Under the sea

From the Miami Herald-

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombia's navy seized a 65-foot submarine that likely was used to haul tons of cocaine on part of its journey to the United States, officials said Tuesday.

No drugs were found or arrests made when the fiberglass submarine was discovered Sunday in a swampy mangrove about six miles off the northernmost point of Colombia's Caribbean coast.

The blue-colored, diesel-powered vessel had sophisticated communications systems and was capable of carrying up to 11 tons of cocaine, Rear Admiral Roberto Garcia Marquez, head of the navy's Caribbean fleet, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine and the country's drug cartels have been known to use homemade submarines to smuggle large amounts of cocaine past U.S. and Colombian patrol boats to Central America, a stop on the route to the United States.

Almost a dozen drug submarines have been found in recent years, most believed to depart from Colombia's Pacific Coast, closer to the operating base of the Norte del Valle cartel, the country's largest drug smuggling organization.

The lengths drug smugglers will go. Even if some drug legalization took place in the US, submarine smuggling isn't likely to end. Note- TFM is in favor of drug legalization, like for marijuana.

Who built these submarines? Were they built specifically for smuggling or bought from some nation, like Russia? Military submarines, this one for instance, are usually much larger than 65-feet in length.

Hat tip- Dr. Taylor at Poliblog
Linked to- Amboy Times, Big Dog, Cao, Conservative Thoughts,