THOUSANDS OF MEXICAN TROOPS PREPARE FOR DRUG OPERATION

APATZINGAN, Mexico - Thousands of Mexican troops rolled into a key drug
stronghold Tuesday to set fire to marijuana and opium fields and round up
traffickers as new President Felipe Calderon pledged to restore order in a
region where smugglers have openly defied authorities with beheadings and
large-scale drug production.

Navy ships also were patrolling the state's Lazaro Cardenas port, a hub for
drugs arriving from Central America and Colombia on their way to the United
States.

Cornelio Casio, one of several generals overseeing the operation, which was
announced Monday, said 6,500 soldiers and federal police were fanning out
across the state.

"We aren't going to lose any time," he said. "We are completely focused on
this war."

In an interview Tuesday with the Televisa television network, Attorney
General Eduardo Medina Mora said the operation was aimed at "reconquering
territory" controlled by drug gangs.

"It's not just a war against drug lords," he said. "It's a war against the
entire criminal structure."

Medina Mora acknowledged that the effort would be difficult, and that the
drug lords will likely just find another stronghold in Mexico. But he said
the operation was prepared for that.

"It's a complicated war," Medina Mora said. "But it is a war we can win."

Some have worried that the crackdown could turn Mexico into a police state
that ignores human rights and claims innocent victims.

But Medina Mora and Calderon brushed aside those concerns.

"In a word, it's about recovering the calm, day-to-day life of Mexicans who
live in the state," Calderon said at an event early Tuesday.

He took office on Dec. 1, promising Mexicans he would no longer tolerate
the execution-style killings, corrupt police and openly defiant gangs that
plagued former President Vicente Fox's six years in office. Calderon has
budgeted more funds for law enforcement and appointed a hard-line interior
secretary, Francisco Ramirez Acuna.

U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza has repeatedly expressed concern about the
rising violence, some of which has spilled over into the United States from
Mexican border cities, and the U.S. State Department has warned U.S.
citizens about travel to Mexico.

Warring cartels have claimed at least 2,000 lives this year and forced Fox
to send troops into the bloody border city of Nuevo Laredo and the beach
resort of Acapulco.

But those efforts have just emboldened traffickers, who have left human
heads outside government offices accompanied by written warnings to leave
them alone.

"One recent message in Michoacan read: "See. Hear. Shut Up. If you want to
stay alive."

In the most gruesome case, gunmen burst into a nightclub and rolled five
human heads onto a dance floor, smearing the white-tile floor with blood.
In another, a pair of heads were planted in front of a car dealership in
Zitacuaro, a town known as a nesting ground for monarch butterflies.

During his term, Fox arrested several top drug lords, creating a power
vacuum in the country responsible for providing the U.S. market with the
majority of its marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines.