Mexico suffers growing addiction and violence as a byproduct of the U.S.-bound flow of narcotics
By Joshua Partlow
The Washington Post
December 21, 2017
TIJUANA¬, MEXICO—In one of her earliest memories, she is crouched under leafy green stalks, hiding from Mexican soldiers. By the time she was in grammar school, she was driving a four-wheeler through those marijuana fields.
By 15, Mildred Barreras Godoy lived along the border, with a boyfriend who each morning disguised himself in an orange construction vest and work boots and drove truckloads of methamphetamine into California, while she waited for his text message: “I scored the goal.”
That was how the habit started for this green-eyed, vivacious daughter of Mexico’s drug-war generation: by proximity. Drugs were always around — someone planting or tending or buying or selling or injecting or inhaling — until she began herself, first snorting lines of crystal meth at parties and then smoking it with such obsession she tore her eyebrows out.
“In my world, everyone uses,” she said.
The drug abuse that has become a defining feature of American life is increasingly emerging in Mexico as well, posing a daunting challenge for health officials and feeding the country’s soaring violence.
For decades, Mexico regarded addiction as an American problem, even as the flow of drugs through this country sharply escalated — and narcotics began seeping into the domestic market. Police and politicians routinely helped the drug cartels in exchange for bribes.
“We produce it in Mexico, that is a problem, and we export it, but every year more stays here, and people begin to consume it,” said Manuel Mondragón y Kalb, the head of Mexico’s National Commission Against Addictions, part of the Health Ministry.
Now Mexican officials must reckon with rising heroin use in the border town of Ciudad Juarez; cocaine circulating in Acapulco’s beach scene; and meth addicts filling rehab centers in the western Jalisco state.
While rates of drug use here remain far below those of the United States, the percentage of Mexican men between 12 and 65 who have used illegal drugs nearly doubled over the past decade (to 15.8 percent) while the percentage of women more than doubled (to 4.3 percent), according to the latest national survey.
“We don’t have a boom, but in some states, yes, we have a problem,” Mondragón y Kalb said.
Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, is one of the problem areas.
While precise numbers are unavailable, the number of drug addicts here has surged, with some estimating it has doubled in a decade. In this year that could shatter Mexican homicide records, more than 1,400 people were killed in this city through October — more than ever before. That is more than twice as many homicides as in Chicago, which has a million more people.
Many addicts in this city use heroin or methamphetamine, or both. Cesar Corona, 27 and unemployed, calls this combination the “Belushi.” On a recent day, he was injecting it into his neck as the sun set on “El Bordo,” a cement expanse along the border populated by drug addicts and deportees. As the drug took hold, his eyes rolled back, his knees buckled, and he began to smile.
“Drug use has exploded here in an incredible way,” said Florina Righetti Rojo, who runs a rehab center, Casa Corazon, for women in Tijuana. “What has this brought us? How many dead?”
Beyond tourist revelry
This gritty border town of 1.7 million people has a well-worn reputation as a sin city, a place where drugs, booze and prostitutes have long been accessible to Americans and Mexicans alike.
The current drug crisis, however, extends far beyond tourist revelry, as methamphetamines have flooded the neighborhoods that house workers in the city’s booming factories.
Mexico’s growing consumption is partly driven by a vast supply. Long a marijuana and opium poppy producer, this country took on a bigger role when its cartels became major transporters of Colombian cocaine to the United States in the 1980s.
Over the past decade, the amount of drugs in circulation and crossing the U.S. border has soared. Between 2013 and 2016, driven by a ravenous U.S. appetite, Mexico more than tripled the amount of opium poppy it produced, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. And as U.S. authorities cracked down on American meth labs, production shifted to Mexico. The nearly 54,400 pounds of meth seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in fiscal 2017 is triple the amount captured five years earlier.
Some compare the border to a dam: As the U.S. government has tightened security in the post-9/11 era, drugs have pooled on the Mexican side. Cartels have flooded the border “with enormous amounts of meth that could not be crossed into the U.S. as quickly as it arrives, so mid- and lower-level distributors push it out into the local markets,” a U.S. law enforcement official who works in the region said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The people dying in drug-related violence are generally not important figures in the cartels, said Victor Clark-Alfaro, a human-rights activist who teaches at San Diego State University.
“They are minor players who are killing each other,” he said. “But they are killing because it is an enormous market.”
‘I was looking for acceptance’
Mildred grew up in the rural outskirts of Los Mochis, a coastal town in the Sinaloa state, a place where drug lords such as Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán were considered folk heroes by locals who benefited from their largesse. She didn’t know her father. Her mother, who was 17 when Mildred was born, would travel to California for months on end to earn money. The girl was left with her grandmother, who grew corn and tomatoes.
On neighboring farms, Mildred discovered Sinaloa’s more famous crops. She would tag along with relatives when they tended marijuana plants. She sometimes worked as a spotter, carrying a whistle and a radio as she watched for soldiers. The cat-and-mouse game was exhilarating, another ad¬ven¬ture for a girl who enjoyed racing through marijuana fields on the rugged four-wheelers common in the area.
“I loved it,” she said.
In 2011, Mildred’s family moved to Tijuana to find jobs — her mom as a beautician, her new stepfather as a factory worker. The city had become so saturated with methamphetamine that the price had plunged. In Mildred’s working-class neighborhood, El Florido, teens would gather on the sidewalks and soccer fields to hawk plastic bags of the drug.
In her new home, Mildred felt uprooted and alone. As she entered her teens, she gravitated toward the rough neighborhood kids.
“I was looking for acceptance, to be part of a group, a family,” she said.
When she met a handsome 20-year-old at a New Year’s Eve party in 2015, she fell for him. The man drove a pickup truck and always had money. He had also recently finished a jail term for drug trafficking, she learned.
Her mother, Azucena Barreras Godoy, tried unsuccessfully to keep the teenager away from her new boyfriend. But with her own marriage falling apart, the mother finally relented when Mildred moved in with the older man.
“I didn’t have any other option,” the mother said. Her fights with Mildred were turning into screaming matches. “So I said, ‘Okay, live with him, maybe you’ll find some maturity and discover that this is not how life works.’ ”
Instead, at her boyfriend’s house, Mildred would smoke marijuana and meth. She helped him by packing crystal meth into large zip-top bags, she recalled. Every morning, like a traditional Mexican wife, Mildred would wake up by 4 a.m. to make her boyfriend breakfast and pack his lunch for the day’s crossing.
He would be home by late afternoon. Their money piled up.
“With what I saved in two weeks, I could buy a house,” she said.
‘I only wanted to do drugs’
As Mildred became entwined in the drug business, the violence around her escalated.
One evening, three armored white pickup trucks pulled up in front of Mildred’s house. Inside were cartel members who hadn’t been able to reach her boyfriend after he had taken a shipment into California. Panicking, she grabbed her boyfriend’s .45-caliber pistol from a closet and waited by the door.
“I thought I’d better shoot them before they could shoot me,” she recalled.
Eventually her boyfriend returned and the misunderstanding was resolved.
As the drug market in Tijuana has grown more lucrative, the battle for the right to sell has become bloodier.
“We know that the violence is surging now because of the drug dealers,” said Juan Carlos Moran, the federal police commander in Tijuana.
Drugs aren’t the only factor in the high homicide rate. There is pervasive poverty. And the decline of the once-dominant Arellano Félix cartel has led to the arrival of other cartels and a splintering of criminal organizations, which have branched into activities including robbery and kidnapping.
On one occasion, Mildred recalled, some cartel members asked her to feed a woman who was being held for ransom. The sight of the elderly, blindfolded woman, who reminded her of her grandmother, unnerved Mildred so much that she called a taxi and helped her escape.
“I have a heart, too,” she said.
When Mildred was a girl, her grandmother used to serve her marijuana tea to treat colitis. But in this conservative country, using hard drugs tended to be taboo.
By age 15, though, Mildred was smoking meth several times a day, enjoying the feverish intensity of the high.
The drug made Mildred’s pupils dilate and the hair on her arms stand on end. She would go into frenzies of housecleaning that lasted hours. In a bout of trimming her eyebrows, she plucked herself clean.
Like many meth users, she went days without sleeping and lost her appetite. Gaunt and jaundiced, she dropped out two months before finishing middle school.
“I hardly ever bathed,” she recalled. “I only wanted to do drugs.”
She fought her mother’s efforts to get her into rehab. Then, one day in June, Azucena Barreras Godoy invited her daughter home for a visit with some cousins. She offered the girl a vitamin capsule that she had secretly filled with the tranquilizer Clonazepam, the mother later recalled.
As Mildred relaxed, the family pounced, tying her legs with a belt.
They hustled her into the car, two cousins guarding Mildred in the back seat, and set out for a rehab center. Mildred frantically considered throwing herself out the window. But the tranquilizer was sapping her strength.
By the time Casa Corazon’s metal door locked behind her, she could no longer resist.
A failing fight
Florina Righetti Rojo opened the center four years ago to cater to the growing population of female addicts. She wants to open another facility for adolescents but hasn’t been able to raise the money.
“Drug use starts in middle school now,” she said.
Mexico is woefully ill-equipped to handle the intensifying addiction problem. As part of a retooling of narcotics laws in 2009, the country planned a major expansion of drug treatment services. That has failed to materialize because of a lack of funding and shifting political priorities, according to public-health experts.
In Baja California, the state where Tijuana is located, the majority of the roughly 200 treatment centers are private, which means they are beyond the means of many poor Mexicans. Some facilities have faced accusations of abuse. Casa Corazon costs $300 per month but treats some women free.
Mexican officials say they are working hard to raise awareness about the drug problem. The National Commission Against Addictions has developed partnerships with the military and public schools and established state-level councils to promote prevention. In Baja California, a new television ad campaign warns of the dangers of drugs. But there is no sign the trend is being reversed.
“Basically, we’re failing in this fight against addiction,” said Jaime Arredondo Sanchez, a researcher at the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission, who studies drug issues in Tijuana.
Surveys have found only a fraction of the people who are dependent on drugs are in treatment.
Mildred is one of the lucky ones. After five months in Casa Corazon, she has been “reborn,” her mother says. The teen has regained the 35 pounds she lost while using meth. She plays soccer three days a week. She passed the test to graduate from middle school. She laughs easily and often.
In therapy sessions, Mildred has retraced the path that led to her addiction.
“I know that what I’ve lived, and what I’ve done, has not been good,” she said. “I was sick before.”
Now she’s ready to begin a new life, she insists, with a new goal. She has decided to become a nurse.
“I want to save lives,” she said.
Her mother still worries about the 16-year-old’s release, expected early next year. She is working on a plan to send the teen back to Sinaloa for school.
She knows the risks in Mildred’s old neighborhood are ever-present. And the lure of meth has not fully dimmed.
Mildred, smiling, recalls it as “delicious.”
“I think the cravings will never stop,” she said.
Ana Ceballos in Tijuana and Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Monday, December 25, 2017
SHEILA JACKSON LEE PLAYS RACE CARD OVER DISPUTE OF FIRST CLASS SEAT
School teacher claims she was bumped out of her first class seat on a United flight by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee
BarkGrowlBite
December 25, 2017
Jean-Marie Simon, 63, a private school teacher from Washington, D.C., purchased a first class round trip ticket on United Airlines from D.C. to Guatemala and back. Things did not go well for her on the second leg of her return flight. When she boarded that flight in Houston on December 18, she found someone else sitting in her first class seat. That person was non other than Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
United, which has lately been known for throwing passengers off its flights, claims that Simon had cancelled her return flight. Simon denies it. She was given a $500 voucher and seated in the economy section.
Simon, a white woman, argued with a black flight attendant that she should be given the seat now occupied by the congresswoman. Jackson Lee overheard the argument and subsequently issued this statement:
“Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice. This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people. But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry.”
By her statement , Jackson Lee has demonstrated that us sorry-ass whites continue to treat African-Americans as second class people.
Jackson Lee continues to be an uber-embarrassment to the City of Houston.
In the spirit of the Christmas season, Jackson Lee should have given her seat to Simon and taken a seat in the economy section with the common folks she always claims to be speaking for. Instead she has taken this opportunity to play the race card.
Ho Ho Ho - And a Merry Christmas to all ….. that is except for Jean-Marie Simon – Ho Ho Ho
BarkGrowlBite
December 25, 2017
Jean-Marie Simon, 63, a private school teacher from Washington, D.C., purchased a first class round trip ticket on United Airlines from D.C. to Guatemala and back. Things did not go well for her on the second leg of her return flight. When she boarded that flight in Houston on December 18, she found someone else sitting in her first class seat. That person was non other than Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
United, which has lately been known for throwing passengers off its flights, claims that Simon had cancelled her return flight. Simon denies it. She was given a $500 voucher and seated in the economy section.
Simon, a white woman, argued with a black flight attendant that she should be given the seat now occupied by the congresswoman. Jackson Lee overheard the argument and subsequently issued this statement:
“Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice. This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people. But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry.”
By her statement , Jackson Lee has demonstrated that us sorry-ass whites continue to treat African-Americans as second class people.
Jackson Lee continues to be an uber-embarrassment to the City of Houston.
In the spirit of the Christmas season, Jackson Lee should have given her seat to Simon and taken a seat in the economy section with the common folks she always claims to be speaking for. Instead she has taken this opportunity to play the race card.
Ho Ho Ho - And a Merry Christmas to all ….. that is except for Jean-Marie Simon – Ho Ho Ho
HAPPY YULE
by Bob Walsh
As a good pagan I just wanted to assure all the Christians out there that I am not personally aggrieved that you guys ripped off our holidays. Pagans are about the most "ecumenical" people out there. Maybe we would rather you gave us a little credit once in a while, or at least didn't wake our asses up on Saturday mornings trying to convert us,. but we can live with it.
Ho Ho Ho. Enjoy the season, whatever you call it.
As a good pagan I just wanted to assure all the Christians out there that I am not personally aggrieved that you guys ripped off our holidays. Pagans are about the most "ecumenical" people out there. Maybe we would rather you gave us a little credit once in a while, or at least didn't wake our asses up on Saturday mornings trying to convert us,. but we can live with it.
Ho Ho Ho. Enjoy the season, whatever you call it.
WOMAN SAVES HERSELF FROM AGGRESSIVE ALLIGATOR WITH .25 AUTOMATIC
by Bob Walsh
It happened in Florida a couple of days ago. The woman and her abusive soon-to-be ex-boyfriend were walking near a pond, discussing who was going to get custody of the dog. Suddenly the dog went bat-shit crazy and an aggressive alligator charged from the pond, coming right at them.
The woman calmly pulled her .25 automatic from her purse, took careful aim and shot her boyfriend thru the knee and then walked away with the dog.
Don't you just love Christmas stories with happy endings?
It happened in Florida a couple of days ago. The woman and her abusive soon-to-be ex-boyfriend were walking near a pond, discussing who was going to get custody of the dog. Suddenly the dog went bat-shit crazy and an aggressive alligator charged from the pond, coming right at them.
The woman calmly pulled her .25 automatic from her purse, took careful aim and shot her boyfriend thru the knee and then walked away with the dog.
Don't you just love Christmas stories with happy endings?
NAKED MAN WITH GUN USUALLY BAD NEWS
by Bob Walsh
Yes, it's true. If you see a naked man running around with a gun (unless your favorite nudist camp happens to have a firing range) it is usually bad news. It certainly was so in Dublin, Ohio on Saturday
DeShaune Stewart, 24, of Columbus, killed both his supervisor and the postmaster. He apparently regarded the two of them as the cause of his impending job loss. (I didn't even know it was possible to fire postal workers.)
The killings were separated by about four miles and three hours.
Steward first approached his boss, Lance Herrera-Dempsey, 52 at about 0430 in the post office building. He was about three hours early, naked and carrying a gun. I am not sure if it was me I would have hung around to see what was going on, but it wasn't me, so....Stewart shot this victim twice, the second shot while he was laying on the floor.
Stewart was then seen three hours later, also naked and armed, chasing Postmaster Ginger Ballard, 53, around the parking lot at her apartment. She died of a head injury after being thrown to the ground.
Stewart is in custody. He was arrested shortly after killing Ballard.
Yes, it's true. If you see a naked man running around with a gun (unless your favorite nudist camp happens to have a firing range) it is usually bad news. It certainly was so in Dublin, Ohio on Saturday
DeShaune Stewart, 24, of Columbus, killed both his supervisor and the postmaster. He apparently regarded the two of them as the cause of his impending job loss. (I didn't even know it was possible to fire postal workers.)
The killings were separated by about four miles and three hours.
Steward first approached his boss, Lance Herrera-Dempsey, 52 at about 0430 in the post office building. He was about three hours early, naked and carrying a gun. I am not sure if it was me I would have hung around to see what was going on, but it wasn't me, so....Stewart shot this victim twice, the second shot while he was laying on the floor.
Stewart was then seen three hours later, also naked and armed, chasing Postmaster Ginger Ballard, 53, around the parking lot at her apartment. She died of a head injury after being thrown to the ground.
Stewart is in custody. He was arrested shortly after killing Ballard.
MAKING A COMEBACK
by Bob Walsh
The National Park Service has just announced that the old (destroyed 40 years ago) Miwuk village in Yosemite Park is going to be rebuilt.
So far, in a project that started almost ten years ago, the village roundhouse foundation has been rebuilt. Construction was stopped in 2011 due to "safety" concerns and the Miwuks had to demonstrate compliance with building codes. Once it is done the village will be open at least to some extent to visitors but is essentially intended to be an actual resident to natives who work in and around the park.
Archaeologists say that the Miwuks have lived in the Yosemite Valley for at least 7,000 years.
The National Park Service has just announced that the old (destroyed 40 years ago) Miwuk village in Yosemite Park is going to be rebuilt.
So far, in a project that started almost ten years ago, the village roundhouse foundation has been rebuilt. Construction was stopped in 2011 due to "safety" concerns and the Miwuks had to demonstrate compliance with building codes. Once it is done the village will be open at least to some extent to visitors but is essentially intended to be an actual resident to natives who work in and around the park.
Archaeologists say that the Miwuks have lived in the Yosemite Valley for at least 7,000 years.
A ‘BIG-ASS’ WAR WITH RUSSIA?
'There's a war coming': Marine Corps commandant tells troops to be ready for a 'big-ass fight' as US military planners say next conflict could be against Russia or North Korea
By Ariel Zilber and Associated Press
Daily Mail
December 23, 2017
The nation's top Marine Corps commander told American soldiers stationed in Europe that 'there's a war coming' and that a 'big-ass fight' was on the horizon, it was reported on Saturday.
General Robert Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, made the remarks during a holiday visit with US troops stationed in Norway this week.
The remarks were first reported by Military.com.
'I hope I'm wrong, but there's a war coming,' Neller said.
'You're in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence.'
The Marine Corps commandant was speaking to the troops about the importance of readiness even during peacetime missions that can change depending on the circumstances.
Neller was speaking to a 300-member contingent of US troops stationed at the Norwegian Home Guard base near Trondheim.
He told the soldiers that American military planners were focused on Russia and the Pacific as possible future flashpoints of conflict.
Neller made the remarks while fielding questions from troops in a town-hall style forum.
'I think probably the focus, the intended focus is not on the Middle East,' Neller said.
'The focus is more on the Pacific and Russia.'
Neller said that while America wants to look beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, it cannot always dictate events.
'The problem is, we may not be interested in the Middle East, but they seem to be fascinated with us,' he said.
'And as long as there are groups there that threaten the United States, there will have to be some presence.'
President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday that Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries globally, but stopped short of accusing Moscow of meddling in the 2016 US election.
The criticism of Russia, laid out in a new national security strategy based on Trump’s 'America First' vision, reflects a view long held by US diplomats that Russia actively undermines American interests at home and abroad, despite Trump’s own bid for warmer ties with President Vladimir Putin.
'Through modernized forms of subversive tactics, Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world,' said the document.
It avoided directly citing what US intelligence agencies say was Russian meddling in last year’s US presidential election.
'Russia uses information operations as part of its offensive cyber efforts to influence public opinion across the globe. Its influence campaigns blend covert intelligence operations and false online personas with state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or "trolls",' the document said.
Trump has frequently spoken of wanting to improve relations with Putin, even though Russia has frustrated US policy in Syria and Ukraine and done little to help Washington in its standoff with North Korea.
Neller's remarks were reported at around the same time that Defense Secretary James Mattis made a similar assessment about the potential for future conflict.
Mattis on Friday told US soldiers in Fort Bragg, North Carolina that 'storm clouds are gathering' over the Korean Peninsula.
Without forecasting a conflict, Mattis emphasized that diplomacy stands the best chance of preventing a war if America's words are backed up by strong and prepared armed forces.
'My fine young soldiers, the only way our diplomats can speak with authority and be believed is if you're ready to go,' Mattis told several dozen soldiers and airmen at the 82nd Airborne Division's Hall of Heroes, his last stop on a two-day pre-holiday tour of bases to greet troops.
Mattis' comments came as the UN Security Council unanimously approved tough new sanctions against North Korea, compelling nations to sharply reduce their sales of oil to the reclusive country and send home all North Korean expatriate workers within two years.
Such workers are seen as a key source of revenue for North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's cash-strapped government.
Trump and other top US officials have made repeated threats about US military action.
Some officials have described the messaging as twofold in purpose: to pressure North Korea to enter into negotiations on getting rid of its nuclear arsenal, and to motivate key regional powers China and Russia to put more pressure on Pyongyang so a war is averted.
For the military, the focus has been on ensuring soldiers are ready should the call come.
By Ariel Zilber and Associated Press
Daily Mail
December 23, 2017
The nation's top Marine Corps commander told American soldiers stationed in Europe that 'there's a war coming' and that a 'big-ass fight' was on the horizon, it was reported on Saturday.
General Robert Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, made the remarks during a holiday visit with US troops stationed in Norway this week.
The remarks were first reported by Military.com.
'I hope I'm wrong, but there's a war coming,' Neller said.
'You're in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence.'
The Marine Corps commandant was speaking to the troops about the importance of readiness even during peacetime missions that can change depending on the circumstances.
Neller was speaking to a 300-member contingent of US troops stationed at the Norwegian Home Guard base near Trondheim.
He told the soldiers that American military planners were focused on Russia and the Pacific as possible future flashpoints of conflict.
Neller made the remarks while fielding questions from troops in a town-hall style forum.
'I think probably the focus, the intended focus is not on the Middle East,' Neller said.
'The focus is more on the Pacific and Russia.'
Neller said that while America wants to look beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, it cannot always dictate events.
'The problem is, we may not be interested in the Middle East, but they seem to be fascinated with us,' he said.
'And as long as there are groups there that threaten the United States, there will have to be some presence.'
President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday that Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries globally, but stopped short of accusing Moscow of meddling in the 2016 US election.
The criticism of Russia, laid out in a new national security strategy based on Trump’s 'America First' vision, reflects a view long held by US diplomats that Russia actively undermines American interests at home and abroad, despite Trump’s own bid for warmer ties with President Vladimir Putin.
'Through modernized forms of subversive tactics, Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world,' said the document.
It avoided directly citing what US intelligence agencies say was Russian meddling in last year’s US presidential election.
'Russia uses information operations as part of its offensive cyber efforts to influence public opinion across the globe. Its influence campaigns blend covert intelligence operations and false online personas with state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or "trolls",' the document said.
Trump has frequently spoken of wanting to improve relations with Putin, even though Russia has frustrated US policy in Syria and Ukraine and done little to help Washington in its standoff with North Korea.
Neller's remarks were reported at around the same time that Defense Secretary James Mattis made a similar assessment about the potential for future conflict.
Mattis on Friday told US soldiers in Fort Bragg, North Carolina that 'storm clouds are gathering' over the Korean Peninsula.
Without forecasting a conflict, Mattis emphasized that diplomacy stands the best chance of preventing a war if America's words are backed up by strong and prepared armed forces.
'My fine young soldiers, the only way our diplomats can speak with authority and be believed is if you're ready to go,' Mattis told several dozen soldiers and airmen at the 82nd Airborne Division's Hall of Heroes, his last stop on a two-day pre-holiday tour of bases to greet troops.
Mattis' comments came as the UN Security Council unanimously approved tough new sanctions against North Korea, compelling nations to sharply reduce their sales of oil to the reclusive country and send home all North Korean expatriate workers within two years.
Such workers are seen as a key source of revenue for North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's cash-strapped government.
Trump and other top US officials have made repeated threats about US military action.
Some officials have described the messaging as twofold in purpose: to pressure North Korea to enter into negotiations on getting rid of its nuclear arsenal, and to motivate key regional powers China and Russia to put more pressure on Pyongyang so a war is averted.
For the military, the focus has been on ensuring soldiers are ready should the call come.
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