Two years after its launch, Mexicans question President Calderón's drug war
Drug-trafficking deaths have skyrocketed by more than 117 percent in 2008.
By Sara Miller Llana

Five thousand, three hundred, and seventy-six people have been killed in Mexico's drug war so far this year, double the number from last year and more than all the US troops killed in Iraq. Is this what victory looks like?

That's the question Mexico is grappling with two years after President Felipe Calderón took office announcing a massive military effort to dismantle drug trafficking organizations. Thursday marks two years since Mr. Calderón announced "Operation Michoacán," the first of a sustained series of high-profile deployments of soldiers across the country.

Since then, federal authorities have disarmed scores of police departments, boasted of bundles of cash and caches of weapons confiscated, and heralded arrests of some of the highest-profile traffickers as proof of success. But the effort's first year, 2007, also turned out to be the nation's deadliest in modern history; and the death toll for 2008 has, as of Dec. 2, far exceeded that, spiking by 117 percent, according to Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora. Authorities at the highest ranks have been arrested for colluding with traffickers, and a strategy that has been a political boon could turn into a liability for Calderón in next year's mid-term elections.

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