Viva Los Pepes - Pablo Escobar in the 1980's

From the Belmont Club comes an excellent allegory between the current capture of S. Hussein and the case of the USA against Medellin drug lord Pablo Escobar in the mid-1980s. Wretchard writes: bq. The confidence with which President Bush has described the noose closing in around terrorists recalls not so much the hunt for Saddam Hussein, but for an earlier, foe, Pablo Escobar, the most powerful drug lord in world history. Escobar's story, for those who have forgotten, is rivetingly told in Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo. Escobar dominated the Medellin cartel in Columbia in the mid-1980s. Flush with billions of dollars from an industry he largely created, Escobar ruthlessly killed all in his path. Thousands of policemen, hundreds of judges -- anyone who dared oppose him -- were murdered and often tortured. And more: bq. In broad outline, this resembles the strategy used to pen up and finally capture Saddam Hussein. Unable to capture him directly, the US authorities in Iraq began to work their way up the Ba'athist chain, tearing down the mountain by another name. His hometown of Tikrit was cordoned off with razor wire. Saddam's relatives were interrogated and turned. His principal lieutenants were captured and killed until the day came when there was nothing but a spider-hole and beat-up taxicab left to Ruler of Babylon. One suspects that, if he still lives, the narrowing circles of Osama Bin Laden are being beset by the same inexorable forces. His infrastructure is being torn down, his confidantes vanishing in the night, his bankers visibly slouching towards the day when he is finally enmeshed in the "closing net of doom". It's really good - read it...