BLOODY HANDS

The image of a river of blood in a Mexican neighborhood was horrible. At
4:30 a.m. Thursday, 18 people -- nine adults, two teen-agers, six children
and a baby -- were pulled from their beds, lined up against a wall and
slaughtered by gunmen using assault rifles, shotguns and small arms.

Mexican authorities initially said they couldn't be sure that the massacre
in El Sauzal, a suburb of Ensenada, was related to increasing drug-related
violence. But it certainly looked like it.

Ensenada is a popular Baja California resort a 90-minute drive south of San
Diego. A drug gang led by the Arellano Felix brothers is based in Tijuana,
across the border from San Diego. Initial reports said a victim of the El
Suazal massacre grew marijuana for the powerful brothers. Known for their
past violence, the Arellano Felix brothers are suspected in the slaying of
drug rival Rafael Munoz Talavera, who was recently found fatally shot in
the Texas-Mexico border city of Juarez, across from El Paso.

The horror of these slayings causes us to recoil, to ask how anyone could
do such terrible things. We muster little emotion when a known drug dealer
is slain in an apparent turf battle with another known drug dealer. We read
with little passion about bodies of drug runners showing up outside border
towns, apparently killed because of a discrepancy in the amount of drugs or
money they were supposed to deliver. But whole families pulled from their
beds and ruthlessly murdered?

People in the United States can't solve murders in Mexico. But it is
important that they realize this: Drug wars south of the border are not a
fight over drugs. They are a fight over the money that so many Americans
are willing to pay so they can use drugs. These drug users have blood on
their hands.

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Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson