I am not, by nature, a tin hat wearing type. But I do shave with Occam’s razor: faced with multiple explanations for any given event, I reckon the least complex is the most likely to be true. Even if I didn’t have contacts feeding me info about Operation Fast and Furious, I’d still believe that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (and Really Big Fires) allowed guns to walk across into the arms of Mexican drug cartels as a direct and knowing participant in the U.S. government’s 2010 Arm the Sinaloas Tour. . .
The idea that the ATF kissed American guns goodbye at the border at the behest of White House gun grabbers to inflate Mexican confiscation numbers to get more juice for the ATF in Washington to get more money and power for the Bureau and anti-gun rights legislation/regulations strikes me as a needlessly complicated scheme. The ATF received plenty of extra Congressional funding before they let the guns walk. Why mess up a good thing?
Unless someone asked . . .
Ralph and I laid it out in an editorial in The Washington Times: the ATF green lighted gun sales to FBI informants (and known cartel associates) by complicit U.S. gun dealers, and then told ATF agents on the ground NOT to interdict the weapon as they flowed to Mexican drug cartels (the Sinaloas specifically) to suit the CIA and U.S. foreign policy. Gunwalker armed U.S. and Mexico’s favored cartel members with U.S. guns. The ends explain the means.
At the very least, this theory (backed-up by sources I can’t disclose) should trigger a press investigation into U.S. policy towards Mexico’s narco-terrorists and their supporters (e.g. the U.S. and Mexican governments). Nope. The mainstream media continues to paint the ATF operation as a simple screw-up. Oops! We did it again (Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.). Drug thugs used ATF-enabled weapons to kill, torture and terrorize hundreds of Mexicans and murder U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry—and the press treats it as nothing more than unintended consequences. Collateral damage.
As the Sipsey Street Irregulars have pointed out since the scandal first broke, the media’s disinterest in the ATF’s blood-soaked black bag job is nothing short of reprehensible. Not that they’d ever admit it. Last week, the Washington Post’s ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton argued his paper’s been right on top of this story, and never ever worked with the ATF to push their pro-gun control series The Secret Life of Guns. Which is about as credible as the ATF Acting Deputy Director William Hoover’s recent claim that he’d planned on shutting down Fast and Furious—but never quite got around to it.
Well then, what about the Mexican press? Given Operation Fast and Furious’s obvious and flagrant violation of Mexican sovereignty, given Uncle Sam’s collusion with Mexico’s narco-terrorists, given the New York Times‘ revelation that the CIA is sending more “assets” south of the border (including security contractors) to fight drug cartels (i.e. Los Zetas), you’d think the Mexican press would delve deeper into the ATF’s “disaster.”
Yes, well, maybe not. Clock this from today’s Borderland Beat:
After decades of poking around crime scenes, digging into conspiracies and hanging out with cops and politicians, columnist Miguel Ángel López Velasco had earned his stripes as journalistic alpha dog of the crime and corruption beat in this steamy Gulf of Mexico port.
But even Lopez might have found it hard to imagine the speed with which hit men would take his life and those of his wife and son.
It was 6 a.m. on a June day when two vehicles arrived at the journalist’s custard-yellow two-story home. Hit men with assault weapons poured out. One punched through the lock on the front door.
The squad rushed in and opened fire on the columnist – who was descending the stairs in his nightclothes – then climbed to the second floor to kill the others. Each victim was given a coup de grace in the forehead.
Do I need to mention that Mexican journalists are, like their fellow citizens, unarmed? Or that “Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says 68 journalists were murdered in Mexico from 2000 to March of this year”? A list that doesn’t include the thousands of reporters who now report whatever they’re told to report, lest the drug cartels decapitate them and slaughter their families.
As I continue to investigate the ATF and its relations to the CIA, FBI, IRS (go figure), ICE, CPB, DHS, State Department, White House and Mexican government, as I look into the connection between official U.S. arms sales and the murderous mayhem south of our border, I implore my colleagues in the MSM to get involved with this story.
There is safety in numbers. And, of course, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. (Thank God.) The more I know about the truth about the ATF, the more nervous I become. The more the U.S. press and Congress needs to make them feel nervous, too.
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/081211.jpg
Added. Thanks.
Thanks for the ongoing F&F reporting and for keeping this despicable snafu alive and at the forefront of TTAG’s news – despite the MSM’s lack of interest or worse – their downplaying and respinning of it as a simple mistake that needs more funding.
F&F is the biggest news since Watergate and history will confirm this – it’s only a matter of time.
It’s amazing that it’s taking Issa and Grassley et al, so long to get the answers to the profoundly simple questions of how high did it go, who knew, and who authorized it…
Breitbart might be a stepping stone to the MSM: http://www.breitbart.com/
Also, Human Events has been covering the story: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45398
The MSM will cover this story completely when they stop ogling Obama like he was Brad F^cking Pitt.
“(and Really Big Fires)”
Ya know, I just may have to visit here more often. That’s funny, I don’t care who ya are.
Wasn’t ATF Death Watch 53 posted on Monday? I thought we were up to 56…..
I gotta take a break . . . Headline amended, Tx,
Let’s not forget: It was ATF agents that broke this story to the world. There is a difference between the agents (some of whom I know) and their political taskmasters who set the policies.
When one considers the arguments made by those politicians now in control, (i.e. that we must institute more governmental ‘controls’ because legal guns are used in drug violence across the border), the effects of the F&F policy, the expected repercussions of the effects had it not been exposed, it is not difficult to see why the current Administration would find benefit from F&F had it not been exposed.
Tin foil? No, that’s simple politics & policies.
While there may be good agents in the ATF, that agency has operated beyond the pale for decades.
Keep reporting dude. Keep digging. Thank you. Stay safe.
http://www.madcowprod.com/
July 13 2011–Venice FL
“A five-year long struggle to penetrate the mysteries of two huge drug busts in Mexico on American-registered planes may soon receive answers, courtesy an unlikely source: a Congressional investigation into Operation Gunwalker, an ATF program with no discernible law enforcement purpose that allowed arms traffickers to smuggle 2000 weapons across the border to Mexican drug lords.
If the CIA is arming Mexican drug cartels, might they not also have been behind the otherwise-puzzling effort to supply these same drug lords with top-quality American-registered airplanes and jets?
Were the two now-infamous American-registered planes busted in Mexico’s Yucatan carrying almost ten tons of cocaine part of this same so-far unnamed Operation behind the ATF’s Operation Gunwalker?
It is the second largest shipment of cocaine ever seized in Mexico, the emblematic drug story of our times.
And its looking more and more like a CIA operation.”
Link to rest of story.
http://www.madcowprod.com/07132011.htm
Guaranteed if this story was released with a simple series of name chances (Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzales, etc.) the press would spread it like wildfire.
In all seriousness:
Is it just me or does this sound like an act of war perpetrated by the US on Mexico?
Yes, Amigo, that is an act of war or would be if Mexico did not depend on the billions of dollars they get, both froom Mexican citizens working here and actual official government money. So Mexico could raise Hell but then it’s not like the Mexican government really values Mexicans.
It’s a pretty dangerous situation for everyone on both sides of the border, neither government cares about dead citizens, only power.
Did you include the CIA in the mix so the Progressive wing of the Democratic party will agitate for an enquiry?
“Ralph and I laid it out in an editorial in The Washington Times: the ATF green lighted gun sales to FBI informants (and known cartel associates) by complicit U.S. gun dealers, and then told ATF agents on the ground NOT to interdict the weapon as they flowed to Mexican drug cartels (the Sinaloas specifically) to suit the CIA and U.S. foreign policy. Gunwalker armed U.S. and Mexico’s favored cartel members with U.S. guns. The ends explain the means.”
No, but any such agitation would be welcome.
I can’t help thinking that, besides the political implications, a whole lot of drug money must have changed hands somewhere along the line, and maybe trickled up?
I’m sure you folks are following the Bob Owens reports on Pajamas Media? He has written maybe a dozen reports –usually with fairly extensive comment threads some of which contain further links perhaps of interest.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/author/bobowens/
…is the archive. I just linked to this site from comments @
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/08/12/another-gunwalker-revelation-another-ticked-off-senator/#comment-86897
(my comment #7 there refers to the ”banana massacres” case which is still as far as i know being heard in Florida courts. Anyhoo, it points to a pattern, a modus operandi —well, here, i’ll just paste the comment (tho the hyperlinks probably won’t appear):
7. buddy larsen
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
This from May 2011 from the same Bing search is even more clear:
http://www.newsytype.com/6861-chiquita-terrorism/
The money quote:
Chiquita was discovered to have been making payments for years to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, the radical left-wing organization that has been terrorizing Columbia for decades. The company also made payments and shipped weapons to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colomiba, or AUC, a far-right guerrilla organization that opposes FARC and the Colombian government. Chiquita paid AUC upward of $1.7 million from 1997 to 2004, during which time the organization said it would ensure Chiquita’s interests in the region. The U.S. government declared AUC a terrorist organization in 2001.
The current suit against Chiquita alleges massacres were carried out by the AUC using weapons and ammunition obtained with funds from Chiquita.
(note: arming both sides, the ‘far-left’ FARC and the ‘far right’ AUC, smell any Gunwalker in there? Just wait ’til some of those Gunwalker guns show up in USA crime scenes –then the MO will clarify perhaps even enough to dawn on an MSM reporter)
…and here’s the closing para of the article:
However, Chiquita is known to have some friends in high places in the U.S. government. One person who helped to broker the $25 million settlement between the Justice Department and Chiquita for making payments to FARC guerrillas, according to The Guardian, was Eric Holder, currently the Attorney General of the United States.
…follwed by list of sources:
Sources
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43221200/ns/world_news-americas/
CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/31/national/main20067475.shtml
New York Daily News: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-05-22/news/29588588_1_chiquita-banana-united-fruit
The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/nov/25/attornery-general-eric-holder-chiquita