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© Photo: APMexican troops destroy marijuana plants during a counter-drug operation on Oct. 25, 2012.
The U.S. military is getting ready to send its elite troops to help in the fight against Mexico's drug lords. American special operations forces will expand their training of Mexican commando teams, teaching them to hunt cartel chieftains like they were al-Qaida extremists. It's a sign the U.S. is preparing for a long shadow war against the cartels.

The training, detailed in documents obtained by the Associated Press, will be reportedly conducted under an expanded special operations program based at the U.S. Army Northern Command's headquarters - which oversees the Pentagon's military operations on the continent. The program has previously tutored "Mexican military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations," according to the AP. But in a memo reportedly obtained by the news agency, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta authorized an expansion of the program that could "eventually triple from 30 [people] to 150," placing a general instead of a lieutenant colonel in charge, and creating a new headquarters.

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