Over the weekend, the Mexican attorney general stated: “The controlled trafficking of weapons is not authorized under the Mexican national legislation. An operation that would contemplate this would not have been acceptable to the Mexican government, and it will never be under any circumstance.” The Mexican Attorney General also stated that it’s conducting its own investigation to identify “the crimes that could have been carried out on Mexican territory.” CBS
That’s right, the gun cartel they’re investigating is the ATF.
…agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms say over the course of a year and a half, superiors ordered them to allow thousands of weapons to cross into Mexico as part of a failed plan to gain intelligence and take down a major drug cartel.
I wonder if Mexico will try to extradite ATF superiors. That would be interesting… Right now, though, they’re actually waiting for the U.S. government’s own internal investigation.
A note to the ATF… You really called this operation “Fast and Furious“?
I hate to tell you this, but you’re no Vin Diesel and Paul Walker by a long shot.
Perhaps you should have called it “Blue Streak“… although that’s probably too generous as well. Even Martin Lawrence’s character succeeded despite the bumbling.
I had wondered if you might mention this, Pete. Good to see the story getting out. Props to Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea, and all their whistleblower friends.
The idea that the ATF was going to take down a cartel by this so called sting operation, is laughable. Please do not promote this reasoning, question it. This operation was undertaken to try and create this so called “iron river” of guns going into Mexico, so the government could then put more “restrictions” on American citizens and their second amendment rights. The ATF is lying, always has, always will!
Is the Mexican government investigating the fact that the U.S. and its weapons manufacturers are the biggest arms dealers in the world? If so, they’re wasting their time focusing on what is common knowledge.
The ATF/(DEA/ONDCP?) “failed plan to gain intelligence and take down a major drug cartel†is presented as being motivated by an innocent attempt to trace cartel members by the guns they use. This seems unlikely. The intelligence obtained by such methods would be useless. People die, but weapons survive. After a short time, there would be no way to know the history of the guns that might reappear again in Mexican police custody.
The ATF’s story doesn’t explain why such sophisticated weapons were smuggled when most of the normal gun inventory trafficked into Mexico involves less powerful firearms originating from home burglaries and other methods of illicit weapons transfers from legitimate U.S. gun dealers.
It appears that the ATF was an accomplice in a crazy attempt by other government agencies to supply guns to create greater levels of violence in the Mexican drug trade, wrongly assuming the cartels would thereby engage in self-purgation. Except the cartels are nowhere near being annihilated. There are more potential cartel members and bosses born every minute in Mexico than die there on a weekly basis from the drug prohibition violence.
The current prohibition violence in Mexico, along with the 36,000+ people killed so far, was not part of a domestic evolution of the drug trade in Mexico at all. Rather, the ATF scandal is evidence the current border drug war was something planned by the U.S. government, encouraged and implemented by the smuggling of high-end weaponry to the Mexican cartels.
Relevant video with the Chief of Policia Civil in Rio de Janeiro, in ’96: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpzd9aaNO6g
something tells me the genius that thought up this plan still has his government job or has retired on a generous pension. our “government” seems to have the attributes of a criminal enterprise but not the reputation. parts of the supergang are allowed to smuggle drugs, murder citizens for walking in an impudent manner(seattle woodcarver John T. Williams), kill and rape nuns in El Salvador, drive around Iraq with a pickup bed full of $100 bills, print bogus money,lie to the people, coddle the rich, imprison and enslave the poor, and all in the name of service to the public. a gang with it’s own prison system, now that’s a gang you got to careful around. watch out mexico it would be a shame if something was to happen to you.
First federal agency to acknowledge medical marijuana removes anti-tumor information from database
I actually expected this; still disappointing though.
Sneaky bastards!
At least we still have the smoking bong:
http://images.americanindependent.com/NCI_Cannabis.png
I knew it, that was an oopsie they just couldn’t allow. No surprise, just dissapointment.
Sneaky barstards indeed… too bad they originally posted it as a PDF so everyone and their mother has a copy of the original… duh. Thanks for posting that Malcolm!
And concerning weapons in Mexico, don’t fail to include in your reading NarcoNews’ Bill Conroy’s piece from two years ago today:
Legal U.S. Arms Exports May Be Source of Narco Syndicates Rising Firepower
And the question will be how much will they tell us? How far will the AG and the DoJ go investigating this. And yes, two bug Huzzahs! to the agents blowing the whistle.
How many US government agencies/agents purposely violate their own “mission”? For example:
Law Enforcement agents routinely violate the law they swore to uphold.
The DEA smuggled coke into America while swearing to rid the country of exactly that.
The CIA and FBI both had soviet counterintelligence agents selling secrets to the soviets.
Now, ATF is smuggling weapons to foreign countries while swearing that their “mission” is to do the opposite.
Ultimate Irony: It is possible that we need another government agency to stop our current government agencies from doing the exact thing they were created to reduce/eliminate.
But who would trust them? After all, they’d work for a US government agency, and those folks are rapidly proving themselves to be untrustworthy.
Making wrong right with a wrong. America your #1.
What a surprise that U.S. – Mexico relations are visibly becoming strained with our misguided and frankly somewhat tragic and bizarre funneling of money into the literal bloodshed of innocent people on both sides of the territory line. In time the real reason for all of this will come out in the wash.
(Love vin diesel by the way, hottest movie hero everr!!)