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To: stevie_d_64
Some of you may have read this on another thread, but I thought I would put it out there for those who have not seen it. It's long but puts things in a different light. I emailed my senators/congressmen.

When are you going to do something about this? Are hearings on the way? The left has put the American people in harm’s way. This is worse than anything any president has done. No president (that we know of) has put American’s lives on the line. This HAS to be illegal. Please respond.

“Let’s Arm The Mexican Drug Cartels With Thousands Of Guns And Continue To Leave The Border Completely Wide Open”
July 11, 2011
How in the world are Americans living in the southwest United States supposed to sleep peacefully at night when the U.S. government has given thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and continues to leave the border completely wide open? The brutality and viciousness of Mexican drug cartels is almost beyond description, and yet the U.S. government has armed them to the teeth and does next to nothing to stop their incursions into U.S. territory. “Project Gunrunner” was supposed to be a U.S. government initiative to fight the flow of guns into Mexico. Instead, it has now come out that ATF agents were ordered to facilitate the acquisition of thousands of U.S. guns by Mexican drug cartels and then halt surveillance on where those guns where going. One of these operations was known as “Fast and Furious” and the revelations that are now coming out have Congress in an uproar. If the full truth about what has been going on is revealed to the American people it is going to turn Washington D.C. upside down.
Right now, some of the most dangerous places to be on the face of the earth are along the U.S./Mexico border. The Mexican drug cartels are fighting a vicious war against each other and against the authorities.
Just this past week, there were 40 drug war deaths down in Mexico in just one 24 hour period. Over 35,000 people have been killed since the Mexican government declared war on the cartels back in 2006.
Every time one big cartel boss is brought down it just seems to cause the cartels to splinter and multiply. Each year the cartels seem to become better armed and more sophisticated.
Now it turns out that there was a very good reason why the cartels are armed so well.
The U.S. government has been supplying them with thousands of weapons.
The following is a brief excerpt from a CBS News report that discusses the fierce opposition that many ATF agents expressed to allowing thousands of guns to be given into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels....
On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn't want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF’s watchful eye. “The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That's how many guns were sold - including some 50-calibers they let walk.”
50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: “Negative. Stand down.”
CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. “It got ugly...” said one. There was “screaming and yelling” says another. A third warned: “this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed.” Amazingly, according to Reuters, ATF agents were ordered not to track where the weapons ended up....
The agents complained they were ordered to break off surveillance of the firearms and instead follow the original gun purchaser rather than track where the weapons went. Does that make any sense at all?
Something really stinks about this whole thing, and the American people deserve the truth.
The Obama administration has been claiming that we need more restrictions on American gun owners because guns from the United States have been getting into Mexico.
During 2009 and 2010, 70 percent of the 30,000 guns that were recovered by authorities in Mexico were determined to have come from inside the United States.
Now we know why.
It was the Obama administration that was supplying large numbers of them to the drug cartels.
So what kind of guns are we talking about? A recent article posted on Natural News detailed some of the types of weapons that got into the hands of the drug cartels....
Among the firearms sold to the Mexican drug gangs were AK-47s, thousands of pistols and, remarkably, .50-caliber rifles which are typically used to disable vehicles or carry out sniper-based assassinations at extremely long ranges (up to two miles). The mainstream media is now reporting that these weapons are turning up in violent crimes being committed in Phoenix, Arizona. So now the Mexican drug cartels can shoot our cops (or any of us) from up to two miles away thanks to weapons that the federal government helped them acquire.
Kenneth E. Melson, the acting director of the ATF, has been taking most of the heat for all this so far.
But the truth is that this goes much higher than Melson. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, Melson is already pointing fingers at other agencies....
The embattled head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has told congressional investigators that some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by his agency in a gun-trafficking investigation were paid informants for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. So how deep will this rabbit hole go?
Will Congress have the guts to fully investigate this thing?
The reality is that is seems incredibly unlikely that Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano did not know anything about what was going on.
Could it be possible that even Barack Obama was aware of all of this?
Once upon a time, Obama administration officials were very proud of Project Gunrunner.
There was even 10 million taxpayer dollars for Project Gunrunner in the “Stimulus Bill” that was passed in 2009....
For an additional amount for ‘State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance,’ $40,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2014, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’ for the ATF Project Gunrunner. Apparently, stimulating the drug war in Mexico was a high priority at the time.
Back in 2009, everyone at the Department of Justice seemed absolutely thrilled with Project Gunrunner.
Video of Deputy Attorney General David Ogden talking about Project Gunrunner on March 24, 2009 can be found right here.
On April 2, 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech in which he discussed the expansion of “Project Gunrunner”....
“Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail.” Did Eric Holder know the full extent of what was happening with Project Gunrunner at that time?
Perhaps someone should ask him.
There are also reports that people have been trying to alert federal authorities to all of this gun trafficking for years. The following is a brief excerpt from an article on www.salem-news.com....
As if the information isn't bad enough, one of our reporters who has spent the last three years working on the border, gathering information on the narco cartels, Robert ‘Tosh’ Plumlee; blew the whistle on the gun walking operation known as, Fast and Furious by filing numerous reports to federal agencies and local law enforcement in May 2009 about these guns walking across the border. The Salem-News article also claims that the cartels have huge stockpiles of mortars, RPGs and anti-aircraft guns down in Mexico....
Also, as revealed in our recent reports, there are major stores in Mexico of what Robert Plumlee refers to as, ‘high impact weapons’ which include anti-aircraft guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers and mortars. These weapons are of U.S. origin, they are ample and they include the latest and most deadly, the same high tech weaponry currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. While not fully tallied, there are reported sites where thousands and thousands of these weapons exist, along with ‘knock-off’ Mexican army uniforms Things have gotten crazy down in Mexico. Any American tourist that drives around in northern Mexico is literally risking his or her life. While we have our troops busy poking around in the caves of Iraq and Afghanistan, a major league threat is developing just south of our own border.
Normally the American public does not do much thinking about Mexico, but now this whole scandal threatens to bring a lot of unsavory truths to light.
Many in the Obama administration are freaking out about all of this and are in “cya” mode. All of the bigwigs want to cover their rear ends and make sure that they don't get tossed under the bus.
Mexican lawmakers are already threatening to ask for the extradition of any U.S. officials that were involved in authorizing the sale of guns to Mexican drug cartels.
Tensions between the U.S. and Mexico are rising. This will be an important development to watch.
One Mexican drug cartel leader is even admitting that many of the weapons being used by the cartels are being supplied by the U.S. government.
Just recently, Mexican federal police released an interview with Jesus Rejon Aguilar. He is reportedly a top honcho in Los Zetas, and he claims that “all the weapons are bought in the United States” and even more shockingly he says that the American government was directly involved in selling guns to the cartels....
“There were buyers for a time – because they weren’t our people, they were buyers on the other side – telling us that even the American government itself were selling them” You can view video of Aguilar making these statements right here.
So what has the Obama administration had to say about all of these new revelations?
So far they are being very quiet about the whole thing.
But what they are talking about is how we need to put more restrictions on American gun owners. In fact, the Obama administration is promising new gun legislation in the “near future”.
Isn't that lovely?
The Obama administration loads the Mexican drug cartels with guns, leaves the border completely wide open and then talks about how we need to curtail the ability of American gun owners to defend themselves.
What in the world are they thinking?
Today, ordinary Americans are forced to endure a nightmare of “security” just to get on an airplane and yet our borders are left virtually undefended.
Day after day, thousands more drug cartel operatives, gang members and street criminals cross our border with Mexico and make a beeline for our cities.
The truth is that the U.S. government does not really care about national security and has not for a very long time.
If the Obama administration really cared about national security then they would secure the border.
We have helped South Korea totally secure their border with North Korea for decades. Nobody gets across that border without authorization.
But on the U.S. border with Mexico security is a joke. Millions of people have crossed it illegally and the federal government does not seem to care.
The feds love to talk about the danger of “terrorists” overseas, but if they really cared about terrorism they would secure the border.
Hezbollah has been very busy setting up operations all over Mexico, Central America and South America for the past 20 years. It is not a secret that Hezbollah is very involved in the drug trade and in trafficking illegal aliens.
Members of Hezbollah could be going back and forth across the U.S. border as you read this, but the federal government refuses to do anything about it.
But Hezbollah is just a small piece of the picture.
There are thousands of very dangerous people that go back and forth across the border on a continual basis and the federal government treats it like it is no big deal.
The entire region along the border is going downhill fast. The sad reality is that there are a number of open war zones along the U.S. border with Mexico.
For example, the city of Juarez, Mexico sits just across the U.S. border and it is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities on the entire planet. In fact, Juarez is now the murder capital of the western hemisphere.
But do most Americans know about this?
No, they are too busy listening to the mainstream media tell them all about Anthony Weiner and Casey Anthony.
Illegal immigrants continue to pour over the border at a staggering rate and a large percentage of them end up in gangs.
There are now over 1 million people involved in gangs inside the United States, and a rising percentage of those gangs are made up of illegal immigrants and are connected to the drug trade. According to federal statistics, gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the United States each year.
In a previous article about illegal immigration, I talked about the infamous “18th Street Gang” which is terrorizing cities all over America. There are reports that the 18th Street Gang has thousands of members in the city of Los Angeles alone.
The following is what Wikipedia has to say about the 18th Street Gang....
A US Justice Department report from 2009 estimates that the 18th Street gang has a membership of some 30,000 to 50,000 with 80% of them being illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America and is active in 44 cities in 20 states. Its main source of income is street-level distribution of cocaine and marijuana and, to a lesser extent, heroin and methamphetamine. Gang members also commit assault, auto theft, carjacking, drive-by shootings, extortion, homicide, identification fraud, and robbery. Just think of how much violence could be stopped by keeping these criminals out of the country.
Yet our federal government does nothing.
But it isn't just gangs of young people that are the problem.
Some mainstream media outlets have been bold enough to report that Mexican drug cartels are openly conducting military operations inside the United States. Scouts for the cartels maintain strategic lookout bases in the hills of southern Arizona. The cartels very much try to avoid any confrontations with our border patrol or with our local police, but once they are approached they are not afraid to open fire.
In fact, it happens all the time. We just don't hear about it much on the news.
The handful of agents that we do have guarding the border are tremendously outgunned and outmanned.
One very frustrated border patrol agent told Fox News the following about what is going on in his area....
“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement.” How can we allow this to go on?
What is happening on the border is a national embarrassment.
Another border patrol agent put it this way in an email to Fox News....
“Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers.” So what is the federal government doing about it?
They are doing next to nothing.
Well, they are putting up some warning signs.
In some parts of southern Arizona today, the federal government has actually put up signs that warn American citizens to keep away from the routes that the Mexican drug cartels use to bring in drugs.
We are supposed to be the most powerful nation on earth, and yet foreign drug cartels dominate our border areas.
At this point, the Mexican drug cartels are deeply entrenched in all of the states along the border. In fact, the reality is that the entire southwest United States has been fundamentally transformed over the past several decades.
Until the federal government secures our borders, it should not ask the American people to make one more sacrifice in the name of “national security”.
Our nation is under attack every single day by these Mexican drug cartels. It was elements within our own government that provided them with thousands of weapons. Hopefully Congress will be courageous enough to launch a full investigation.

58 posted on 07/11/2011 4:57:14 PM PDT by Linda Frances
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To: Linda Frances

“During 2009 and 2010, 70 percent of the 30,000 guns that were recovered by authorities in Mexico were determined to have come from inside the United States.
Now we know why.”

Sorry to have to tell you, but your statement above is VERY wrong!

30,000 guns may have been recovered in Mex., but only a fraction of those came from the U.S.
The Mex. gov. can tell which guns were U.S. manufactured by looking at the serial number range, of THAT FRACTION 70% may have been CONFIRMED to have come from the U.S.
Bear in mind, guns lawfully sold to the Mex. government, then diverted to gangs, also “came from the U.S.”

As I recall the actual number of guns smuggled to Mexico from the U.S. is under 20% of the total.

Remember, the cartels get plenty of drugs from So. American countries who’s economy is worse than theirs, they get weapons from them too.
Many of these weapons were also originally lawfully sold to So. American governments, so technically they also “came from the U.S.”, but they were not smuggled across OUR border by cartel agents!

Automatic weapons, rocket launchers, and grenades are NOT coming from U.S. gun-shops!
Hugo Chavez is arming Mexican cartels and “Indian” groups to destabilize Mexico, he would like to make Mex. his puppet socialist state, or at least make life more miserable for the U.S. with a failed state on their border.

Accuracy is important, particularly when addressing members of congress.
Please do not become an unwitting agent for the BATFE/Gun grabbers/liberal media.


65 posted on 07/11/2011 5:36:26 PM PDT by Loyal Sedition (Loyal Sedition, often described as "To the right of Attila The Hun"!)
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