America's Mexican Border Wars

[Tosh Plumlee]

Note: Last week I posted the picture of the Anti Aircraft 50cal gun with over a thousand rounds of ammo, and the AP Mexico article. These weapons more than just the Gun were found from information obtain from the Joint Mexican American Task Force (TF-7) operating inside Mexico. The American public is being lied to by ATF and other agencies. Its still the same old inter-agency turf wars of old... Who gets the credit for the find and the intelligence gathering.

This FORUM received this information last week with pictures, before the fact,..., from a Task Force Team operating inside Mexico.
This is not a rifle and did not come from a Gun show or a pawn shop.. whats goin on here? The ATF is misleading the public on this weapon that was found in the Cartels hands. Why?

Mexican arms race: bigger guns for drug cartels

AP – Police remove weapons that were seized from suspected drug traffickers after presenting the weapons and …



By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer Alexandra Olson, Associated Press Writer – Mon Apr 20, 3:33 am ET

MEXICO CITY – An escalating arms race among Mexico's drug cartels casts doubt on whether Mexico or the U.S. can stop the flow of weaponry, despite renewed vows last week from presidents of both countries.

Stockpiles captured by Mexican soldiers show that warring traffickers are now obtaining military-grade weaponry such as grenades, launchers, machine guns, mortars and anti-tank rockets.


Some drug gangs have even sought explosive material that some experts worry could be used in car bombs and improvised explosive devices of the kind used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers found 14 sticks of TNT among an arsenal of hundreds of rifles and grenades seized in November from a house in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

But so far, attempts at using bombs have been unsuccessful as drug gangs haven't yet developed the skills to build effective ones, said Stephen Meiners, a Latin America analyst with Stratfor, a private U.S.-based group. Authorities suspect the Sinaloa cartel tried to kill a Mexico City police officer last year with a homemade bomb that killed only the attacker.

"Once you have a bomb maker that has mastered that skill, unless that bomb maker is caught, he can keep constructing those devices and send them out to be deployed," he said.

One of the most worrisome weapons yet was seized this week just south of Nogales, Ariz.: a powerful gun mounted on the back of an SUV and protected by a thick metal shield. Police said it belonged to one of the Beltran Leyva drug gangs.
Mexican and U.S. authorities disagree on just what type of gun it was. Federal police coordinator Gen. Rodolfo Cruz maintains it was .50-caliber anti-air craft machine gun. ATF, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said it was an unmodified .50-caliber semiautomatic rifle made by TNW, a U.S. firearms manufacturer.

( NOTE: Look at the picture of the Gun posted here last week. (below) You can clearly see that this is not a rifle or a 50 cal gun...It was said my the Mexican Intel that its ben modified to use larger caliber ammo... ..you do not get these type of guns from Gun Shows or Pawn Shops Take a hard look at the picture posted below, last week. from the
AP in Mexico.)


ATF investigators traced the gun — along with seven others seized at a house in Sonora state on Monday — to suppliers in the United States, said Bill Newell, special agent in charge of the ATF in Arizona and New Mexico.
While crudely built, the truck-mounted rifle would give traffickers a powerful advantage against lightly armed police, Newell said: A gunman could protect a whole convoy with sweeping fire while protected by the metal shield.

"Imagine being a two- or three-man police team at a rural checkpoint and these guys roll up with this thing," Newell said. "You'd be slightly intimidated, wouldn't you?"

President Barack Obama says he will crack down on the smuggling of weapons easily purchased lawfully in the United States and then taken to Mexico, which has strict gun-control laws.
But Mexico's drug gangs are clearly digging in for this war, which has already claimed more than 10,670 lives since Calderon deployed 45,000 troops to confront the cartels at the beginning of his presidency in December 2006.
Even as the governments try to choke off the U.S. weapons supply, the gangs are clearly trying to expand their arsenals beyond the assault rifles and semi-automatics they can get in the United States.
These and other, much heavier weapons are readily available on the global black market, particularly from stockpiles left over from Central America's civil wars.
Civilians are increasingly being targeted. In October, assailants hurled a grenade at the U.S. consulate in the northern city of Monterrey. In January, a TV network's offices in the same city were attacked.
The grenades used in both attacks were similar to one thrown into a nightclub in Pharr, Texas, in January, according to the ATF. That one didn't explode.
The agency suspects they came from a Monterrey warehouse where the Gulf cartel had been stockpiling weapons, including South Korean-made K75 fragmentation grenades.

The cartels are still far from obtaining enough arms and training to overpower Mexico's military, which is much better weapons coordination, Meiners said.
On Wednesday, only hours before Obama's visit, 15 gunmen were killed but only one soldier died when a convoy of armed men fought with troops patrolling a drug trafficking hotbed in remote, mountainous Guerrero state.
But local police are outgunned and have left the battle to the military — showing how hard it will be to achieve what Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Obama agreed will be success — a drug war which local police can handle without military help. "We only have 20 police, and we cannot risk entering in operations against the narcos," said Santiago Bustos, the second-in-command of the police in San Nicolas del Oro, where Wednesday's shootout happened...". (end)


(posted last week April 14,2009 Deep Politics Forum)

Mexican detained with anti-aircraft machine gun

(notice the bore of this weapon its bigger than a .50 cal as well as the ammo... some in Mexico Intel said it was modified to fit larger ammo)

• AP – An anti air-craft machine gun, the first weapon of its kind seized in Mexico, is displayed to the media …
  

article Mexico AP April 14,2009

NEW INFORMATION AN UPDATE:
(04-20-09)

NEW UPDATE: (4-20-09)


This FORUM received this information and article last week with pictures, before the fact,..., from a Task Force Team operating inside Mexico.

This is not a rifle and did not come from a Gun show or a pawn shop..

Whats goin on here? The ATF is misleading the public on this weapon that was found in the Cartels hands. Why?

Mexican detained with anti-aircraft machine gun

(notice the bore of this weapon its bigger than a .50 cal as well as the ammo... some in Mexico Intel said it was modified to fit larger ammo)

note: ATF ID'ed this weapon as a "rifle"

• AP – An anti air-craft machine gun, the first weapon of its kind seized in Mexico, is displayed to the media …
  

article Mexico AP April 14,2009




Bill Newell, special agent in charge of the ATF in Arizona and New Mexico.
"...While crudely built, the truck-mounted rifle...".

Well to me this does not look like a 'rifle' This is a 50 cal fully automatic Deck Mount Browning fully automatic machine gun.

AND I do not think you can find one of these at a US Pawn Shop or a Gun Show.... and too, I think it would be very hard to sneak it across a border check point.

Why does the ATF,government agencies,as well as the media out right lie to us about these US Military weapons being found in the Cartels hands?

In fact there were three browning fully automatic machine guns found in this raid not to mention other high grade US Made military weapon and other equipment found that was not mentioned by ATF or the media....

(More to come on this very soon)

information obtained from a very sensitive source operating within a secret military Task Force operating inside Mexico.