to focus on the narcotrafficking violence that is plaguing Mexico. Los Angeles based Bill Whitaker narrated videotape of a shootout in the high desert south of Juarez for CBS. Mexican troops launched an attack on Villa Ahumada, a town where narco gangsters had killed three different police chiefs and driven out the mayor. Whitaker reported that 21 people were left dead in the desert snow, only one of them a soldier. On ABC, investigative reporter Brian Ross filed A Closer Look preview of his story for Nightline on the northward creep of Mexican narcotics violence. Phoenix now averages a kidnapping a day as "cartels send their operatives across the border to claim territory or settle scores." Ross played hair raising audiotape of threats against a hostage: "I am about to cut off his hand. Which hand would you like, the left of the right?"
For his part, CBS' Whitaker put Ross' tale of violence heading north in context. The $14bn the Mexican cartels earn each year comes from "the insatiable US appetite for drugs" and it is estimated that 95% of the cartels' guns are smuggled southwards from the United States, 2,000 weapons a day.
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