From the Express News:

While more than 90 Mexicans have been killed in Nuevo Laredo this year, 42 Americans have disappeared while visiting the city, four of whom are believed to have been murdered, according to U.S. Embassy officials in Mexico.

And from the State Department's Mexico travel advisory:

In recent months, the worst violence has been centered in the city of Nuevo Laredo in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where more than 30 U.S. citizens have been kidnapped and/or murdered in the past eight months... .

So if those figures are right, how do we explain the following information from an Associated Press story that appears in today's Fort Worth Start-Telegram?

Since August (2004), 41 U.S. citizens have been reported kidnapped along the Mexican border, according to U.S. authorities. Nineteen have been returned, two have been confirmed killed, and 20 remain missing.

Is the AP publishing false information, or are the numbers put out by the Express News (courtesy of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico) and the State Department embellished? AP is talking about the whole of the U.S./Mexico border. Whose numbers can we trust? Can we trust any of them?

Are we seeing the first signs of the breakdown of the misinformation campaign?

Leading question

Now take a look at the following lead paragraph from the San Diego Union Tribune. This story is breaking as I write this....

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – The United States is closing its consulate in this violence-wracked border city for a week following a shootout in which assailants used machine guns, grenades and even a rocket launcher to attack a home, the U.S. Ambassador said Friday evening.

How does that stack up to the following story lead-in from a BBC story?

Tear gas canisters and stun grenades were fired into the ... fortified compound and an armoured vehicle moved in to demolish the walls.

Three hours later they broke down the main entrance.

... When the fire started at around 1200 local time (1800GMT) several children were believed to be inside ...

... The fire worsened when the cult's store of munitions exploded.

Oh, yeah, here's the lead sentence from the story above:

1993: Waco cult siege ends with inferno

At least 70 people are feared to have died in a fire at the besieged headquarters of the Branch Davidian sect near Waco, Texas.

I don't recall the Mexican government shutting down any of its consulates after that little incident. I'm sure they just feel the United States is a much safer place to live than violent Mexico, right?

Of course, another view of things might take on a decidedly political interpretation. After all, it might be to the advantage of some diplomatic visions of the world to ensure that the citizens of the United States are distracted by the "narco-terrorism" along the border, so they don't focus so much on the "terrorist insurgency" in Iraq.

For those hard-core believers in the war on drugs, who might be inclined to a more patriotic view of power politics, I urge you to recall a famous saying from another era of Prohibition, that attributed to a small boy whose idealism was shattered by the "Blacksox" baseball scandal, when the "1919 Chicago White Sox team ... 'threw' the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds after taking bribes from bookies."

To paraphrase: "Say it ain't so, George"