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For the Global Thinker

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Honduras, the DEA, and America's New Battleground


Honduras is the new front line of the DEA’s War on Drugs—and a growing number of civilian lives are being claimed by the chaos.

Excerpt:

"I threw myself into the river so they wouldn't shoot me again," she said. She stayed there, grabbing onto a branch and keeping only her nose above the water, to avoid the hail of bullets.

Later, in a press conference, Lezama spoke on her daughter's cell phone from a hospital bed in La Ceiba. In a surprisingly calm voice for someone just shot, Lezama said she never imagined the helicopters would fire on her little boat, with its cargo of fishermen, women and children.

Lezama is one of the lucky ones in that boat the morning of May 11.  Juana Jackson and Candelaria Pratt -- both bearing unborn children -- were shot to death, along with 14-year-old Hasked Brooks and Emerson Martinez. Three other Mosquito villagers are in serious condition.

The State Department helicopters were carrying out a joint counter-narcotics operation with a unit of the Honduran police trained by the U.S. government and a "Foreign-Deployed Advisory Support Team (FAST)" of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Their side of the story is that the boat had received an illegal drug shipment from a small plane they had followed into the nearby jungle. Why there were no arrests from the alleged drug plane is one of the many open questions to the story


Lessons of Iraq Help U.S. Fight a Drug War in Honduras

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MOCORON, Honduras — The United States military has brought lessons from the past decade of conflict to the drug war being fought in the wilderness of Miskito Indian country, constructing this remote base camp with little public notice but with the support of the Honduran government.
Read More Here...

Honduras Becomes Focal Point of America's Drug War...See Photo Essay...


 Inmates, Corruption Rule Hondura's Prisons....See Photo Essay...


Volcanoes and Storms Ravage Central and South America...See Photo Essay...

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