Whack-a-mole Drug War: US Report: Takedowns of Mexico Capos Don't Stop Drug Flow

And how does the government square this report with its claims, such as those made yesterday, regarding a 'surgical strike' against La Familia, that " "The arrests and seizures we are announcing today have stripped La Familia of its manpower, its deadly product and its profit and helped make communities, larger and small, safer"?

From 'InSight Crime'

US Report: Takedowns of Mexico Capos Don't Stop Drug Flow: "A leaked internal report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that the arrests and deaths of Mexican kingpins have no bearing on the flow of drugs into the U.S., throwing the government's anti-drug strategy into question.

The unclassified report was found and published by a hacker group calling itself LulzSec. The document recorded monthly drug seizures from January 2009 through January 2010, to measure the effect when capos were taken out of action. ...

The report concludes, “The removal of key personnel does not have a discernible impact on drug flows as determined by seizure rates. [Drug trafficking organization] operations appear to have built in redundancy and personnel that perform specific duties to limit the damage incurred by the removal of any one person. By sheer volume alone, drug operations would require more than one individual to coordinate and control the process.”

In one sense, this seems to be a striking admission by a prominent government agency that the so-called kingpin strategy -- focusing on the capos heading the largest drug trafficking groups, rather than the networks supporting them -- has failed to achieve one of the main objectives of U.S. drug policy."