Look, I applaud Sylvester Stallone’s heroic stance against human traffickers and kidnappers – for I know there will be quite an outcry especially from the large and very influential human trafficking and kidnapper lobby.

Of course, this movie comes on the heels of two other edgy ventures: The G.I Joe flick – which turned a gritty American icon into an airbrushed Benneton ad, and “Inglourious Basterds” a fantasy that has average Jews hacking Nazi soldiers to pieces.

These three movies have two things in common:
1) They avoid present, real danger in the world and instead choose villains that are not just safe, but politically correct to hate. You’d think it would be easy for Quentin Tarantino to find a present day enemy for the Jews (like, say, a terrorist group that denies the Holocaust and wants to wipe Israel off the map), but maybe none exist! And what of those guys who flew planes into the World Trade Center? I suppose in the era of the “unclenched fist,” we must be more sensitive to “backlash” than barbarism.

2) They want to make money. And to make money these days, it means putting the world first, not America. Global tickets sales mean eliminating any scent of American justice – that evil Cowboy mentality that reminds the world we’re reliably awesome. But most important, it’s distasteful to consider a battle between good and evil when it’s happening today.

Because then, you have to choose.

Tonight we’ve got the lovely Lauren Sivan, Carl Cameron, Ron Geraci, and Dr. David Tolin, from the great show “Hoarders!” (love that show)

Her trembling hands and shaking legs speak volumes of the pain she suffers day-in and day-out, wondering about the fate of her little girl. “Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she cold and hungry? Have they hurt her? If they did kill her, where is her body?” These thoughts race through the grief stricken mind of this single mother a hundred times a day.

Consuelo (not her real name), a 49 year-old mother of four, can hardly speak her daughters’ name before her face flinches with pain and her eyes fill with tears again. “Today is my baby Paula’s 20th birthday [not her real name either]. It’s been over two years and we’ve heard nothing.” With a breath of exasperation, frustration, and more than a hint of resentment she exclaims, “And no one has helped us. No one.”

As horrific as this sounds, this story has been played out hundreds of times in the last five years all across the U.S./Mexican border. Sometimes it ends with the return of the loved one, in some cases alive but in most cases not. Sometimes, like in Consuelo’s case, it never ends.

I’ve interviewed over fifty families in the last four years, families living the same nightmare every day: “What has happened to my loved one in Mexico?”

My first encounter was with a man whose daughter and best friend became the center of attention in the mainstream media for a short time after their kidnappings in September of 2004. So compelled by their story, I made them the centerpiece of the kidnapping segment of my documentary, “Drug Wars.”

William Slemaker sat down with me and told me the frightening details of the night his daughter, Yvette Martinez, 24, and her best friend, Brenda Cisneros, 21, were kidnapped just a half-mile from the bridge crossing back into the U.S. by the local police in Nuevo Laredo, only to be handed over to a drug lord the next day. He told me that when he reported the two girls missing he was surprised to find out how helpless U.S. authorities were and how hopeless the Mexican authorities were.

After a grueling night of listening to William and five other families tell me their stories of pain and despair, I was emotionally drained to the point that I got up from the chair I had been sitting in for nearly six hours, walked into the adjoining room, broke-down and cried like a baby. As a father, I could not help but place myself in the shoes of these parents and feel for just a moment, the pain they have been feeling for years. I walked back into the room where they had gathered and as I embraced them all thanking them for talking to me, I thought to myself I never want to know what it would be like to be in their position. Their pain is what keeps me reporting on the border today.

I look at my bank account and see that I have literally broke myself and my family financially to get the word out to as many people as possible—then I think of them and suddenly my problems are not so bad after all. I stop feeling sorry for myself and start working again.

Not all of the kidnappings I have worked in the past four years have this never-ending pain attached. Some people do actually get confirmation of the death of their loved one, occasionally they even get the remains which they can bury, grieve over, and gain some type of closure through. And then every once in a while a happy ending comes—their loved one comes home, alive—not always well, but alive.

The last kidnapping I covered in Nuevo Laredo was just such a case. Two young girls 18 and 19-years-old were out late at night at a bar in Nuevo Laredo. At about 2:30am they were kidnapped and held without a ransom demand for a week. On the seventh day—their captors released them near a truck stop on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo. I spent most of that week with the mother of the older of the two girls, Gina (not her real name).  Her grief, pain and suffering was all too familiar to me. Gina’s cry for help to the public and authorities exacted the same response I have seen over and over since hearing William Slemaker’s story in 2006.

Alas there were two silver linings in this story—the obvious one was that the girls were returned to their families, emotionally beat down and physically hurt, but alive and well enough to recover. But the one silver lining that had an even bigger impact on me than the girls being reunited with their loved ones, was the unconditional love and support this family received from one man. He was the same man that first called me on the phone to tell me about the kidnappings before the local news had even reported it. He told me “Rusty, you need to get down here and investigate this.”

This man stood by Gina and held her hand as she walked, held her head as she cried and helped her at every critical turn. This man stood there with a face of tears as the news of the safe return of this young girl was confirmed by the authorities and celebrated along with the family as they waited in anticipation for the teenage victim to walk through the doors of the Webb County Sheriffs office. When it was all over, Gina went on national television thanking this man for all he had done to encourage, help and support her and she thanked God for sending this man to her because she had no one else.

That man was none other than William Slemaker.

William has managed to take the pain he has endured for the past four-and-a-half years and turn it into a useful and powerful tool to help others faced with the same plight. I have taken William with me all over the country to speak at conventions and several venues where we premiered “Drug Wars.”  Audiences from everywhere are drawn to his story but drawn even closer by his passion to help the hundreds of other people that have missing loved ones in Mexico. I pray for William and his family that though helping these other people and showing them unconditional love and support that the pain and grief they have suffered over Yvette’s disappearance will be removed—without a trace.

I’ve been documenting the Mexican drug cartels and their operations in Mexico and the U.S. on film and in print for the past four years. I’ve contributed to magazines, newspapers and presented segments on network news, I’ve written a book on the subject and meet regularly with intelligence agents from every three lettered agency in the alphabet. I’ve had a front row seat to one of the most violent and brutal uprisings in the history of our two countries and still I am amazed that so few people, especially within our government comprehend this problem and haven’t a clue as to the true effects it is having on our own society, economy and geopolitical landscape.

The flow of illicit narcotics into the United States from Mexico is nothing new and neither is the fact that the Mexican DTO’s (Drug Trafficking Organizations) are running the entire show. Up until recently it was believed that they were earning somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 billion dollars a year from that enterprise and for the past two decades the U.S. government has been content with the lackluster results of their interdiction efforts evidenced by the fact that nothing has really changed in that time span.

But lately it seems something has finally got certain branches of our government worried and when viewed in its totality, it should worry us all; in fact, when you have seen the vision that these highly organized, well financed DTO’s have for their future, not only will you be concerned, but if you care for this country, it will scare the hell out of you.

This is the kind of stuff  you see in the movies-but even “Scarface” had an ending.

I’m going to be writing in an effort to paint this picture for all to see. I do my reporting from the frontlines because I spend about two to three weeks out of every month in Mexico and along our border.

I’ve had the opportunity to get at close range to some of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world. Whether that has been a blessing or a curse remains to be seen, but nonetheless, it has given me insight into a situation that is not only dangerous, but frightening–to see first hand what they are successfully doing with the money, power and influence they are amassing by selling their wares to our own people and around the world.

The men who run these organizations are not a bunch of coked out cowboys slinging their pistols in the air as they party day and night. No, these are intelligent, educated men with the resources to surround themselves with some of the sharpest minds on the planet. They run global, multi-billion dollar businesses that operate around the clock, around the world. They know the power of knowledge. They have the latest in technologies and weaponry, they use satellites for communications and surveillance. They employ their own private armies–fully trained and armed to teeth–in order to protect their operations.

Narco-terrorism is alive and well, not just along our border but all over the U.S.

Want proof? Last week 750 operatives from the Sinaloa cartel were taken down in over 120 cities across the country. Before that, last fall, 500 operatives working for the Gulf cartel were arrested in an operation spanning the south. That’s 1,250 narco-terrorists operating on American soil, receiving their instructions from Mexico, all arrested here in the last six months.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing in much more detail about the interviews I’m gathering from ordinary citizens who are caught in the cross-fire of daily cartel hits–family members of kidnapped children, teachers who are being extorted by the cartels, hospital staff who are afraid to do their jobs because when a wounded cop or criminal is brought to their hospital the cartels send a hit squad in to finish the job right in front of doctors and nurses…

I’ll share stories of cops who are afraid of doing their job because even though they don’t work for the cartels, their bosses do, so when they are sent out to do a job, they don’t know if they are doing it for their government or the cartel.

The bottom line is that there is no governmental force in control of the Juarez corridor, but what’s worse is that there is no single cartel in control either, making this region the most dangerous place to be in the Western Hemisphere.

The American public has little clue what the effects of narco-terrorism looks like.  Mexico itself has not yet failed, but Juarez has, and it is happening 1100 feet from our border.