There is no doubt in my mind that Obama Administration cabinet members knew about Operation Fast & Furious, the ATF’s “stingless sting” that enabled the sale of some 2000 U.S. gun store guns to Mexican drug thugs. Two of which ended-up in the hands of men who murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. I am reasonably sure the President of the United States was also briefed on the extralegal, U.S.-sponsored gun smuggling operation. I am losing hope that they will be held accountable for approving this criminal endeavor. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been supplying the Mexican Army and State Police with fully-automatic firearms, knowing full well that tens of thousands of these guns “seep” into the hands of narco-terrorists. (Syrian rebels anyone?) And knowing that the Mexican Army and Police are just as murderous as the cartels. Here’s some [more] evidence that legal firearms sales are arming Mexican killers . . .
A woman says she saw Mexican soldiers shoot and kill her 15-year-old daughter after a confrontation with a suspected drug gang even though the teenager was lying wounded on the ground. Twenty others also were shot and killed in rural southern Mexico after they surrendered and were disarmed, the mother told The Associated Press.
The Mexican government has maintained that all died during a fierce shootout when soldiers were fired on in the early morning of June 30. That version came into question because government troops suffered only one wounded, and physical evidence at the scene pointed toward more selective killings.
The witness said the army fired first at the armed group holed up at the warehouse. She said one gunman died in the initial shootout, and another gang member and her daughter were wounded. The rest of the gunmen surrendered on the promise they would not be hurt, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
After the gang surrendered, the girl, Erika Gomez Gonzalez, lay face down in the ground, a bullet wound in her leg. Soldiers rolled her over while she was still alive and shot her more than half a dozen times in the chest, her mother said. Another suspected gang member was injured in the initial attack.
“A soldier stood the kid up and killed him,” said the witness, who said she had gone to the warehouse the night before to try to retrieve her daughter from the gang she had apparently joined.
The soldiers interrogated the rest of the gang members in front of the warehouse, and then took them inside one-by-one, she said. From where she stood just outside the warehouse and in army custody, she heard gunshots and moans of the dying.
Now it would be one thing – a horrible thing but one thing – if the Mexican troops murdered the gang members in an effort to rid the populace of criminals. There is no reason to believe that. There is every reason to believe that the Army executed the drug gang on behalf of another drug gang (the area has been the scene of inter-cartel warfare for some time). With the complete support of the Mexican government.
Several days after the killings, reporters visited and took pictures of the warehouse and found little evidence of sustained fighting. There were few stray bullet marks and no shell casings. At least five spots along the warehouse’s inside walls showed the same pattern: One or two closely placed bullet pocks, surrounded by a mass of spattered blood, giving the appearance that some of those killed had been standing against the wall and shot at about chest level.
After the AP report, the prosecutors’ office released a statement saying there was “no evidence at all of possible executions.” The office said it found ballistic evidence of “crossfire with a proportionate interchange of gunshots.”
The state government refused to release autopsy reports the AP requested under Mexico’s freedom of information law, declaring them state secrets to be guarded for nine years.
Yes, I know: we can’t disarm the Mexican Army. I know that guns are not the problem; America’s War on Drugs is as responsible for the Mexican killings fields as anything the Mexican Army does to its own people. I also know that politics makes strange and bloody bedfellows. But there should be some sort of reaction from Uncle Sam to the carnage south of our border. I’m no gun control advocate, but funneling more machine guns into the region at taxpayer’s expense isn’t a solution to the problem at hand. By any stretch of the imagination.