South of the border, down Mejico way

Mexican marines battled suspected drug cartel gunmen whose allies erected at least a dozen roadblocks in the northeastern city of Monterrey, authorities said Friday. One marine and three gunmen were killed.

The gunmen opened fire and threw grenades at a marine patrol Thursday night on a highway on the western city limits, according to a Navy statement.

At the same time, gang members used buses and other vehicles to block at least a dozen main avenues in downtown Monterrey, said Alejandro Garza y Garza, the attorney general of Nuevo Leon state, where Mexico's third-largest city is located.

Such blockades have become a common cartel tactic across northeastern Mexico to impede security forces from calling in reinforcements during shootouts. The region has become one of Mexico's most violent this year since a turf war broke out between the Gulf cartel and its former ally, the Zetas gang of hit men.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/oct/15/mexican-marine-3-gunmen-killed-in-shootout/

While we're messing around in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, trying to force democracy and western values on people who don't want them, terror is rampant 150 miles south of the unprotected U.S. border.