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Forget immigration, NAFTA, the environment and Cuba--the news hook for Presidential diplomacy between Mexico and the United States is the narcoviolence between trafficking cartels in the border zone. NBC and CBS assigned their White House correspondents to the leaders' meeting in Mexico City. Felipe Calderon has committed his military to suppress the gang warfare that has killed more than 2,500 so far this year. For his part, Barack Obama has been unable to suppress the domestic demand for drugs that makes the trade so lucrative--$40bn annually according to CBS' Bill Plante; nor has he interdicted the southbound firearms that make the feud so lethal.
CBS' Plante called the firearms smuggling "a major sore point" for Mexico. NBC's Chuck Todd quoted Obama's argument that a renewed federal ban on sales of assault weapons is not necessary; their export is already illegal. Neither Plante nor Todd mentioned the National Rifle Association's argument, which NBC's Mark Potter quoted Tuesday, that it is untrue that 90% of the cartels' weapons were purchased in gun shops north of the border.
ABC had Nightline anchor Terry Moran preview the Obama-Calderon meeting on Wednesday so instead of having its White House correspondent cover the talks, it turned to investigative correspondent Brian Ross to explain the nuts and bolts of the Gulf Cartel's narcotics distribution system. He pointed to the interstate highway hub of Atlanta--with freeways headed to all points of the compass--as a distribution center for 18-wheeler tractor trailers with cocaine stored in hidden compartments. Ross ticked off the other major transshipment centers as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Chicago and Denver. "Each cartel stakes out its own territory like the Mafia families of old."
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