Bloggings by boz

• Up to eight UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters for the air force and federal police.

• Up to four Casa 235 Persuader surveillance airplanes for the navy.

• Up to eight Bell 412 helicopters for the Mexican air force.

Obviously the non-helicopter aid in the form of police training and judicial reform may have a bigger impact on Mexico's security and much of it hasn't happened yet either.

After my previous post about the slow trickle of aid to Mexico, Abigail Poe wrote about the comparison between aid to Mexico and aid to Colombia. Aid to Colombia started slow and sped up over the course of many years.

The additional problem with the slow delivery of Merida Initiative funds, however, is that it's only supposed to be an urgent three year program. Merida was sold to Congress as absolutely urgent due to the increasing violence in Mexico. Part of the funds even went through the emergency supplemental process with Iraq and Afghanistan money instead of the usual appropriations. That was after the Bush administration spent months hinting at a new aid package without discussing the details with Congress. To hide the planning details for months, then present security support for Mexico as an urgent issue and then take years to get the program moving seems disingenuous.

Either we should deal with the immediate urgency of the problem, in which case this is moving far too slowly, or we should start looking out 10-15 years and thinking about longer term strategy and sustainability. The hurry up and wait style of appropriating this money is not the right way to go about the issue.