Barack Obama shortly will inherit a war an ocean away in the Middle East that potentially could spiral out of control dragging the US into it, but he immediately faces a far more deadly war that’s raging on his own back doorstep on the US-Mexican border. It's a war fast becoming America’s most serious and direct homeland security threat as described in the January HSToday cover report, Savage Struggle on the Border.

Ground zero of America’s war on drugs is in Mexico, where President Bush recently told the Washington Times Obama faces a looming war with drug cartels where 'the front line of the fight will be Mexico.'

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged this past week that he told Obama’s choice to succeed him, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, that he had had to put the border security problem at the top of his list of immediate national security concerns. ....