Posted on 10/01/2011 5:45:06 AM PDT by marktwain
I don’t like the term “epic fail.” It’s misused almost as frequently as “awesome”—which should be reserved for something so impressive that contemplating its existence is like standing mute in the face of God. But the ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious is an epic fail. It involves at least eight major U.S. federal law enforcement agencies: ATF, DEA, FBI, DOJ, CPB, ICE, IRS, DHS, CIA. That’s because the ATF’s “guns for goons” program was part of a wider America effort to get a handle on the American-financed (however inadvertently) Mexican drug wars. You know; the wars between the cartels, both with and against the Mexican government. The Obama administration’s government-wide covert effort has been—and will be—a failure of enormous magnitude. The chickens are already come home to roost . . .
Click here for a just released report entitled Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment. Here’s your money shot:
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw has testified to the fact that over the last 18 months, six of seven cartels have established command and control facilities in Texas cities that rival even the most sophisticated battalion or brigade level combat headquarters. Texas has suffered 22 murders, 24 assaults, 15 shootings and five kidnappings related to the cartels.
In other words, they’re here. The ATF doesn’t have to enable gun smugglers heading south to supply cartel members (by turning a blind eye to U.S. gun store sales or, as has been proven, actually handing the Mexico-bound bad guys the guns). The ATF doesn’t have to worry about pesky international law. They can just keep tabs on cartel affiliates buying guns in American and then . . . nab them!
And yet that’s exactly what they didn’t do during Operation Fast and Furious. Dude, that’s awesome. The $1.6 billion per year Bureau failed to arrest a single “big fish” gun smuggler during this 10-month misegos. More to the point, why the hell didn’t the ATF arrest someone? What’s in it for the ATF to sit on their hands as . . .
Crime, gangs and terrorism have converged in such a way that they form a collective threat to the national security of the United States. America is being assaulted not just from across our southern border but from across the hemisphere and beyond. All of Central and South America have become an interconnected source of violence and terrorism. Drug cartels exploit porous borders using all the traditional elements of military force, including command and control, logistics, intelligence, information operations and the application of increasingly deadly firepower. The intention is to increasingly bring governments at all levels throughout the Americas under the influence of international cartels.
It is that last part that I find most troubling. I reckon the United States government is already under the influence of the international cartels.
The nearasdammit complete lack of blowback from the Mexican government on Operation Fast and Furious—which violated Mexico’s border and armed vicious criminals—can only mean that Felipe’s peeps knew about the ATF’s black bag job. So why didn’t they stop it?
The Calderon government is in the pocket of the Sinaloa cartel. And We the People of the United States are heavily invested—politically, financially and militarily—in the Calderon government. Hello, Barack? The Sinaloas are our friends. Los Zetas are our enemies. How about you lay off the Sinaloas? Oh, and pass the word to the ATF por favor.
Captured Sinaloa jefe Jesus Zambada Niebla (currently awaiting trial in Chicago) says the U.S. government has been supporting his team against Los Zetas for years. Niebla’s lawyers tell TTAG that their client doesn’t know about F&F in particular, but that it fits Uncle Sam’s m.o. like a proverbial glove.
As the “loss” of some 2000 ATF-enabled firearms indicates, both the micro (ATF F&F) and macro (providing a U.S. base for the Mexican Navy’s Special Ops teams to launch attacks to kill and capture Zetas) sides of the strategy to “divide and conquer” the cartels is not working to keep Americans safe. Quite the opposite . . .
In a curious twist of irony, the more successful the Mexican military becomes in confronting the cartels, the more likely the cartels will take the active fight into the United States as they compete against each other in the battle to control distribution corridors inside Texas.
STRATFOR has pointed out that the Mexican drug cartels don’t want to unleash their usual murderous mayhem (e.g. decapitating and disemboweling social media journalists and planting their headless bodies in a public place) in the U.S. lest they waken the “sleeping giant” of U.S. law enforcement.
But it’s one of those tipping point deals. Once the cartels have enough power in the U.S., they won’t care about retaliation. And remember: we’re talking about a loose affiliation of animals as well as a highly organized terrorist organization.
So now we wait. When will the American-based narco-terrorists’ violence become so obvious that the U.S. government has to stop kissing Calderon’s ass, stop playing favorites amongst the cartels and unleash our guard dogs? Will it be too late when it happens?
Meanwhile, the ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious stands as a not-so-shining example of what happens when bad civil servants are given bad instructions by people who are willing to compromise our safety for their political survival. Here’s a glimpse of the result at the sharp end:
When I get up in the morning and step out the door, I’m looking for rattlesnakes and illegals, and I’m packing my gun and my cell phone. When I go down to feed my horses, I have my dog, my pistol and the cell phone. You just have to stay aware. Several months ago, I walked in my tack room and my two big dogs went ballistic, and there were two illegal aliens there. I get more angry than scared because you cannot be scared. You’re just going to have to pull your socks up and just get after it and I’ve got border patrol on speed dial.
That would be the same Border Patrol whose Agent Brian Terry was murdered by drug thugs wielding ATF-enabled firearms.
Gunwalker ping.
Input needed. Have now started a new ping list called BORDER WARS since so many of these stories are starting to intersect and overlap. I would like to keep the Gunwalker threads separate. Let me know if you want on the Border Wars list. It will NOT be the same as Gunwalker, though they might overlap occasionally. Please ping me to any articles you think fit in this catagory. Thank you.
The ATF wasn’t content with a massacre in Waco.
They had to top it.
And these liberal Dims call conservatives and Republicans the NAZIs, the police state.
And yes, though the analogy is not perfect, I am going to refer to this as Obama’s Waco.
“But it’s one of those tipping point deals. Once the cartels have enough power in the U.S., they won’t care about retaliation. And remember: we’re talking about a loose affiliation of animals as well as a highly organized terrorist organization...”
which now, unfortunately, includes our _resident, our secretary of state, and our attorney general.
“...part of a wider America effort to get a handle on the American-financed (however inadvertently) Mexican drug wars.”
Don’t overlook the more covert effort to bolster the anti-gun argument of the leftists by parading out the ‘found’ firearms as clear evidence of the need (their word) for more stringent gun control measures.
I see this as much more like Obama’s Iran-Contra, but that’s just me.
Yeah, agree for sure. It's been my belief since Waco and Ruby Ridge that the ATF is a rouge organization, bunch of cowboys as in the movie Tombstone. If we peel the onion a little bit on this Fast and Furious caper I believe that we would find that the underlying motive was to create a perception among the general population that these guns were showing up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels as a result of law breaking U.S. gun dealers. However, the setup when bad and the AFT and Justice is now scrambling to cover it up. I think that when it's all said and done, assuming the GOP led House has the cajones to see this through, we will find that this illegal and neferious scheme was created by both the Calderón administration and the Obama administration were co-conspirators in this...
Not even all conservatives know enough about Waco to understand, and the libs who at least are somewhat familiar with it still consider it a good thing.
This SHOULD mean the end of ATF, considering they have all that manpower, and nothing really important to do, that they are willing to engage in politicial activsim probably out of sheer boredom indicates to me that they need to be disolved.
Ltn
Remember how highly the left thinks of dictators like Chavez and people like Che? We tend to think the unthinkable can't happen, but when we know these marxist goals, we better keep our eyes open for the unexpected.
Our biggest problem is they have put their wall up to protect themselves; the lying media. Citizens won't know what hit this country until it's too late. Are we there yet? We have let international terrorist set up control and command centers in this country. This is a sovereign nation and we are not even fighting terrorist on our own land. People need to wake up.
For any of this to have happened, it needed high level approval, followed by high level interference and now comes the high level stonewall.
Moving a few people around and shuffling a few chairs at the big table appears to help with covering things up, but justice won't be denied.
Figuratively speaking, now we need a hanging.
BTTT
Literally speaking, now we need a hanging. A public one. For all of them.
There have been at least 200 deaths (SO FAR) from these weapons. Those responsible need the severest punishment possible. Every one of them.
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