Stamping Out Rumors

The New York Times has an article about Mexico's efforts to contain unfounded stories about Mouriño's death.

The article implies that Mouriño, as the formal head of Mexico's security agencies, would have been in the cartels' crosshairs. I don't think so; although he's the nominal chief, Mouriño isn't a very public figure on counter-narcotics. He was much more involved with legislation and dealing with Congress. Eduardo Medina Mora and Genaro García Luna were more likely to be targeted by drug gangs. (Of course, José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos was still a target for the cartels, even though he was no longer in Calderón's government.)

Another argument against the crash being the work of narco-terrorists: the plan was landing, not taking off. If it was sabotage, why wouldn't it have kicked in until minutes before the flight was to end? The same argument applies for a bomb: it you were a cartel henchman, and you managed to sneak a bomb onto a plane in San Luis Potosí, why would you (or could you even) wait until the plane was on its approach hundreds of miles away to detonate it? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.