Right now, elements of the GOP, namely, Second-Amendment absolutists who prize their ability to hold gun shows without restraint, are effectively collaborating with the Los Zetas cartel, by delivering arms right to them. Los Zetas get their guns, in part, from under-regulated U.S. gun shows, and SOMEONE in the United States is making a lot of money from the trade.
The idea currently floating around the GOP (e.g., by presidential candidates like Rick Perry) to send U.S. troops into Mexico to fight the drug trade is meant instead to accelerate this lucrative trade. A corrupted U.S. military would be an immense boon to the arms trade, and likely the drugs trade as well. Corrupted commanders could make princely salaries! Corrupted troops too! Everyone would benefit (except for your average Mexican, or American, of course). And we would import the accompanying violence right into the United States.
At the same time, elements of the U.S. Government, first under Bush (Wide Receiver), and now also under Obama (Fast and Furious), have decided, along with elements of the Mexican Government, to arm the Sinaloa Cartel in its battle with Los Zetas.
When the GOP attacks Attorney General Eric Holder regarding Fast and Furious, they do so at the bidding of their masters, Los Zetas, who fiercely resent the arming of the Sinaloa Cartel.
I can understand the decision to support the Sinaloa Cartel. The heavily-armed and well-trained Los Zetas are C-R-A-Z-Y, and they must be stopped! And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all. Still, it's a decision fraught with peril.
From my point of view, the decision to support the Sinaloa Cartel is also convenient. It maneuvers the Second Amendment absolutists, who have always been a thorn in my side anyway, into the position of being traitors to the United States. If they maintain the Second Amendment grants them the perfect freedom to arm mortal enemies - foreign enemies - of the United States, without any interference from anyone, God help them. You know what needs to be done with traitors.....
It would be nice to debate these matters in Congress first, of course. Matters of such grave importance regarding foreign policy should be debated. Still, Congress is busy blocking Obama's domestic agenda these days. No time for the really-important stuff:
Here is an interesting article:
In Washington pundits and pols have beat the drums of war calling for more intervention. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, recently convened hearings on a bill to designate Mexico’s organized crime groups as “terrorists.”
Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the former drug czar, took to the podium at a recent conference on crime and terrorism at George Washington University to sound the alarm of a “cross-border threat,” saying, “For God’s sake, these people are fighting for their lives, they are being murdered, these men and women of law enforcement … we need to stand with them.”
Meanwhile, Republicans fire political ammunition at the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder, in particular for the catastrophic Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms operation Fast and Furious, the 2.0 version of the Bush administration’s 2007 Operation Wide Receiver. Both sent high-powered weapons into Mexico and the eager hands of criminals. Under Fast and Furious, the weapons were largely funneled to the Sinaloa cartel, a drug-trafficking syndicate that became a formidable force in the last decade.
Some in Washington have suggested that the war as waged by the U.S.-backed Calderon has effectively shielded the Sinaloa cartel. Asked about allegations at the conference, Gen. McCaffrey responded cryptically, “Almost nothing in life is yes or no.”
A cartel capo speaks.
From inside a Chicago courtroom, a high-level capo with the Sinaloa cartel has mounted his defense by exposing the murky inner workings of organized crime and the U.S. government’s strategy in Mexico. A television beams in the image of Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, his slight frame draped with a prison-issued white shirt, from a minimum-security prison in Michigan where officials transferred Zambada to allow him access to fresh air while minimizing the risk of a jailbreak or assassination.
Zambada was allegedly a senior cartel operative. He is said to have handled the logistics of moving heroin and cocaine into Chicago and delivering the proceeds from drug sales — some $1.3 billion over three years — to two Sinaloa cartel leaders, Ismael “Mayo” Zambada García and Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman.
The Zambada case has electrified the Mexican political class and rattled the U.S. press after his attorneys claimed that U.S. government agents sanctioned his criminal operations. Defense attorneys have demanded government documents related to operations that permitted weapons to flow into the hands of the Sinaloa cartel and government informants responsible for killings and moving drugs. Zambada and his lawyers are arguing that the U.S. government has effectively aided the Sinaloa cartel, or at the very least condoned criminal activity. Zambada’s defense, in essence, is a Mexican legal offensive against the U.S. tactics in the war on the cartels.
It is a bare-knuckled legal fight. On one side are two veteran organized crime attorneys George Panzer and George Santangelo (whom a New York judge once described as house counsel to John Gotti). On the other side is federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, best known for prosecuting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and drawing up the first indictment for Osama bin Laden. The U.S. prosecutors say Zambada’s argument is built on “the unsupported and implausible pretense that an authorized agent of the United States government sanctioned not only the defendant, but the entirety of one of the largest criminal organizations in the world, to traffic limitless quantities of drugs.”
Yet Mexican suspicions of U.S. actions are running higher than ever. Like the disastrous ATF operation Fast and Furious that unleashed thousands of weapons onto the streets of Mexico, the Zambada case has big implications for U.S.-Mexico relations. Luis Astorga, author and researcher in drug trafficking, says Mexicans may begin to see an ally with two faces: “a friendly one that wants to support the institutions of Mexico, and the other that makes deals and undertakes operations like Fast and Furious,” he said. “If it turns out that there was some sort of agreement, that would be a low blow to Mexico because who is paying the cost in blood and politically is Mexico, not the United States.”
No comments:
Post a Comment