On January 11, 2012, the Mexican Attorney Generals Office (AGO) released the latest casualty figures in the government’s war against organized criminal groups.  The AGO confirmed that there have been 47, 515 drug related killings since December 2006—when President Calderon gave the military full rein to combat drug trafficking and organized crime.  To put this in perspective, in Afghanistan, there were 18,389 civilian and security deaths from January 2007 to November 2011. In the first nine months of 2011, 12, 903 people died in Mexico due to the violence, compared with 11,583 killed during the same period of 2010.  While most people would logically think this means the war is getting worse, the Mexican AGO has tried to spin this as encouraging news by stating: