A few items for those following topics related to combating Mexican drug cartels:
- See this detailed press release listing all US Department of Justice assets being used to combat Mexican drug cartels.
- The Washington Post has begun a year-long series focused on the Mexican drug war that has its own home page.
- If you habla español, the Post series identified LaPolaka.com as Ciudad Juarez's leading political blog. The writer has fled to El Paso and now publishes the blog from there.
RELATED:
Obama's Mexico policy depressingly familiar.
"The Merida plan has been overly publicized but with very little actual effect for the magnitude of problems that we are facing," Duarte said in an interview. "We are fighting in the streets, Mexicans killing Mexicans, using arms that were illegally exported from the United States, and it is our soldiers who are putting themselves in the line of fire to stop the flow of drugs. What we need is not some overly publicized Merida plan. We need true solidarity."
ReplyDeleteI wish someone would get some defintive facts on on our country supplying Mexico with arms.
The following report with information from ATF seems to contradict what AG Holder, Secretary Clinton, HS Napolitano, other politicos and the MSM are saying.
The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/
But FOX News promoted their own "myth" - that the real number is just 17%. That's also a statistical misreading. The real truth likely splits the difference, which would still be a significant US contribution to the problem.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just liberals who say the US is a major source of Mexican guns, it's every law enforcement agency who deals with the issue. I've been told many times by drug interdiction officers - the actual drug cops making the stops or their supervisors - that the drugs run in the northbound lanes and money, guns, and (some would add) stolen cars flow south. That's pretty common knowledge in law enforcement circles - no more controversial than saying drugs are getting through checkpoints at the border.
The other big source of weapons is from defectors and corrupt bureaucrats in the Mexican military. So to the extent that US military aid buys weapons, train personnel, etc., they may be assets that later fall into the hands of drug traffickers. We keep making this same mistake: E.g., training the original Los Zetas at the US Special Forces training center in Fort Benning, GA turned out to be a REALLY bad idea.
Grits, there's simply no way to know which Mex military man is going to remain a loyalista and who's going to turn their coat as soon as the ink on their US supplied-training certificate is dry. Plato o plomo is usually a split-second decision.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of the Zetas, however, I would say it was the opposite, and they were probably in narco employment from the start.
I recall the comments made by the late US Army pilot Captain Jennifer Odom, before her (suspicious!) 1999 death in Colombia while flying intel-gathering flights into narco-controlled territory. She told her husband just before her death that she and her fellow American military 'advisors' just couldn't trust the locals riding on their aircraft, as they'd caught a few feeding intel to their real employers. I suspect Plan Mexi- uh, er, 'The Merida Intiative' will turn out to be even worse.
For additional information and some in-depth comment on the narco-gangs’ weapons supply problem in Mexico log onto
ReplyDeletehttp://narcosphere.narconews.com/
Read “Legal U.S. Arms Exports May Be Source of Narco Syndicates Rising Firepower” Posted by Bill Conroy - March 29, 2009 at
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/03/legal-us-arms-exports-may-be-source-narco-syndicates-rising-firepower
Be sure to read Mr. Conroy’s answer to a reader’s comment – “Tracing the Bad Gun Math” submitted March 30
Then read “Private-sector Arms Sales to Mexico Sparsely Monitored by State Department” Posted by Bill Conroy - April 5, 2009 at
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/04/private-sector-arms-sales-mexico-sparsely-monitored-state-department
The 90%ers are trying to make the American public believe that all of the poor downtrodden Mexican government’s gun problems are being foisted upon them by American Second Amendment supporters and evil gun show promoters. Not the case! Folks who believe that 90% of illegal weapons in Mexico are traceable to the United States are choosing to believe whatever Clinton, Napolitano, Pelosi, Brady and Holder tell them, without question. People who do not bother to do their own research believe the 90%ers are correct simply because they say they are.
Calderon, the DoJ, and BATF know the problem isn’t due to federal firearm licensed (FFL) dealers and gun show promoters. They know the main source of illegal firearms is the Mexican military, followed by gunrunners from China, south america, and the mid-east. For information; every gun in Mexico that is not owned by the military or police is illegal. What does that say for government gun control?