ATF Death Watch 105: What Did the Mexicans Know and When Did They Know It?

When drug thugs wielding ATF-enabled firearms shot U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, all hell broke loose. Once the FBI-enabled cover-up was undermined by ATF whistleblowers, that is. Actually, all hell didn’t break loose. It kinda shifted around and started to leak a bit here and there. Slowly. And the Obama Administration may have got away with it too—if it hadn’t been for those meddling gun bloggers!

But Mssrs. Cordrea and Vanderboegh were playing a winning hand. The fact that dozens of Mexicans were kidnapped, tortured and/or murdered at the point of an ATF-enabled gun (as is still the case) was background noise.

A U.S. citizen? Different story. Ex-Marine Border Patrol Agent murdered on U.S. soil? Now we’re talking! Which begs the question: where’s the Mexican outrage?

The [Mexican] president refused to criticize the U.S. for the operation “Fast and Furious”. “If I fall into the trap and go against President Obama, against the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Snuff, Firearms and Explosives), the only thing I’m doing is to weaken those who know they are true allies and falling into the strategy of those who are actually harmful to Mexico as traffickers,” he said.

This article at diariodelyaqui.mx goes on to make an important point: the only thing worse than the current Mexican administration would be its defeat at the hands of the PRI. As corrupt as Calderon’s National Action Party undoubtably is, the PRI is a political party only in the sense that a group of vultures feasting on a carcass after it’s been killed and eaten by an alpha predator is a fiesta.

Calderon has hinted darkly at the cartels’ perversion of the political process (not including his own peeps, of course). But he’s behind the curve. According to diariodelyaquie.mx, the PRI has already made “arrangements” with the drug cartels ahead of next year’s elections.

The former chairman of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Luis Carlos Ugalde, acknowledged that “drug money has entered the campaign, especially the governor and mayors, because that is the space where it [organized crime] has territorial control.”

But he said that drug trafficking and organized crime are not interested to violate the electoral process.

“We have seen killings in local elections, even a candidate for governor, but I do not see that violence, which itself has been targeted, is an attempt to undermine the democratic political process,” the political and academic.

Sure. In case you hadn’t noticed, Mexico is to corruption what Siobhan Parekh is to bikinis. Modern Mexican politics is largely if not exclusively a matter of which groups gets the vig from the drug cartels; criminal organizations with immediate access to tens of billions of dollars and enough weapons and soldiers to take on an entire army. And the will to do it.

Not-so-coincidentally, ATF-enabled guns ended-up in the hands of the Mexican drug cartel that stands accused of paying off the Mexican government: the Sinaloans. Which leads us to the simple conclusion that President Calderon can’t condemn Uncle Sam’s ATF-shaped violation of Mexican sovereignty because A) Calderon knew about it or B) he’s Obama’s bitch or C) the Sinaloans might engage in a little chainsaw diplomacy with their ex-partner’s friends and family. Or D, all of the above.

If this dynamic isn’t obvious enough, remember that the Mexican President made a shameful and shameless plug for a renewal of the U.S. federal assault weapons ban at the exact moment that the ATF was allowing low-level scum to scarper across the border with U.S. gun store guns. Assault rifles. You’d think the Mexican Prez would’ve been mightily pissed about that. Or, as argued above, not.

Consider this: the previous Bush-era ATF gun running “sting” (Operation Wide Receiver) was a joint U.S. – Mexican program. Why would the ATF cut out our neighbors to the south for Operation Fast and Furious? U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might have a few emails hanging around somewhere relating to the missing international aspect of this firearms fiasco. As might the DEA, CIA, CPB, ICE and the White House.

If Representative Issa so desires, he could open up another front in the battle to expose the Obama Administration’s conspiracy to arm one group of narco-terrorists against another, while amping-up the Mexican drug cartel “crisis” to promote the ATF and additional gun control. An enterprise that contributed to the death of Mexican and American citizens.

I have no idea if and how that would play out. It seems likely that Congress won’t be shining a light into that dark little corner ahead of the Mexican general election. For the sake of realpolitik, the feds will let sleeping Mexican dogs lie. As they are wont to do.