$359 million to send National Guard to border

Washington Post:

The Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border under a $350 million initiative that would expand the U.S. military's role in the war on drugs, according to Obama administration officials.

The circumstances under which the troops could be deployed have not been determined, the officials said. They said the proposal was designed to give President Obama additional flexibility to respond to drug-related violence that has threatened to spill into the United States from Mexico and to curb southbound smuggling of cash and weapons.

The initiative, which was tucked into a supplemental budget request sent to Congress this month, has raised concerns over what some U.S. officials perceive as an effort by the Pentagon to increase its counter-narcotics profile through a large pot of money that comes with few visible requirements.

The broadly worded proposal does not mention troop deployments, stipulating only that the military is to receive up to $350 million "for counter-narcotics and other activities . . . on the United States' border with Mexico."

If contingency plans go unactivated, the money will be retained by the Defense Department for general operations and maintenance uses after September 2010, an administration official said.

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I would use them to put a tight cordon around the area across from Juarez and Tijuana. That is the turf the criminal insurgents are spilling the most blood to control and they are doing so because they are the gateways to two major transportation corridors in the US. If we could control the flow of drugs through those two areas we could do great damage to the criminal insurgents in Mexico.