Americans, get to know your Mexico neighbor better. No wonder Lou Dobbs was yanked from CNN.

Before I sign off for the day I'll pass along this stomach-turning report from The New York Times (H/T Foreign Policy Initiative) dateline January 12:

When it comes to gore, Mexico’s drug traffickers seem to compete among themselves for the title of most depraved. One will chop off the heads of victims. Another will string dead rivals from bridges or burn their genitals. Recently, hit men removed the face from a dead man and sewed it onto a soccer ball.

On Tuesday, Mexican authorities announced the capture of one of those who they said had been active in this game of one upmanship, Teodoro Eduardo Garcia Simental, described as a ruthless drug lord based just south of the American border in Tijuana. Mr. García’s trademark, when not trafficking marijuana and methamphetamine to the United States, was boiling rivals in barrels of lye in what has become known as pozole, for the Mexican stew, the authorities said. [...]

Not to be tedious but when will the U.S. government break down and admit they've been pandering long enough to Mexico's oligarchs and corrupt regimes? And that they've been playing ostrich about Mexico's descent into hell, which is not simply a drug trafficking or gang problem?

And please, no huffy email from CNN. Nobody past the age of 12 believes that pressure to remove Lou Dobbs's show from CNN didn't come from the highest levels of government in Mexico and the United States.

However, the news from Haiti today, the news from Mexico, the news from John Batchelor's show about evidence of al Qaeda's involvement with Venezuela's drug trafficking, all point to the need for Washington to develop a rational strategy for U.S. relations with the rest of the Western Hemisphere.