EXPERT SAYS VIOLENCE BY CARTELS MAY INTENSIFY

More than 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars. It
could get bloodier.

"The grenades, the car bombings in Mexico is just a preview of the
worse to come. The collateral damage is nothing now in what can happen
to the future," said Phil Jordan, former director of the federal
anti-drug El Paso Intelligence Center, or EPIC.

Grenades have been increasingly used in attacks in Juarez and other
parts of Chihuahua. Last month, Mexican federal police and rescuers
were ambushed with a car bomb on a downtown Juarez street.

The Juarez drug cartel has been targeting federal police because the
cartel claims the police are working for the rival Sinaloa cartel. The
Juarez cartel, known as La Linea, has said it has more car bombs.

The rival cartels and their allied gangs have been fighting for
control of the plaza, or territory, and lucrative smuggling routes to
the United States.

Mexico's top intelligence chief said about 28,000 people have been
killed in drug violence since a government crackdown began in 2006.

In Juarez, about 1,700 people have been slain this year, and about
6,000 people have been killed since 2008 when a war erupted in the
region between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels.

Guillermo Valdes, director of the Centro de Investigacion y Seguridad
Nacional (CISEN), or National Security and Investigation Center, said
at a news conference Tuesday that drug abuse also is on the rise in
Mexico.

CISEN, which provides information to various Mexican government
agencies, is similar to the CIA and DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center.

CISEN's death toll is higher than the national figure of 24,826 that
the federal Attorney General's Office released in July.

Jordan, an expert on Mexican drug trafficking, said all indications
are that the violence will get worse unless the United States, Mexico
and other nations form a coalition to battle cartels.

"The grenades the other day and the car bombing is just another
escalation that has no boundaries, but the escalation does have
borders," Jordan said. "The cartels will not attack or use that type
of tactic in the United States."

Jordan said narcotrafficking organizations will avoid bombings,
beheadings or other such overkill tactics in the United States because
they draw too much attention.

"They are not stupid to bring those techniques to the U.S. You don't
want to create havoc on the customers," he said.

Jordan said the Juarez drug cartel is not behind a text-message death
threat that circulated in the Phoenix area that placed a
million-dollar bounty on Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the wake of
the controversial Arizona illegal-immigration law.

"The rumor that they are going kill the sheriff (Arpaio) in Arizona is
false," Jordan said. "In my opinion, the cartels are not going to
waste their time threatening sheriffs. E The cartels will not be
wasting their bullets and their time getting law enforcement in the
U.S. riled up."

Jordan agreed with a quote from an unnamed FBI agent from El Paso on
the bureau's website comparing the ruthlessness of Mexican drug
cartels to al-Qaida.

"Al-Qaida can only understand one thing, that's bullets," Jordan said.
"The cartels are the same way right now because they have elevated the
level of violence to car bombings and beheadings. These people will
only react to General Patton-type force."

CISEN also reported new statistics about drug use in
Mexico.

The agency reported that between 2002 and 2008, about 6 percent of
Mexico residents between 12 and 65 years old said they had consumed
cocaine, and that the number of people in the nation who used drugs
doubled in that period.

The intelligence agency also released the following statistics for the
number of apprehensions of alleged drug cartel members:

Gulf cartel and Zetas: 20,000.

Pacific (Sinaloa or Guzman Loera) cartel: 18,000.

Juarez (Carrillo Fuentes) cartel: 12,000.

Beltran-Leyva cartel: 9,000.