If Guatemala Can Do It, Why Can't We?

Guatemala is sending hundreds of troops, elite presidential guards and anti-drug police to its border with Mexico to stem growing drug violence. Drug smuggling into southern Mexico, bound for the U.S., is running rampant.

In southern Mexico, suspected drug gunmen dumped a man's head outside a newspaper in Tabasco state on Saturday with a message threatening police and rivals. "This is what will happen to those who interfere. The army won't protect you." A Mexican soldier died of gunshot wounds on Saturday after a shootout late on Friday in the western state of Michoacan.

The Guatemalan deployment is part of a $1.4 billion U.S. anti-drug aid plan for Mexico and Central America proposed by President George W. Bush. The initiative needs U.S. congressional approval. Guatemala is likely to go ahead even if Congress fails to act.

Lawmakers in Washington have held up the plan with calls to attach conditions on how and where the aid -- which includes helicopters and encrypted communication devices -- is used. They also want to include human rights oversight in the package.

Mexican legislators rejected conditions on the anti-drug aid on Saturday as a threat to Mexico's sovereignty and called for rewriting the proposal at a meeting with U.S. counterparts. "For the initiative to be successful, our rights must be respected and any intention to intervene in (domestic) issues must be put aside," Mexico's lower house speaker Ruth Zavaleta told the meeting in Monterrey, northern Mexico. Here we have beggars wanting to be choosers. Mexico seems to have no problem trying to interfere and intervene in American issues. They just appealed to the U.N.'s highest court Thursday to block the executions of Mexicans in the United States. What gall!

The U.S. Senate wants Mexican soldiers accused of crimes to be tried in civilian courts. It also wants federal officials to take on state and local anti-drug roles, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says. The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon says any conditions for the aid are unacceptable because Mexico is undergoing its own police and judicial reform. Senator Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, warned that "we will not give (Mexico) a blank check." That would be a welcome change.