www.nytimes.com www.facebook.com Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. Altogether, more than 28000 people have been killed in the nearly four years since President Felipe Calderón began his offensive against the nation's drug organizations, with the gangs escalating fights over turf and dominance as the federal police and military try to stamp them out. Of those, over 2000 were local, state or federal police officers, according to the Public Security Ministry. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration. The upsurge in drug-related violence is traced to the end of 2006 when the government launched a frontal assault on the cartels by deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to take them on. Mr. Calderon has successfully pushed the United States to acknowledge its own responsibility for the violence in Mexico since it is American drug consumers who fuel demand and American guns smuggled into Mexico that are used by the drug gangs. The violence has in some cases spilled over the border and become a source of mounting concern in states in the Southwest. And in June 2010 a Justice Department report described a "high and increasing" availability of methamphetamine mainly because of large-scale drug production in Mexico. In August 2010 ...