Several weeks back a few news stories popped up on my radar about drug/gang violence in Mexico but, frankly, didn’t pay that much attention to it. With 368 kidnappings for ransom in the country in 2008 the drug cartels shooting it out in a border town didn’t seem all that unrealistic.

Well, the violence in Ciudad Juarez is, apparently, getting so bad the 5,000 Mexican soldiers already in the city are not enough. Local business owners are calling for United Nations peacekeepers to stop the violence. What blows me away is Ciudad Juarez and the murder rate. Through mid-October there 1,986 homicides or roughly 7 per day.

I’m blow away.

Will the Mexican government ask the U.N. to step in?