ATF Death Watch 70: Arm the Mexicans [NSFW After the Jump]

Two facts have pushed the ATF Gunwalker scandal into the media mainstream. First, email evidence revealing the not-so-surprising fact that the ATF attempted to cover up their role in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Second, email evidence proving that White House officials knew about Operation Fast and Furious before, during and after Terry’s sudden, bloody end. Not even The New York Times—the “newspaper of record” that’s shunned and buried the Gunwalker scandal—can ignore the fact that the Obama administration is guilty of criminal conspiracy in the murder of a federal law enforcement officer. Or can they?

But the e-mails do not contain any discussion of the tactics of the investigation — called Operation Fast and Furious — that have made it the subject of a heated Congressional inquiry. The authorities monitored suspected “straw buyers” in an effort to identify who they were working with, rather than moving quickly to arrest them and take their guns off the street.

The Times knows well enough that the facts don’t support the ATF’s contention that Operation Fast and Furious was a “botched sting” (i.e. a well-meaning if poorly run and incomplete effort). There’s just no getting around the fact that the ATF let straw purchasers buy guns at American gun stores, walk out and disappear.

In one of the rare cases where the ATF followed the illegal buyers out of the store, agents called their boss and asked permission to arrest the smuggler and/or his hand-off. They were told to hang fire. Stand down. Leave. Fuhgeddaboutit.

Let’s be clear: no one involved in Operation Fast and Furious arrested anyone during the ten months that Uncle Sam turned a blind eye to gun smugglers smuggling some two thousand guns across the border. Not at the ATF nor any of the other federal agencies whose involvement has already been documented (DEA, ICE, DOJ, DHS, IRS).

How could they? Despite recent revelations (by the New York Times no less) that the Obama administration’s sending more CIA operatives into Mexico and now lets the Mexican federales stage anti-cartel (Los Zetas) helicopter raids from U.S. territory, Uncle Sam has no jurisdiction in Mexico. Even if the ATF could have traced an American AR-15 straight to cartel boss Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, there’s not a damn thing they could have done about it.

And? Again, that wasn’t the point.

Whether you accept TTAG’s intel that the CIA orchestrated this black bag job to arm the Sinaloa cartel against Los Zetas (who are fighting the Mexican government for control of the country), or believe gun rights advocates’ assertion that Fast and Furious was designed to gin-up public support for draconian gun control enforcement and new legislation (by inflating the American contribution to the drug cartel arsenals), it’s clear that Operation Fast and Furious was specifically designed to arm Mexican bad guys.

In that sense, F&F was a success. ATF bureaucrats were literally high-fiving each other when “crime scene” reports on the intra-cartel carnage IDed Fast and Furious firearms south of the broder. And again with Operation Castaway, the media-neglected ATF op that enabled American guns for Honduras. In both cases, “our” bad guys were using American guns to kill the “real” bad guys.

It was all going swimmingly until Agent Terry took one for the team. Or not. Truth be told, America’s multi-pronged effort to support the Mexican government and its allies (e.g. the Sinaloa cartel) against Los Zetas is an unmitigated disaster. The more “we” win the more we’re losing.

The struggle between these two vicious groups is fueled by billions of dollars (per month) moving from U.S. drug users to Mexican cartels, and from Yankee taxpayers to the Mexican military and police. As long as this money river keeps flowing, any strike against a cartel jefe only leads to more chaos and bloodshed, as the survivors fight for to fill the resulting vacancy. borderlandbeat,com:

As more major Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO’s) get hit by the federal government in places like Michoacan, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, we also start to see many of these cartels take each other out, in many cases it creates a power vacuum, where these cartels splinter and spread out becoming very unstable and unpredictable. [Dismembered body below]

When some of the top bosses get killed or are forced to hide relying on some of the plaza bosses to run the organization, some of the cells go unchecked and produce some the brutality that shocks the conscious.

Durango is a state where authorities have found hundreds of clandestine graves in recent months, but the news do not resonate as they do in other places.

The undisputed territories become battle grounds for cartels trying to gain control of trafficking routes to the US. This has been the case in the Golden Triangle, specifically Durango and Torreon and in some aspects Chihuahua that is so hard to predict and identify who is who.

One example is the recent challenge by Los Zetas who have dared to attempt to take control of the region from El Cartel de Sinaloa/Pacifico.

Operation Fast and Furious should be seen in the context of the violent struggle for control of Mexico between U.S.-backed criminals (including Calderon’s government) and non-U.S. backed criminals.

Not because the conflict excuses ANY of the American agencies involved in Operation Fast and Furious. Because the human toll of our deeply misguided intervention in Mexico is measured by more than one dead Border Patrol Agent. It’s also aided and abetted the torture, murder and oppression of tens of millions of Mexicans.

The Obama Administration believes it can use its military muscle and covert ops like F&F to help the Mexican government defeat Los Zetas, and thus transform the illegal drug trade into a relatively peaceful endeavor. Wrong. There’s too much money, too much corruption and too few armed civilians to stop the endless, fratricidal bloodshed.

What could we have done—other than arm the Sinaloas? What can we do to prevent a Zetas-backed military dictatorship that will send millions of Mexican refugees across our border?

First, come clean. Expose Fast and Furious. Pursue the paper trail to the White House; make the officials responsible for their actions in the ATF’s illegal operations. Expose the agencies that enabled the enablers. At the same time, follow the blood trail. Congressman Issa should call the gun smugglers and their victims to testify, to make the ATF’s perfidy “real” to the taxpayers who funded it.

Second,  bring our Mexican policy out of the shadows. We the People deserve to know what’s being done in our name, so that We can decide how we should deal with our southern neighbors, and reexamine own failed “War on Drugs.”

We should also disband the ATF. The Bureau has proven, once again, that they are a law unto themselves, suplus to requirements and a danger to freedom-loving people everywhere.

And lastly, we should arm the Mexican people against both the cartels AND their own government. That’s what we should have done in the first place; it’s our only hope for a stable Mexico.

The day that the New York Times supports Mexicans’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms is the day that America once against stands for freedom and democracy in the fact of evil and tyranny.