THE WEIRS TIMES, Thursday, April 8, 2010
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AN AMERICAN FAMILY’S CANCUN HORROR
I t ’s every par-
by Michelle Malkin
Syndicated Columnist
ent’s worst spring break nightmare come true: Fun in the sun somehow turned into a south- of-the-border blood- bath for 21-year-old Zeke Rucker. The vacationing Rutgers University graduate was discovered alone
outside his resort hotel in the wee hours of the morning of March 16, bleeding and unconscious by a swimming pool. His heart- broken and horrified family has questions. American and Mexican officials don’t have any answers -- or any immediate interest in finding out what happened to Zeke. Did he fall? Was he beaten? Did hotel staff
witness anything? A resort security guard found Rucker at around 4 a.m. near some lounge chairs with his head “bashed in.” According to family members, the hotel has interior surveillance video showing Rucker
“staggering” from his room. But there is no exterior video to shed light on what hap- pened once he exited the hotel or when and how exactly he sustained his grave head injuries. His wallet and ID were left intact inside his hotel room. Zucker’s New Jersey-based parents strong-
ly suspect foul play and random violence. But the American consulate told the family there will be no investigation, and Zeke’s parents say the Mexican police didn’t even bother to meet with them. Mexican consulates on American soil are
famous for vigorously intervening on behalf of their illegal alien citizens -- lobbying to get them driver’s licenses, bank accounts and health care, for example, and rushing to defend illegal alien border-crossers arrested in reckless- and drunk-driving cases. Where are our U.S. lawmakers to put pres-
sure on our U.S. State Department to get to the bottom of the Ruckers’ Cancun horror? For now, the family is focused on nurs-
ing Zeke back to health. He remains in a coma under heavy sedation after undergoing
emergency surgery in Mexico to remove a hematoma in his brain. During that surgery, he suffered an infection that has left him with a raging fever and complications. Zeke was flown to Miami’s Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital for top-notch care. But not without difficulty. Zeke’s aunt, Jodi, related the Ruckers’
hellish experience transporting her nephew out of the violence-wracked country: “The air ambulance team is made up of ex-military men who have done evacuations out of many countries. They say that Cancun is one of the most difficult places to get out of. The air ambulance team when landed in Mexico was surrounded by military with guns drawn that then searched the plane.” The Ruckers hired a “handler,” who “basi-
cally gives the Mexicans American cash for their plane to land and take off safely. It’s called ‘greasing the monkey.’ (Zeke’s father) was getting anxious because of the amount of guns and men surrounding the plane, and the pilot told him not to worry because
See MALKIN on 38
TEST CASE: MARJAH
Third in a series of re- ports from Afghanistan
CALENDER, AFGHANISTAN
by Oliver North
Syndicated Columnist
-- Springtime. Back home, Congress is in recess, the kids are out of school and the redbuds, dogwoods and cherry trees are about to bloom. Here, south of the Hindu
Kush, opium poppies are in full blossom, the harvest is about to come in and it’s the start of what the locals call “fighting season.” Though people in both countries have come to accept those conditions as “patterns of life,” some here intend to change the archetype for the people of Afghanistan. If their plan succeeds, it could prove to be the undoing of the Taliban -- and mark the beginning of the end of this long war. And most of the so-called mainstream media will have missed the moment. Last week, three high-profile visitors came to
Afghanistan, and all talked about the future of the fight. Our commander in chief came for six
hours of meetings at Bagram Airbase and in Kabul. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was here for two days of briefings and meetings with U.S., coalition and Afghan commanders and troops. In both cases, major media reports focused on U.S. and civilian casualties, the upcoming “final offensive” here in Kandahar and the alleged corruption of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed, the head of Kandahar’s provincial council. But the visitor who may have made the most important contri- bution to bringing an end to the Taliban was the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michele Leonhart. Leonhart, it should be noted, is a DEA special
agent and the first administrator of the agency to make an official visit to an active war zone. More than 90 of her special agents and sup- port personnel are deployed here, and in the past six months, three of them have been killed in action, and another was wounded. During her three-day inspection tour of Afghanistan, she conferred with U.S., coalition and Afghan officials to review and approve next steps in taking down what she calls the “Taliban narco-
insurgency.” In Afghanistan, farmers, insurgents and cor-
rupt officials all rely on income derived from the spring poppy harvest. The goal of the plan -- developed by Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson’s Marine expeditionary brigade based at Camp Leatherneck, DEA specialists on the ground and “in-country” U.S. agricultural and develop- ment experts -- is to undermine the networks that finance the Taliban and abet the corrup- tion of Afghan government officials, without disrupting the livelihood of poor farmers who may have been coerced into growing opium by insurgent networks. Breaking these connections without alienat-
ing the civilian population in what has been a Taliban stronghold is no small task. More than seven U.S. Marine and Afghan national security force battalions have been committed to the mission. So have significant resources of the DEA and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which will provide micro-grants to farmers who do not harvest the poppies they planted last fall. Cash will be given to stimulate small businesses
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