Whack-a-mole: Drug cartels in U.S. as big a threat as terrorism

The author of this OpEd is Sylvia Longmire, described as a former Air Force officer and special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, who also worked four years as a senior intelligence analyst and border security expert for the California Emergency Management Agency. She is described as "a consultant" on Mexico's drug war and a writer. She does not draw any conclusions or make any proposals as to how to confront the drug situation. But she does make clear that the problem is not one of the border, but of what is done within the U.S.

Drug cartels in U.S. as big a threat as terrorism - CNN.com: "... we're too focused on spillover in the border area to realize that Mexican drug cartels have deeply infiltrated every corner of the United States, and they did so well before terrorism and religious extremists entered our national consciousness. According to the U.S. Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center, members of Mexican cartels are operating in more than 270 U.S. cities and thousands of smaller communities.

Those same cartels dominate drug trafficking operations in places like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Atlanta and Newark, New Jersey. Violent gangs across the country act as their proxies and sell Mexican drugs like marijuana, crystal methamphetamine, brown powder and black tar heroin, and Colombian cocaine in our cities and neighborhoods from San Diego to Syracuse, New York." Dec. 9, 2010