Calderon's Unwinnable War; Using troops to fight Mexico's drug lords has pushed the death toll to new highs, testing public patience and support.(Felipe Calderon)

Byline: Joseph Contreras (With Monica Campbell in Mexico City)

The government official had just turned his SUV in to a narrow alley near his office on May 14 when a red Pontiac cut him off. Next, according to eyewitnesses, three gunmen on motorcycles pulled up alongside and opened fire. The flawless assassination bore all the hallmarks of the murders once carried out in BogotA and Medellin by the henchmen of Colombia's notorious drug lords. But the mayhem this time was in the upscale Mexico City district of CoyoacAn. The victim was Jose Nemesio Lugo, a 55-year-old Justice Department official who, only a month earlier, had been put in charge of the attorney general's national crime-intelligence center.

The Mexican news media were quick to blame domestic traffickers for the hit. If they're right, it was only the latest bloody reprisal sparked by President Felipe Calderon's massive military crackdown on the country's growing drug trade. Rather than tamp down violence, Calderon's decision to increase the military's role in the conflict has had the opposite effect: Mexico today is at war, and it's not clear who's winning. Since January, more than 1,000 people have died in drug-related violence--on pace to eclipse last year's record-breaking total of 2,000.

Last month alone, five Mexican soldiers, including a colonel, died in an ambush in Calderon's home state of MichoacAn; the body of an Army captain was found near the highway from Mexico City to Acapulco, and an admiral narrowly escaped assassination in Ixtapa. In an unprecedented admission by a sitting Mexican president, Calderon disclosed earlier this year that he has received death threats, probably from drug lords.

Using the military to fight drugs isn't new in Mexico. The country's armed forces were first used to eradicate marijuana and opium-poppy crops in the late 1970s, and Calderon's predecessor, Vicente Fox, sent hundreds of troops into six northern states in the late spring and summer of 2005 to help restore a semblance of law and order. But the current president has vastly increased the military's role. Faced with a wave of drug-fueled violence that rose sharply in Fox's final months, Calderon sent thousands of troops into MichoacAn and the neighboring state of Guerrero within weeks of taking office last December. Since then, he has expanded their number to 24,000 and widened the theater of operations to six other states. Calderon has escalated the drug war in two other critical respects: the action now includes much of central Mexico, not just the north; and instead of limiting their efforts to crop eradication and intelligence gathering, troops are now performing functions normally assigned to police, such as raids, interrogations and the seizure of contraband.

Mexican officials say the surge is working: more than 1,000 gunmen and traffickers have been arrested, and raids and roadblocks are leading to almost daily drug captures. The president now seems bent on expanding the war: his government recently announced plans to create an elite military force capable of surgical strikes against traffickers.

One reason for the rising body count is that some cartels use highly trained ex-members of the Army's Special Forces, known as Zetas, as hired guns. "Calderon's war on drugs has firmly pinned Mexican Zetas against their former comrades," noted a report issued by the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs in late May, "taking the conflict to a new level." The cartels have also become more brazen. A month ago dozens of gunmen invaded Cananea, near the U.S. border, abducting seven cops and four civilians and sparking a five-hour fire fight that left more than 20 dead. Senior government officials have also become targets. The director of the Coahuila state police's kidnapping and organized-crime unit was himself ...