Arming the enemy

[Gob]

Hundreds of US guns were bought, resold and sent to Mexican drug cartels in an Arizona sting operation while US firearms agents were ordered not to intervene, Congress has heard.

Three firearms agents said they were told to track the movement of the weaponry, but not to make any arrests.

US lawmakers expressed outrage at the details of Operation Fast and Furious.

The news comes one day after a report suggested Mexican drug cartels have armed themselves with US weapons.

The report suggests some 70% of firearms recovered from Mexican crime scenes in 2009 and 2010 and submitted for tracing came from the US.

On Wednesday, congressional lawmakers concluded that Fast and Furious, which was designed to track small-time gun buyers to major weapons traffickers along America's south-west border, never led to the arrest of any major traffickers.

The guns tracked by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were reportedly used in numerous killings in Mexico.

Lawmakers on the House of Representatives Oversight Committee said they demanded answers from the Obama administration about why no arrests were made while investigators were tracking the firearms.

"We monitored as they purchased handguns, AK-47 variants and .50 caliber rifles, almost daily at times," ATF agent John Dodson told the committee.

He added that though he wanted to "intervene and interdict these weapons", his supervisors told him not to make any arrests.

At a hearing prior to the panel, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said "hundreds upon hundreds of weapons" destined for cartels in Mexico were purchased in gun shops in Arizona.

Operation Fast and Furious was designed to track weaponry as it moved from small-time gun buyers to major traffickers, who have often avoided prosecution.

In December two US assault rifles were found at the scene of a shootout where Customs and Border Protection agent Brian Terry was killed.

"We ask that if a government official made a wrong decision that they admit their error and take responsibility for his or her actions," Robert Heyer, the deceased agent's cousin, told the panel on Wednesday.

Nearly 35,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, and many of the killings have been carried out with guns smuggled in from the US.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13785080

[Andrew D]

Follow the money.

Everyone -- well, everyone with a triple-digit IQ -- knows that the way to take the steam out of the Mexican drug cartels is to stop the lunacy of criminalizing the drugs. Drug cartels cannot compete with legitimate companies on the open market.

So why are we not doing what everyone knows is the best thing to do?

Follow the money.

[rubato]

More guns make us safer!

More guns for Mexican Drug Lords makes us all safer and better mannered people.

Don't you know anything?

Guns = Good

More Guns = More Good

Most Guns = Most Good

Just ask the people in Afghanistan and Iraq.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

WASHINGTON: Undercover US narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington's expanding role in Mexico's fight against drug cartels, say current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organisations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most importantly, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said while the DEA conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency's effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

Agency officials declined to discuss details of their work publicly, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael Vigil, a former senior agency official, said: ''We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren't laundering money for the sake of laundering money.''

Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said: ''My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results, otherwise the DEA could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.''

Those are precisely the kinds of concerns members of Congress have raised about a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious, in which agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed people suspected of being low-level smugglers to buy and transport guns across the border in the hope that they would lead to higher-level operatives working for Mexican cartels. After the agency lost track of hundreds of weapons, some later turned up in Mexico; two were found on the US side of the border where an American Border Patrol agent had been shot dead.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-agents-l ... z1fbGFu2kU

[liberty]

More guns make us safer!

More guns for Mexican Drug Lords makes us all safer and better mannered people.

Don't you know anything?

Guns = Good

More Guns = More Good

Most Guns = Most Good

Just ask the people in Afghanistan and Iraq.


yrs,
rubato

Gun are tools; they can it better or they can make it worse it all depends on who has possession of said weapons.

[dales]

Don't forget, rube still has his 9mm.

(I understand it's a "love/hate" relationship)

[Lord Jim]

That quote Lib presented is typical of the sort of depth of analysis that always made rube's posts such worthwhile reading....

[rubato]

Gun owners should be licensed, like drivers, and guns should be registered and their ownership tracked, like cars.

Also, all of the costs of guns to society, law enforcement, medical, &c, should be paid for by fees paid by people buying guns and ammunition or by private insurance they are required to purchase.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

Of course, if we have a constitutional right to do something - say, keep and bear arms - then it can't be "licensed," by the state.

I personally think that each individual should be responsible for his own misdeeds. And if they are impecunious, well, tough luck.