Mexico IS a WAR ZONE....
No need to shout Joe !! You get your information from the Media, right? If the US Media, every outlet all across the US, reported every shooting and murder in the US, every day from all over the country, every state, every city, every town and repeated the total number of shootings and murders that occured over the past 5 years every time they reported a new one, the US would look like a War zone. There are incidents like this that occur in Guatemala, San Salvadore but you don' t hear about them. Why is that Joe. Because the US media is not interested in reporting the news, they got an attention getting roll on Mexico violence that garners the eyes and ears of the lazy media dependent US audience and therefor high ratings and more advertising dollars and they are gonna stick with it. Did you ever notice that the stories on each news from different channels tends to be the same stories, little variation? Why is that Joe? Because that's all the news or the most important stories? Why? Because they do not like to be scooped so they share their story list. They think that the personality and looks of the anchors and reporters is more important than the news! Take a look at the history of news reporting and world events and you will begin to see the picture. Millions were slaughtered in Africa with barely a nod from the US media.
Your perception and interpretation of the problems in Mexico are distorted by the constant hammering and distortion of the media. Mexico is in no way a war zone. Most of the country is quiet and peaceful. It is unfortunate that Calderon picked up old Tricky Dick Nixon's WAR against Drugs to describe the efforts of the Govt. against the narcos. Note that the US govt has officially discontinued using the War On Drugs terminology.
Now you can say I have my head in the sand or use Stuart's Unicorn terminology, but in reality believing something is much worse than it is will cause you to make errors in judgement just as much as ignoring a problem. The errors will probably be different of course. If people could take off the Sh*t colored glasses that the US media puts on them, things would be a lot clearer. The problem is bad enough without a cheering section to make it appear worse.
The response to Stuart was directed at , what I feel at least, is his repetitive jumping on people who don't see things as bad as he does. Rob, who got the most recent load dumped on him, for example, is an intelligent guy and has the right to his own perceptions and opinion and not to be insulted about them.