Ben Rhodes

Armed Forces at a much higher scale than what has been true in the past through Northern Command and a new GIATF, Joint Interagency Task Force, that's been put together to focus on cartels in Mexico.

And certainly the intelligence community is a part of that, providing analysis, providing information.

Sort of information that your partner on the ground, in this case, the Mexican armed forces, Mexican police wouldn't necessarily have available.

It's additive because a lot of the human intelligence comes from local law enforcement.

And that's probably the case here.

Mexican law enforcement is much better placed than any U.S.

intelligence to gather human intelligence on the ground.

On the other hand, Mexican organizations are also under a greater level of threat than U.S.

security officials are.

And so for them, it's convenient for the United States to conduct some of the surveillance.

You know, that's a good question.

Clearly, President Scheinbaum is doing everything she can to prevent a U.S.

direct attack on Mexican territory.

I agree right from the very beginning.

Mexico watchers, I have completely aligned with the view from before this administration took office that they really wanted to carry out an armed strike in Mexican territory.

I'm not sure it was so much this incident

Where the Scheinbaum government showed, oh, no, we're taking action.

If you'll give us the tools or the information, we'll carry out the action so you don't have to be here.

That's very much where she wants to be.

Because also there's a good chunk of the population that wants her to take this kind of action against organized crime in Mexico.