Documents: ATF used "Fast and Furious" to make the case for gun regulations (Dec 2011)

Story dated December 7, 2011 - you should ask the mods to add publication date to headline in brackets. THIS IS OLD.

bfl

Obama, Calderon Mexico City press conference. Transcript

April 17, 2009 12:46 AM

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

(Mexico City, Mexico)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 16, 2009

JOINT PRESS CONFERENCE WITH PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

AND PRESIDENT FELIPE CALDERÓN OF MEXICO

Los Pinos

Mexico City, Mexico

4:29 P.M. CDT

PRESIDENT CALDERÓN: (As translated.) Ladies and gentlemen of the press, of the media, I would like to give the warmest welcome to Mexico to President Barack Obama, and to the delegation accompanying him. This is an historic event that will inaugurate a new era, a new relationship between our two countries.

Today in the meetings that we have held we have confirmed the determination of both governments to consolidate the very, very close contacts and links that join and bring together Mexico and the United States. We have new projects in important affairs such as security, migration, competitiveness, and global affairs.

As never before we have decided that the fight against multinational organized crime must be based on cooperation, shared responsibility, and in trust, a mutual trust.

Both governments recognize that the Merida Initiative is a very good starting point in order to strengthen cooperation in security. But we want to go beyond, we want to go further in order to liberate, to free our societies from the criminal activities that affect the lives of millions of people.

We have also agreed to expedite the times so that we can have available the resources for this Merida Initiative, and we have also decided to launch other activities that are in the hands of our governments. For example, we can adopt new measures for preventing illicit flows at the border, particularly the flow of weapons and of cash. We will also be strengthening our cooperation in information and intelligence in order to more efficiently fight against money laundering.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I want to begin by thanking the people of Mexico for their gracious welcome. And I want to thank President Calderón for the hospitality he has shown as a host.

You know, this is my first trip to Mexico as President, and I see this visit — as I know President Calderón does — as an opportunity to launch a new era of cooperation and partnership between our two nations, an era built on an even firmer foundation of mutual responsibility and mutual respect and mutual interest. We had a productive and wide-ranging conversation and I think we have taken some very important steps down that path.

It’s difficult to overstate the depth of the ties between our two nations or the extraordinary importance of our relationship. It’s obviously a simple fact of geography that we share a border, and we’ve always been bound together because of that geography. But it’s not just that shared border that links us together. It’s not only geography, but it’s also culture, it’s also migration patterns that have taken place that have become so important.

Our deep economic ties mean that whenever — whatever steps that we’re going to take moving forward have to be taken together. And that’s why we worked hard, hand in hand at the G20 summit. And that’s what we will continue to do at the Summit of the Americas and beyond, so that we can jumpstart job creation, promote free and fair trade, and develop a coordinated response to this economic crisis.

We also discussed our shared interest in meeting an immigration challenge that has serious implications for both the United States and for Mexico. My country has been greatly enriched by migration from Mexico. Mexican Americans form a critical and enduring link between our nations. And I am committed to fixing our broken immigration system in a way that upholds our traditions as a nation of laws but also as a nation of immigrants. And I’m committed to working with President Calderón to promote the kind of bottom-up economic growth here in Mexico that will allow people to live out their dreams here, and as a consequence will relieve some of the pressures that we’ve seen along the borders.

Now, as essential as it is that we work together to overcome each of these common challenges, there’s one particular area that requires our urgent and coordinated action, and that is the battle that’s taking place with — with respect to the drug cartels that are fueling kidnappings and sowing chaos in our communities and robbing so many of a future, both here in Mexico and in the United States.

I have said this before; I will repeat it: I have the greatest admiration and courage for President Calderón and his entire cabinet, his rank-and-file police officers and soldiers as they take on these cartels. I commend Mexico for the successes that have already been achieved. But I will not pretend that this is Mexico’s responsibility alone. A demand for these drugs in the United States is what is helping to keep these cartels in business. This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.

So we have responsibilities, as well. We have to do our part. We have to crack down on drug use in our cities and towns. We have to stem the southbound flow of guns and cash. And we are absolutely committed to working in a partnership with Mexico to make sure that we are dealing with this scourge on both sides of the border.

And that’s why we’re ramping up the number of law enforcement personnel on our border. That’s why, for the first time, we are inspecting trains leaving our country, not just those entering it. That’s why our Department of Homeland Security is making up to $59 million available to defend our common border from this threat to both of our countries.

Now, as we discussed in our meeting, destroying and disrupting the cartels will require more than aggressive efforts from each of our nations. And that’s why the United States is taking the following steps: We’ve begun to accelerate efforts to implement the Merida Initiative so we can provide Mexico with the military aircraft and inspection equipment they need when they need it.

Yesterday, I designated three cartels as Significant Foreign Narcotics Drug Traffickers under U.S. law, clearing the way for our Treasury Department, working together with Mexico to freeze their assets and subject them to sanctions.

My National Homeland Security Advisor, who is here, General Jim Jones, as well as my Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, and my top advisor on homeland security and counterterrorism, John Brennan, are all meeting with their Mexican counterparts to develop new ways to cooperate and coordinate their efforts more effectively.

In addition, as President Calderón and I discussed, I am urging the Senate in the United States to ratify an inter-American treaty known as CIFTA to curb small arms trafficking that is a source of so many of the weapons used in this drug war.

Now, there are some of the common challenges that President Calderón and I discussed in our meeting and that we’re going to be working on to overcome in the months and years ahead. It will not be easy, but I am confident that if we continue to act, as we have today, in a spirit of mutual responsibility and friendship, we will prevail on behalf of our common security and our common prosperity.

So I think that this is building on previous meetings that we’ve had. In each interaction, the bond between our governments is growing stronger. I am confident that we’re going to make tremendous progress in the future. Thank you.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President, as well.

President Obama, as a candidate for your office, you said that you wanted to see the assault ban weapon — the ban on assault weapons reinstated. Your Attorney General has spoken in favor of this. Mexican officials have also spoken in favor of it. But we haven’t heard you say that since you took office. Do you plan to keep your promise? And if not, how do you explain that to the American people?

And, President Calderón — I’m sorry, if I may — would you like to see this ban reinstated? And have you raised that today with President Obama? Thank you.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, we did discuss this extensively in our meetings. I have not backed off at all from my belief that the gun — the assault weapons ban made sense. And I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment rights in our Constitution, the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners who want to keep their families safe to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we now know, here in Mexico, are helping to fuel extraordinary violence — violence in our own country, as well.

Now, having said that, I think none of us are under any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy. And so, what we’ve focused on is how we can improve our enforcement of existing laws, because even under current law, trafficking illegal firearms, sending them across a border, is illegal. That’s something that we can stop.

And so our focus is to work with Secretary Napolitano, Attorney General Holder, our entire Homeland Security team, ATF, border security, everybody who is involved in this, to coordinate with our counterparts in Mexico to significantly ramp up our enforcement of existing laws. And in fact, I’ve asked Eric Holder to do a complete review of how our enforcement operations are currently working and make sure that we’re cutting down on the loopholes that are resulting in some of these drug trafficking problems.

The last point I would make is that there are going to be some opportunities where I think we can build some strong consensus. I’ll give you one example, and that is the issue of gun tracing. The tracing of bullets and ballistics and gun information that have been used in major crimes — that’s information that we are still not giving to law enforcement, as a consequence of provisions that have been blocked in the United States Congress, and those are the areas where I think that we can make some significant progress early.

That doesn’t mean that we’re steering away from the issue of the assault guns ban, but it does mean that we want to act with urgency, promptly, now. And I think we can make significant progress.

PRESIDENT CALDERÓN: Thank you for your question. I want to say that, in effect, on this topic — not only on this topic, but on many of the other thorny topics of relations between the U.S. and Mexico, we have had an open, frank, trusting conversation between President Obama and myself. We have spoken of assault weapons. He is well aware of our problems.

And we have described it as it is from the moment that the prohibition on the sale of assault weapons a few years ago, we have seen an increase in the power of organized crime in Mexico. Only in my administration, in the two years and four months, we have been able to see — or rather we have seized more than 16,000 assault weapons. And in the efforts we have made to track their origin — and President Obama has referred to that — we have seen that nearly 90 percent of those arms comes from the United States — those weapons come from the United States. There are about 10,000 sales points in the U.S.-Mexico border — only at the border.

On the other hand, I do believe that our relationship — the new era we must build in our relationship between Mexico and the United States must be one with trust and respect. And we definitely respect the decision of the U.S. Congress and of the U.S. people in this regard, because they are very well aware of President Obama and his government’s willingness to move forward on these issues.

We know that it is a politically delicate topic because Americans truly appreciate their constitutional rights, and particularly those that are part of the Second Amendment. I personally believe that as long as we are able to explain clearly what our problems in Mexico are, then we might also be able to seek a solution respecting the constitutional rights of the Americans, at the same time will prevent — or rather avoid that organized crime becomes better armed in our country.

But we have to work on it. We have to work on it. But we fully respect the opinion of the U.S. Congress and we know that there’s a great deal of sensitivity regarding this topic.

But there are many, many things that we can definitely move forward in. For example, in armament, it is not only a matter of seeing whether we can change the legislation on assault weapons — we have already said what our position is — but we might also be able to see whether they can apply existing legislation in Mexico and the United States on armament. For example, in Mexico it’s a matter of enforcement, with the Export Control Act, for example — this is in the United States — I’m sorry — prohibits the export of weapons to those countries where those weapons are prohibited.

And that is the case of Mexico. If we actually comply with the U.S. law — or rather if everybody complies with the U.S. law that prohibits the sale of these weapons and their export to Mexico, we can move a great deal forward.

President Obama has made recent decisions in the last few weeks, and we value them and appreciate them — for example, to reinforce the operational capability of U.S. border agencies in order to comply with this legislation and with other laws, in order to review the flows of entry not only into the United States, but also the outgoing flows, outgoing from the U.S., to make sure that there is no illicit money, in strict compliance with United States legislation. I think these are very important steps.

But there is a problem, and only as long as we build on this trust and we clearly explain to citizens of both countries how we must find a solution, we will be able to achieve one. We do so respectfully, presenting our position, knowing full well how the U.S. people feel about this and being fully respectful of the sovereign decisions that the United States might make, or that any other country might make.

One more thing — one more thing I forgot to mention. One other thing we can do is to track the weapons that we have in Mexico. If we manage to detect weapons sold illegally in the United States in violation of this law on the control of weapons exports, or if, in the United States, they can have — probably move forward on a good registry of armament or on the prohibition of certain massive sales of weapons, for example, to a hunter or to a common citizen — we know that these people do not usually buy hundreds of rifles or assault weapons or grenades — if we can move forward in those areas, I do believe that security both of the United States and Mexico will improve because those weapons are pointing against Mexican people and Mexican officials today.

But crime is not only acting in Mexico. It is also acting in the United States. Organized crime is acting in both countries. And I do hope that those weapons that are sold today in the United States and are being used in Mexico, I hope the day will never come in which they will also be used against the North American society or against U.S. officials, just like they are now being used in Mexico.

Q (As translated.) Good afternoon, Presidents. You are going to share four years of an administration, and there can be an in-depth change in this fight against organized crime in these four years. As of today, how can we establish the concrete objectives that in 2012 will allow us to say, fine, a new era began between Mexico and the United States back then?

Particularly I’m addressing this to you, President Obama. In addition to the chance that you will invest your political capital in being able to stop the flow of these weapons to Mexico, what can we hope for, what can we expect to see in terms of arresting the drug lords, the kingpins, in the U.S.? Because there are laws against corruption, but this is enabling now — in other words, the U.S. market is now the biggest for drugs. And former President of Mexico, ex-President Fox, said that in the back they have only gotten little pats in the back from his predecessors. Can we hope for more from your administration?

And to you, President Calderón, with this new era, how can you measure the detention, the arrest of drug lords in the United States, and also putting a stop to the flow of weapons? How can you measure this?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think that we can measure this in terms of the reduction in violence; in the interdiction of drugs; in the interdiction of weapons coming south; in the dismantling of the financial structures that facilitate these drug cartels; in the arrest of major drug kingpins.

So I think we know how to measure progress. The challenge is maintaining a sustained effort. And as I said, something that President Calderón and myself absolutely recognize, is that you can’t fight this war with just one hand. You can’t just have Mexico making an effort but the United States not making an effort. And the same is true on the other side.

I think both our efforts have to be coordinated; both of our efforts have to be strengthened. I’ve made some very concrete commitments, already sending additional resources, already making additional investments. These are measurable in millions and, ultimately, billions of dollars over several years. And I believe that President Calderón has used enormous political capital to deal with this issue.

Obviously the Mexican people, particularly along the borders, have suffered great hardship. And as a consequence, if we partner effectively — and that’s why I brought many of my top officials on this trip, to interact with their counterparts — I’m confident that we’re going to make progress. Now, are we going to eliminate all drug flows? Are we going to eliminate all guns coming over the border? That’s not a realistic objective. What is a realistic objective is to reduce it so significantly, so drastically, that it becomes once again a localized criminal problem as opposed to a major structural problem that threatens stability in communities along those borders and that increases corruption and threatens the rule of law — that’s the kind of progress that I think can be made.

And so, we are going to — we’re going to work as hard as we can and as diligently as we can on these issues — always mindful, though, that the relationship between Mexico and the United States cannot just be defined by drugs. Sometimes there’s a tendency for the media to only report on drug interdiction or immigration when it comes to U.S.-Mexican relations. And one of the things that we talked about is the extraordinary opportunities for us to work together on our commercial ties; on strengthening border infrastructure to improve the flow of goods; on working on clean energy, which can produce jobs on both sides of the border.

So we’re going to stay very focused on this. We’re going to make this a top priority, but we just always want to remember that our relationship is not simply defined by these problems; it’s also defined by opportunities. And that’s what we want to take advantage of as well.

PRESIDENT CALDERÓN: Thank you, President. I agree a great deal with you and I fully thank you for your support and understanding in this very difficult topic. I think the question is very relevant. I see a big opportunity for President Obama and myself, since we are going to be sharing the next four years as heads of our administrations, I see a big opportunity here.

And on this issue, what I hope to see at the end of my administration is actually many things. One is a reduction in the levels of criminal activities in our countries related to organized crime, which is also related to drug trafficking — they go hand in hand. We have a strategy with short-, midterm, and long-term objectives.

In the short term, for example, we have set out to recuperate the security and tranquility of our citizens, particularly in those areas that have been harder hit by the crime. And this is where we have the joint operations, where we are mobilizing not only our federal police but also the army — and this, regardless of the fact that it is not an easy matter and it hasn’t been and it can change in the course of time, but at least we begin to see fruitful results in some areas.

For example, in the last quarter — or rather compared to the last quarter of last year, our first quarter of this year, there was already a drop of 27 percent in criminal activities. That is as an average for the entire country, only in Ciudad Juarez — as of the joint operation that we launched in February, between February and March violent deaths in Ciudad Juarez, crime-related — violence related to crime dropped by 80 percent.

Of course I understand that the spectacular nature of some of these operations has really attracted worldwide attention. But with a very difficult crime rate that we had last year, despite them, crime in Mexico was 10.7 deaths because of crime for every 100,000 inhabitants. It is less than what it is in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, or Brazil in Latin America, and it is also a lower number than the crime rates of many U.S. cities.

I believe one issue has to be, of course, that we have to cut down on crime in Mexico, for sure, but, number two, I hope, in the course of time, to be a safer border and a more efficient border. As long as — if we are able to stop the flow of drugs, illicit money and weapons, we will have greater progress both in the United States and Mexico. And one way to measure this is by appreciating and valuing the technological capabilities, particularly of nonintrusive detection at the border, so that for those who do want to make business and do want to trade, that the border is open, and those who want to commit crime, the border will be a closed area.

One way to measure this — and here U.S. cooperation is essential — is to have the right technology, particularly nonintrusive technology that will enable us to have safe borders. And the initiative, the Merida Initiative, is very much focused on this.

Now, in the midterm, we would like a renewal of our police forces in Mexico. At the end of my administration, I would like to be able to have a new federal police that will be worthy of the citizens’ trust and that will be efficient. And here U.S. cooperation is also fundamental. Why? Well, because on our side we are cleaning our house, we are sweeping everything from top to bottom so that all the police forces, from the top officials at the Attorney General’s office, the army, the navy, that all officials in Mexico, all police officials that we can truly trust in their honesty, and that at the same time, technologically, they will be top-notch, as the rest of the world, in investigation, in databases. We want a scientific police, one that is very well-trained in technology, and U.S. help will be very welcome and it will be essential.

We also have a judicial plan for oral trials. And I think that as we fulfill these objectives, many of them have already — are part of our agreement on safety, security and protection. With a shared responsibility that we now have with President Obama and his team, we are certain that we will reach these objectives and that our strategy, which is the correct one, will have many more possibilities of achieving success, and that at the end of our administration we will have a Mexico, a United States, that are much safer and freer of violence — violence free, rather.

Of course, drug trafficking cannot be ended by decree. As long as there is a supply of high — or rather, is high demand, there will be a high supply. But what we can control is the effect of criminal activities in society, to stop the actions of organized crime, and we can also act preventively in order to bring down the consumption of drugs in the United States, and in Mexico, too, which also begins to be a problem of great concern to us.

I felt exactly the same, the summer of 1974.

Striking is the realization that the ATF was never tracking cartel sales at all, but were instead tracking the incidents of cartel murders, bloodshed and mahem that they could report on, in order to build a case against long gun sales and gun rights.

F&F was never reported as tracking ensuing murders provided by ATF weapons.

Some of us are just now getting that picture. 300 Mexicans dead to build a narrative against gun buyers in the US. One of our own dead.

How pathetic is this? Beyond comprehension, when you put the story in accurate terms.

And Calderon? How much does he really care? No coverage by the American press.

Worth re-posting now that there is a bit of attention on this story. This really is a smoking gun article regarding the motivation for F&F. It was ignored when it was first published.

She BETTER give credit to these guys, d@mmit!!!!!!!

Damn skippy! Thaks for beating me to it. Having CBS claim credit now would be wrong in soooo many ways.

Two of our own dead.

Holder and the Hilldabeast's fingerprints are all over an identical operation between Tampa and Honduras

does it add up?:

Honduras? Why would ATF walk guns to Honduras?

and this........

Obama Admin Lobbying Honduras To Allow Zelaya Back In? Are You Kidding?

What could possibly be the motive behind this lunacy?

On the last day of December last year, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, the deposed Honduran president and self-described victim of high-frequency radiation attacks by Israeli mercenaries, vowed to the press that he would return to Honduras. Few outside of Honduras have paid much attention to Zelaya’s MacArthur-esque prediction, but it has become apparent there is more behind his declaration than his usual hyperbole and bombastic absurdities.

Behind the scenes in the Obama administration there appears to be a concerted effort to pressure the democratically elected government of President Porfirio Lobo to dismiss charges of misappropriation of government funds and falsifying documents that are pending against Zelaya. This would open the door for his return to the country, and would be certain to undermine the delicate process of reestablishing democracy and order that is currently taking place in this poor and beleaguered nation.

When Zelaya was removed from office in July of 2009, the Obama administration at first joined with leftist dictators Fidel Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua in calling for his reinstatement. The Obama White House seemed oblivious to the Honduran constitution, as well as the threat Zelaya posed to the stability of the country and the region. When the courageous Honduran people held firm to their democratic constitution and refused to yield to the pressure exerted by the U.S., the Obama administration found no way of saving face other than reversing course and backing the democratic presidential elections called for by their constitution.

The Honduran Connection 7.7.11 Now we know why Hillary Clinton and Obama were falling all over themselves to support and prop-up the Honduran Marxist dictator-wannabe, Manuel Zelaya back in 2009. I never could figure out why they would create such blatantly unflattering, pro-Marxist optics for the Obama regime for a small country like Honduras. Now it all makes perfect sense. Zelaya attempted to overthrow the Honduran constitution and install himself as dictator for life, a la Hugo Chavez. The Honduran Congress AND Supreme Court followed their Constitutional Rule of Law to the letter and removed Zelaya. Within hours Obama and Clinton were threatening Honduras and demanding that the Marxist dictator Zelaya be re-installed. Now we know why. Obama and Clinton were arming Zelaya and were coordinating with Zelaya to run arms through Honduras. Presumably the deal was that some of the arms would stay with Zelaya and most would move into Mexico from the South. Then, Obama and Clinton could "find" U.S. guns in Southern Mexico and Central America, and thus use these optics to bolster their false contention that "90%" of Mexican guns were sourced directly from the U.S. "See? U.S. guns are all the way down in Chiapas State and Guatemala. U.S. guns are everywhere! The Second Amendment simply is not feasible any longer!"

Baby Doc's Back - will Obama Back Aristide?

US revokes visas to pressure Haiti on election

Sharryl Attkisson deserves credit. Her investigations and reporting have been original and extensive. And she got one of the major networks to actually air her reports.

see #29

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ocuments: ~~ATF~~ Obama used "Fast and Furious" to make the case for gun regulations

fixed

See B.S. outed THIS?!?

Another with Brian Terry?

Thanks. That is what I remembered.

Jaime Zapata. I remember that. Why isn’t that included in this investigatio? I believe his family is suing ICE. Why can’t the Terrys’ sue ATF?

No, Jaime Zapata was not with Terry when he was murdered.

Jaime Zapata is not mentioned very often but the article does say that the House committee is investigating his murder.

If having See B.S. look like the heroes for this nod to the “bitter clingers” is the price of putting it on the American sheeple’s radar screen, there are worse prices that could have been paid.

Perhaps this is why Hillary will never run again.

Republicans may well hold their canon fire on her this round, just in case she overloads herself with her considerable self admiration and reconsiders a run in the future. Then....BOOM! (Back to the cinammon rolls for Hillary.)