The FTO Story

In the late 1990s, as part of the Clinton agenda, a list was drawn up by the State Department of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).  Basically, at least how the Clinton folks wrote this up originally....you were to be a target and they'd bring up your name, your organization....then aim at the money-making part of the operation, bring global power (including economic) against you.

Right now today, there's around 60 organizations on the list, which you can view. 

Now, just because you get your name on the list.....doesn't mean that this is the bitter end.

The Abu Sayyaf Group, for example, has been on the list since 1997.  They still in some form, exist today.  The Real Irish Republican Army has been on the list since 2001, and to some degree....still exist today.

Once you get on the list, the CIA folks then start efforts to infiltrate, or buy info on your organization....with attempts to make it more difficult on them.

The Obama folks decided at some point.....to put various ISIS groups on the list, then bombed them via drones.  Effective or not.....it was meant to send a message.  If you rose to the top three to ten players of the group, your name got on a list, and your odds of dying went remarkably up.

So, we come to the Trump idea....put the Mexican and Latin American drug cartels on this list.  The State Department?  They are simply reviewing the idea, because.....lets be honest....no drug cartel has ever been on the list before.

Lets say they go to the list, and you end up with twelve cartels noted.  The list would then (I assume) include groups in Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Columbia, and Venezuela.  They would list the top ten guys in each organization, their headquarters, and how they operate.

Then Trump would approach each country and let them know....he'll drone-kill each guy, unless that country takes down the cartel.  Well.....no one is going to dare arrest cartel chiefs. 

So around six months into this program, you start to hit cartel chiefs.  You have the US military then identifying routes of traffic.....flying drones over 'hub-centers'....gathering intelligence, and then hitting them.  Cocaine prices escalate (maybe 50-percent in one single week) in the US.  Distribution gangs in Baltimore and NY start to report shortages of cocaine.  Users are now getting antsy, and committing bigger crimes to afford the escalating prices.

At some point, an entire network of the cartel is taken down.  That drug distribution network in the US is then forced to react, and find new production cycles. 

The CIA would eventually get smart about where the money is, and start to find ways of siphoning off the money from banks.  The cartels would react, and kill bank officials....thinking they were behind the business.

Targeted US border guys?  US military starting to be targeted?  US governors being targeted?  All of this would lead to escalations.  The only way to really get ahead in this game....is to kill more of them....before they can rebuild or redevelop their strategy.  Once you achieved killing off an entire cartel, you'd have to emphasize that it doesn't end. 

But here's the odd factor in this game.  All of these distribution gangs carrying and marketing the drugs in the US?  You could charge them up real quick.....aiding and abetting a FTO.  Suddenly, a big player with the Baltimore El Salvadoran gangs....would be grabbed and sent for massive federal charges....fifty years in a max-security prison.  You'd go after his number two. In a matter of one single year.....you would have sent twenty of these guys up for helping an FTO situation.  You could even go and start construction on a new prison complex....in anticipation of hundreds to be convicted in the next five years.

Something that Bush or Obama might have done?  No, never in a thousand years.