America's Mexican Border Wars

[Tosh Plumlee]

The Homeland Security's anouncement this morning, in reference to the drug war inside Mexico and along its border with the United States, was first mention on this forum last week by a Forum member.... You had it first before the mainstream media. H Clinton is now in Mexico talking about this matter with Mexico's President. The State Department is now on high alert concerning this matter, as well as the JCOS at the Pentagon. Law Enforcement has been trippled and checkpoints have been beefed up.

Operation, "BEST" and "OPS Firewall" have now been made public... U.S Troops are being moved into the border region as I type. New Mexico now has added border protection at the known and unknown crossover points for the drug runners are now being blocked... New Mexico now has a "Best" Team in focus.., as well as other secret teams in operations.

In short. Action is now being taken... The mainstream media did not want this story last month... but now they want credit for it now... (what a bunch of low lifes)

I am going back to Juarze today and ride along with the Mexican Army, again... These are really good guys and they know the ones that have turned and believe me they are taking care of them one by one... They too, to some degree, are getting a bumb wrap in the American Press.

American politics are playing into all this because of NAFT, just like they did many years ago. Good people have their lives on the line, and the Washington Beltway had rather play the Greed Game than solve this WAR.

The Media is in bed with them... and they sure as hell do not want me doing what I am doing... using a little ole Forum to put out what good Undercover law enforcement, Border Patrol, and the American military are doing to stop the spread of drugs coming into this country through Mexico. They are working hard with Mexico to solve these long delayed actions put on hold by previous addministrations. Got to run... but wanted this out "BEFORE THE FACT". My protection.

Example of past post:

"... The US is drawing up comprehensive plans to help Mexico in its fight against drug-trafficking, a senior military official has told Congress.

Gen Gene Renuart, head of the US Northern Command, told a Senate hearing that troops or anti-narcotics agents would be sent to the Mexican border.

The plan could be finalised as early as this week, he added.

Correspondents say Mexico's mounting drug violence has emerged as a real national security threat to the US. ..."


from a previous post :

"... This post is in answer to a few emails I have received asking me 'How did you know about these stories before they broke on CNN today and a few days ago?"...

Well the stories and the details thereof and the first news about Mexico's drug war problems first broke on this forum a few weeks ago. It was a test to see if anyone really reads this stuff. (documented before the fact, or appeared on any major American media news reports)

We, and that means friends of mine in law enforcement in Mexico and the United States, put together a 'private Undercover team and went into Mexico for three weeks. Some of us are still there. What we found was turned over to U.S. government officials, DEA, ATF and The Department of Justice as well as the Mexican Army, and the major media outlets..., it was sat on for a number of days by all, and appeared to be going nowhere.

I then went on Mike Levin's radio program with Celle Castillo, previous border Patrol and DEA, last week and in that program was a recap of previous CIA and military operations, dating back twenty years concerning America's so called Drug War, of the time was discussed.

That is when I started posting on this forum about the Mexico Drug War in and around Juarez and other border towns. Soon the mainstream media starting to cover parts of our findings, because we were pushing at them to take a look at what we had uncovered. ...".

3-15-09 posted in reference to Dawn's reply.:

"...
Yes Dawn, it is. There are a thousand stories like this one in the Naked City.

I am not in my rocking chair as yet, althought close. I am down here, "working" on documenting various aspects of the Zetas operations (Gulf Cartel) here in Juarez. Thats about all I can say at this point in time... perhaps you have seen some of our work on TV these past two weeks.
I'm Hanging out with the Mexican Army. Most of these guys and girls are really good people and they know the ones in their ranks whon have turned "bad". They have their own "Hit Teams" and most of that is not covered by American mainstream media. Its a real war down here between them and the gangs. Secretly they have to work undercover and infiltrate these border gangs and take them out., and they do not work through the Mexican court system. They have their own system to deal with the turncoats and it is not something you want to see on prime time American TV. Its a cat and mouse game within their own ranks and very dangerous for them.

Its kind of like our own situation as to our political system... you have to weed out the crooks before they weed you out... Take care little lady... tell the "Fisty One' hello for me... Tosh ...".

[Peter Lemkin]

Tosh is worth a thousand CNN high-profile reporters and gets the stories they miss [on purpose] anyway.....good going T. Guess your getting lots 'o practice en Espanol!

[Tosh Plumlee]

U.S. law enforcement has been 'crying their eyes out' to four administrations, pleading to whomever would listen about the pending doom of the drug war plague. They have pleaded with four Presidents and their administrations, and to members of both houses of Congres for help to stop this 'oncreeping'--soon to be onrushing criminal tide before it reached our borders. Some gave their lives in a phony drug war based on politics; a secret war where only lip service from those past Presidents and politicians was given them. However, in reality their pleas fell on deaf ears.

The 'Drug War' is a total, abject failure and has been a waste of taxpayers' money. More than one operative in law enforcement and the U.S. military has recently warned that the day of 'Drug Lord' rule in the Western Hemisphere has already arrived. They have told our politicians and begged them to pay attention to these issues. These drug cartels and gangs are not coming to our cities, they are already here--killing, raping, and maiming our citizens.

Today, law enforcement is outgunned (on both sides of the border)--armed with our own U.S high-grade military weapons, which have been sold for profit and transferred into the hands of these drug cartels and gangs, who use them to try to destroy the legitimate government of Mexico and soon our own. And our answer to this problem is, “ well let's shut the barn door, now that the horse is long gone."

I call it FRAUD in the Drug War and FRAUD upon the American people. Twenty-five years of FRAUD and FAILED POLICIES at the expense of the American people and too at the expense those who gave their lives in this unknown war.

I say, "SHAME ON OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS PAST AND PRESENT! THEY HAVE VIOLATED THEIR PUBLIC TRUST!" And have put AMERICA in Harms Way.
Tosh Plumlee

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We move now to the border. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Mexico today, a day after the Obama administration announced it would send more money, technology and manpower to secure the United States-Mexico border and bolster the Mexican government’s anti-drug operation.

President Obama laid out the new plan at his press conference on Tuesday night.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We are sending millions of dollars in additional equipment to provide more effective surveillance. We are providing hundreds of additional personnel that can help control the border, deal with customs issues. We are coordinating very effectively with the Mexican government and President Calderon, who has taken on a extraordinarily difficult task of dealing with these drug cartels that have gotten completely out of hand.

And so, the steps that we’ve taken are designed to make sure that the border communities in the United States are protected, and you’re not seeing a spillover of violence, and that we are helping the Mexican government deal with a very challenging situation.

We’ve got to also take some steps. Even as he is doing more to deal with the drug cartels sending drugs into the United States, we need to do more to make sure that illegal guns and cash aren’t flowing back to these cartels. That’s part of what’s financing their operations. That’s part of what’s arming them. That’s what makes them so dangerous.


AMY GOODMAN: Earlier Tuesday, Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano said the administration was, quote, “still considering and looking at” deploying the National Guard at the border. She added she would meet with Texas Governor Rick Perry to discuss sending a thousand National Guard troops to the border.

Secretary of State Clinton’s visit to Mexico marks the start of several high-level meetings between Mexico and the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are scheduled to meet with Mexican officials in early April before President Obama’s visit just ahead of the Summit of the Americas.

Mexican authorities say over 6,000 people were killed in drug-related violence last year, and some American analysts have warned Mexico could become a, quote, “failed state.”

For some analysis from the US-Mexico border, I’m joined now on the telephone from El Paso, Texas, by independent journalist and author John Gibler. His book Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt came out earlier this year.

John, welcome to Democracy Now! The reaction on the border to the announcement yesterday, and what you see happening there?

JOHN GIBLER: Good morning, Amy. Thank you very much.

The reaction on the El Paso side is one of mild relief. There is a good deal of people kind of scared about this idea of spillover violence. And the reaction on the Juarez side of the border that I’ve been able to judge so far is one of skeptical “Well, we’ll see.” There’s a lot of energy, kind of skeptical of the Obama administration. They’ve not seen a lot of real promise and initiative from the US government on the drug war.

And one of the reasons there is, first of all, I think the United States government has always liked to export the perception of chaos and violence to other countries, like Colombia and now Mexico. So while the drug violence in Mexico is very real, at least the Mexican people are sufficiently outraged to demand change. Over the last few years, as the violence has exploded, every 2nd or 3rd of January the main headline of Mexico’s national dailies is the number of people that have been executed the year before. In 2007, that number was about 3,000. As you mentioned, in 2008, it was about 6,000 people. But where is the corresponding count in the United States?

Here, drug executions and violence between dealers who are disputing and battling over turf are a daily occurrence across the country, but the violence seems to have been ghettoized. There is no national political consciousness in the mainstream media or in the government about how that violence stems itself from the drug war. So now you have the mainstream media, the President coming along and warning us of spillover violence from Mexico.

I think that expresses the kind of racist logic of the drug war, where first drug violence is seen as spilling over from another country, instead of as something that is always transnational and related to the drug trade, and second, you know, the absence of the corresponding outrage for the drug violence that plagues most US cities—and the response there from the government seems to always be build more prisons and incarcerate more people of color.

AMY GOODMAN: And this issue of Mexico as a failed state?

JOHN GIBLER: I think, there again, it’s not so much that the state is failing, rather than rather uncomfortable facts about its true nature are exposed. And that has to do with the fact that the drug cartels, and for decades now, have so deeply infiltrated pretty much every institution in the state of [inaudible], so when the drug cartels enter into this extreme, bloody, very real war over territory, over trafficking routes, that war takes place within the structure of the state itself. That is, the different people in the judicial branch of government, the executive branch of government, the highest levels of the federal anti-drug forces, like those offices in the federal attorney general’s office, where Noe Ramirez Mandujano, the ex-anti-drug czar, was recently found taking $450,000 in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. Well, people start to fall internally to the state, as well, is one of the kind of levels [inaudible] casualties of that violence between rival cartels.

But here, as well, this should be a moment to pause and reflect and look back at the United States, as well, because, again, I think the US always tries to export this perception of chaos, export the perception of corruption, and it’s as if once the drugs cross the border they somehow teleport to their end users and are just [inaudible] across this vast nation without the aid of an incredible distribution network, highly organized, that will always need to rely on local fixtures, and local fixtures involved in every level of government. Again, here I think the Mexican people might have something to teach us in the fact that their outrage at the level of corruption and violence pushes society to act more, whereas here there’s just this tendency to export all of this chaos and violence to other countries and not look at how—you know, or [inaudible] to find the places where the drug cartels have also infiltrated the state here in the US.

AMY GOODMAN: John Gibler, I want to thank you for being with us, independent journalist and author—his book is Mexico Unconquered—speaking to us from near the border in El Paso, Texas.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/25/ob...ents_money

[Tosh Plumlee]

Some of us OPS boys and Law enforcement have been saying this for a very long time... now they are pushed into admitting it.

Clinton: US shares blame for Mexican drug wars


AP – Wed Mar 25, 7:10 pm ET



MEXICO CITY – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday pledged to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mexico in its violent struggle against drug cartels, and acknowledged the U.S. shares blame because of its demand for drugs and supply of weapons.
She said the United States shares responsibility with Mexico for dealing with violence now spilling across the border and promised cooperation to improve security on both sides.
"The criminals and kingpins spreading violence are trying to corrode the foundations of law, order, friendship and trust between us that support our continent. They will fail," she told Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa. "We will stand shoulder to shoulder with you."
On Tuesday, the Obama administration pledged to send more money, technology and manpower to secure the border in the U.S. Southwest and help Mexico battle the cartels. Clinton also said Wednesday that the White House will seek an additional $80 million to help Mexico buy Blackhawk helicopters.
All that is in addition to a three-year, $1.4 billion Bush administration-era program to support Mexico's efforts. Congress already has approved $700 million. President Barack Obama has said he wants to revamp the initiative.
Obama said Tuesday he wanted the U.S. to do more to prevent guns and cash from illicit drug sales from flowing into Mexico. But Clinton's remarks appeared more forceful in recognizing the U.S. share of the blame. In the past, particularly under the Bush administration, Mexican officials have complained that Washington failed to acknowledge the extent that the U.S. drug demand and weapons smuggling fuels the violence.
"I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility," Clinton told reporters, adding: "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."
Criminals are outgunning law enforcement officials, she said, referring to guns and military-style equipment such as night-vision goggles and body armor that the cartels are smuggling from the U.S.
"Clearly, what we have been doing has not worked and it is unfair for our incapacity ... to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible," she said. "That's not right."

Clinton said she would repeat her acknowledgment as loudly and as often as needed during her two-day visit to Mexico City and the northern city of Monterrey. Officials said her priorities included encouraging the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon to increase its battle against rampant corruption by promoting police and judicial reform.
Just hours before she arrived, the Mexican army announced it had captured one of the country's most-wanted smugglers, a man accused of controlling the flow of drugs through Monterrey for the powerful Beltran-Leyva cartel.
The measures outlined Tuesday include increasing the number of immigrations and customs agents, drug agents and antigun-trafficking agents operating along the border, as well as sending more U.S. officials to work inside Mexico.
Those measures fall short of calls from some U.S. states that troops be deployed to prevent further spillover of the violence, which has surged since Calderon stepped up his government's battle against the cartels...".

A few months ago the following article was picked up and published in a foreign news outlet.


"... A violation of public trust

U.S. law enforcement has been 'crying their eyes out' to four administrations, pleading to whomever would listen about the pending doom of the drug war plague. They have pleaded with four Presidents and their administrations, and to members of both houses of Congres for help to stop this 'oncreeping'--soon to be onrushing criminal tide before it reached our borders. Some gave their lives in a phony drug war based on politics; a secret war where only lip service from those past Presidents and politicians was given them. However, in reality their pleas fell on deaf ears.

The 'Drug War' is a total, abject failure and has been a waste of taxpayers' money. More than one operative in law enforcement and the U.S. military has recently warned that the day of 'Drug Lord' rule in the Western Hemisphere has already arrived. They have told our politicians and begged them to pay attention to these issues. These drug cartels and gangs are not coming to our cities, they are already here--killing, raping, and maiming our citizens.

Today, law enforcement is outgunned (on both sides of the border)--armed with our own U.S high-grade military weapons, which have been sold for profit and transferred into the hands of these drug cartels and gangs, who use them to try to destroy the legitimate government of Mexico and soon our own. And our answer to this problem is, “ well let's shut the barn door, now that the horse is long gone."

I call it FRAUD in the Drug War and FRAUD upon the American people. Twenty-five years of FRAUD and FAILED POLICIES at the expense of the American people and too at the expense those who gave their lives in this unknown war.

I say, "SHAME ON OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS PAST AND PRESENT! THEY HAVE VIOLATED THEIR PUBLIC TRUST!" And have put AMERICA in Harms Way. ..".

Wm (Tosh )Plumlee ...American Mexico Special Operations Group (AMSOG)

Sept 25, 2008

P.S. It has taken some time for those in Washington DC to get it... and during this time frame thousands have been murdered and we have these gangs in our major U.S. cities today. The drug war has bneen played for political gain at the expense of those who have served in the so called, "war on drugs".

[Peter Lemkin]

While they've 'noticed' the 'problem' now....militarizing the border IMO will only cause more deaths and hardships on both sides - mainly in Mexico. They don't want to do - or even think of what really needs to be done...such as decriminalizing the user, and making it part of the real economy, not the shadow economy - controlled by cartels and fat-cat hypocrites. What's your take Tosh on how this will play out now?! The admission was OK, but I don't see there is going to be any logical follow-up. They still make it seem like the 'nasty' 'drug pushers' south of the border bring it and induce people in the US to use it, rather than just supplying the demand [in some cases officially induced demand] - but all this pipeline in the hands of banditos armed to the teeth, and going up very high. :vollkommenauf:

[Tosh Plumlee]

http://www.narconews.com/

Legal U.S. Arms Exports May Be Source of Narco Syndicates’ Rising Firepower



Posted by Bill Conroy - March 29, 2009 at 3:18 pm
More Than $1 billion In Private-Sector Weapons Exports Approved For Mexico Since 2004
Mainstream media and Beltway pundits and politicians in recent months have unleashed a wave of panic in the nation linking the escalading violence in Mexico, and its projected spread into the U.S., to illegal weapons smuggling.
The smokescreen being spread by these official mouthpieces of manufactured consensus is that a host of criminal operators are engaging in straw (or fraudulent) gun purchases, making clandestine purchases at U.S. gun shows or otherwise assembling small caches of weapons here in the states in order to smuggle them south of the border to the “drug cartels.”
The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF’s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico.
To be sure, some criminal actors in the U.S. are smuggling small arms across the border. But the drug war in Mexico is not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns. The drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.
At least one report in a mainstream media outlet deserves credit for recognizing that trend.
“[Mexican] traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals,” states a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. “The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations. …”
Narco News, in a report last December [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] also examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations.
So where are these military-grade weapons really coming from?
Rather than address that valid question head on, the mainstream media, and now even the Obama administration, have been attempting to paint lipstick on the pig,trumpeting, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the “courageous efforts undertaken by [Mexican] President Calderon.”
And the “courageous” Mexican President Felipe Calderon, for his part, redirects the blame for the Mexican narco-organization’s increasing firepower back to the U.S.
In a story published by the Associated Press in late February of this year, Mexican President Calderon is quoted alleging the following:
We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico. Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades.
But no matter how hard Calderon and U.S. officials try to disguise the pig, it still oinks.
A Narco News investigation into the flow of arms across the U.S. border appears to lead right back to the systemic corruption that afflicts a vast swath of the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon and this nation’s own embrace of market-driven free-trade policies.
The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.
“As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade,” states an October 2007 report by the for-profit global intelligence group Stratfor, which Barron’s magazine once dubbed the Shadow CIA. “… Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.”

Counting Commerce

The U.S. State Department oversees a program that requires private companies in the United States to obtain an export license in order to sell defense hardware or services to foreign purchasers — which include both government units and private buyers in other countries. These arms deals are known as Direct Commercial Sales [DCS]. Each year, the State Department issues a report tallying the volume and dollar amount of DCS items approved for export.
The reports do not provide details on who the weapons or defense services were exported to specifically, but do provide an accounting of the destination countries. Although it is possible that some of the deals authorized under the DCS program were altered or even canceled after the export licenses were issued, the data compiled by State does provide a broad snapshot of the extensive volume of U.S. private-sector arms shipments to both Mexico and Latin America in general.
According to an analysis of the DCS reports, some $1 billion in defense hardware was approved for export to Mexico via private U.S. companies between fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2007 — the most recent year for which data was available. Overall, during the same period, a total of some $3.7 billion in weapons and other military hardware was approved for export under the DCS program to all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
In addition to the military hardware exports approved for Mexico, some $3.8 billion in defense-related “services” [technical assistance and training via private U.S. contractors] also were approved for “export” to Mexico over the same four-year period, according to the DCS reports.
That means the total value of defense-related hardware and service exports by private U.S. companies to Mexico tallied nearly $5 billion over the four-year window. And that figure doesn’t even count the $700 million in assistance already authorized under the Merida Initiative [Plan Mexico] or any new DCS exports approved for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 [which ends Sept. 30].
Following is a sample of the types of arms shipments approved for export to Mexico through the DCS program during fiscal years 2006 and 2007 alone:
• $3.3 million worth of ammunition and explosives, including ammunition-manufacturing equipment;
• 13,000 nonautomatic and semiautomatic firearms, pistols and revolvers at a total value of $11.6 million;
• 42 grenade launchers valued at $518,531;
• 3,578 explosive projectiles, including grenades, valued at $78,251;
• Various night-vision equipment valued at $963,201.
A troubling revelation about the DCS program, which has direct relevance to the drug war in Mexico, is contained in a fiscal 2007 report issued by the State Department. That report summarizes the results of the State Department’s Blue Lantern end-use monitoring program for DCS exports.
That Blue Lantern report found that "the Western Hemisphere (especially Latin America and the Caribbean) continues to be a region with a high incidence of unfavorable cases involving firearms and ammunition." The unfavorable finding indicates that fraud may have occurred and those cases "may be subject to civil enforcement actions or referred to law enforcement for criminal investigation."
For the entire DCS program, and this is a disturbing figure, of the 634 Blue Lantern cases closed in fiscal year 2007, a total of 143, or 23 percent, were deemed “unfavorable."
The Blue Lantern report does not mention specific transactions in detail, but does provide case-study examples. One included in the report indicated that a Latin American firearms dealer acted as a “front company for another Latin American company.”
“[The] owner admits that [the] company exists only on paper…,” the fiscal year 2007 Blue Lantern report states. “[The] host country authorities had temporarily suspended the firearms import licenses to [the] parent company because of its link with small arms smuggling to gangs in [a] third country.”
Given Mexico’s strict gunlaws with respect to private individuals, it is likely most of the DCS program defense hardware approved for export to that nation was directed toward the military or law enforcement agencies. But it is precisely that fact which should be raising some alarm in Washington.
Mexico, by Calderon’s own admission, is dealing with a serious corruption problem within the ranks of Mexican law enforcement.
From a December 2008 report in the Los Angeles Times:
Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday said his government was making strides against corruption but warned that graft remained a threat to the nation's efforts against crime.
Calderon’s rival in the 2006 Mexican presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in recent open letter published in the Mexican newspaper Por Esto! and addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, is even more blunt in his assessment of the extent of corruption within the Calderon regime.
You surely know that all of this began when a group of about 30 traffickers of influence and corrupt politicians, using the cover of so-called neoliberal economic policies, took control of the Mexican State, as well as a good part of national and so-called public goods. And these policies of pillaging that has enriched a minority in an exaggerated and obscene manner, in a way that has not occurred in any other part of the world, has condemned the Mexican people to exile and survival.
And that corruption is not limited to Mexican law enforcement. Sources provided Narco News with a PowerPoint presentationprepared for the DEA that indicates the following:
Between Jan 2000-Dec 2006: More than 163,000 military members were criminally processed during former president Vicente Fox’s 6 years term of office. The majority of the crimes were: [the list includes abuse of power, homicide, embezzlement, kidnapping, bank robbery, illegal possession of firearms and health crimes [essentially organized crime].
Another slide in that same DEA PowerPoint presentation states that the Mexican military reported an average of 1,200 desertions per month in 2006.
And it should not be ignored that the Zetas, one of the most violent drug-organization groups in Mexico right now, was founded by former elite Mexican special-operations troops — many of whom received some training in the United States.
[The two most recent DCS reports can be found at these links: FY2006 and FY2007.]

The Elephant in the Room

A former senior U.S. Customs Inspector, who asked that his name not be used, provided the following reaction when presented with the DCS data:
I would agree entirely [that] DCS (and DoD gifted, as opposed to DCS sold) weapons are obviously the simplest explanation for the massive rise in the number of fully automatic weapons, grenades, rockets, etc., obtained by the narcotics gangs. … That is to say, they are obtaining their weapons from their own, Mexican, government, by various illegal means.
… The Mexican government has a long and well-documented history of corruption at all levels, from city to federal. Most of the weapons being "displayed" [in the media] are simply not available for sale to American civilians, particularly including the grenades — both 40mm and hand types. …
… The source of these weapons can be easily traced by ATF. … All foreign sales must be reported to ATF prior to shipment, just in case the government wishes to hold up a shipment to a particular country, etc. Tracing the serial numbers would be easy, with US government assistance, of course.
But that assumes the Mexican government, and our own government, really want to trace those weapons. A November 2008 report in the San Antonio Express News, which includes details of the major weapons seizure in Reynosa, Mexico, that same month involving the Zetas, reveals the following:
Another example of coordination problems occurred this month. Mexican authorities in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, seized the country’s single largest stash of cartel weapons — nearly 300 assault rifles, shoulder-fired grenade launchers and a half million rounds of ammunition.
But weeks later, Mexican authorities still have not allowed the ATF access to serial numbers that would help them track down the buyers and traffickers on the U.S. side.
To be sure, cartel corruption and intimidation of Mexican law enforcement at every level and in every agency has caused some dysfunction.

A former DEA agent, who also asked not to be named, says the shipment of military-grade weapons to the Mexican government under the DCS program, given the extent of corruption within that government, is essentially like “shipping weapons to a crime syndicate.”
At least one individual with long connections to U.S. intelligence agencies is convinced that the corrupt transfer of arms between the Mexican military and narco-criminals in Mexico is more than theory.
Tosh Plumlee is a former CIA contract pilot who flew numerous missions delivering arms to Latin America and returning drugs to the United States as part of the covert Iran/Contra operations in the 1980s, according to public records. After becoming troubled by those government-sanctioned missions, Plumlee decided to take his concerns to Congress.

Plumlee was eventually called to testify before Congress on a number of occasions, only to find that the Congressional committees hearing his testimony ordered it classified — which meant if Plumlee later spoke about it publicly, he would be violating the law.

Plumlee, however, still has deep contacts in the spook world, some of whom, it seems, want him to bring some information forward concerning the nature of the drug war in Juarez, Mexico. As a result, Plumlee says he recently made a journey with individuals he described as “sensitive sources” to a small warehouse in Juarez — located just across border from El Paso, Texas. Plumlee says he agreed to accompany the sources because he is currently doing research for a book he is writing about the drug war.

Plumlee says it was clear to him that the warehouse was not part of a Mexican military operation, yet it was packed with U.S. military weapons — including grenades, grenade launchers, LAW anti-tank weapons [essentially high-tech bazookas], M16 rifles and night-vision equipment.
Plumlee says his sources indicated that the U.S. weapons in that warehouse — as well as another warehouse located elsewhere in Juarez that he did not visit — were now under the control of a narco-trafficking organization, which had obtained the munitions from corrupt elements of the Mexican military.

Plumlee concedes he does not know why he was allowed to step inside that warehouse and later walk out alive. All he can say for sure is that he was being used to get the information out and suspects that those weapons have since been relocated.
As incredible as Plumlee’s story sounds, it cannot really be surprising that there would be stores of weapons in clandestine warehouses in a city like Juarez, which, since the beginning of 2008, has produced about 2,000 of the estimated 7,000 murders in Mexico’s bloody drug war. And whether anyone chooses to believe Plumlee’s information or not, it is clear he has a long history of being a player in the netherworld of black operations, and might well be trusted by some players who still engaged in that dark art.

Mike Levine, a former DEA agent who has years of experience participating in dangerous undercover operations overseas, says Plumlee is who he claims to be. Levine now hosts a radio show in New York City on a Pacifica Radio station [the Expert Witness Radio Show] and Plumlee has appeared on that show several times over the years.
Here’s what Levine has to say about Plumlee’s credibility:
Before I invited Tosh to come on the air, because his story was so incredible, I vetted him through government agents, all of whom said he is the real thing. I have a copy of the air map he turned over to a San Diego Weekly newspaper, bearing notations of all his drug flights, which first sold me on the guy.
After he had made many revelations on-air in New York, and mainstream media continued to ignore him, Congress was apparently listening. I had been told by my own sources that agencies like CIA were regularly recording our show. (I used to remind them, on air, to make sure they pressed the red button to record.)
So Tosh calls me one day in around 1997 and says that Congress had asked him to testify about his experiences, in closed-door session. I told him, "If you do that, they are going to do nothing but classify your testimony making it illegal for you to tell your own story."
And that, indeed, is what did happen, according to Tosh.

Could it be that Plumlee was used as a type of message in a bottle because, like has happened so many times in the past history of this nation, the normal chain of command and our politicians in Washington, D.C., simply don’t want to hear the truth, don’t want to risk rocking the boat of international relations with Mexico or interrupting the free-trade flow of a multi-billion dollar “legal” arms business?
After all, if our government had to concede that the Mexican military is so wracked with corruption and beyond the control of Mexican President Calderon that it cannot be trusted to control its own weapons, then how can U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government have any hope for success in what many would argue is an already ill-conceived drug war?
In fact, if that is what we are now confronting in Mexico, it is likely that U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government, when it takes the form of U.S. weapon shipments, is likely only going to fuel further bloodshed and put U.S. agents and operatives now in the field assisting in those efforts at grave risk.
Narco News did seek to get comment from officials at both the Department of Justice and the Department of State about the issues raised in this story. To date, those queries — both by phone and e-mail — have been met with dead silence.
Stay tuned ….

• Bill Conroy's Reporter's Notebook
  

[Tosh Plumlee]

DRUGS and GUNS... GUNS and DRUGS... whats new?

The information below was given to mainstream media as well as to a congressional oversight committe. The report was put on hold until further notice.. as yet it has not reappeared. anywhere.

Report Finds U.S. Arms Sales are Undermining Human Rights

12/11/08 11:58 AM Posted by Jennifer Kessinger
On December 10, 2008, the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan policy institute, issued a report stating that of the top 25 U.S. arms purchasers in the developing countries during 2006 - 2007, more than half were either undemocratic governments or regimes that engaged in major human right abuses. An executive summary of the report can be found here.

The thirteen countries listed in the report were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Colombia, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Yemen and Tunisia. Over 2006 - 2007, arms sales to these countries totaled more than $16.2 billion. The report also states that of the 27 nations engaged in major arms conflicts, 20 were receiving weapons and training in the U.S.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the State Department commented that U.S. policy on sale of arms is well established, and considers a country’s need for an item, its human rights record, and whether the arms transfer supports U.S. foreign policy and national security goals. U.S. arms sales grew to $32 billion in 2007, or more than three times the level since President Bush took office in 2001.
Tags: Human Rights

note:

U.S. Weapons at War 2008 (Executive Summary)

[/url]
[url=http://www.newamerica.net/taxonomy/term/14]American Strategy Program, Arms and Security Initiative




The United States is the world's leading arms exporting nation, accounting for over 45 percent of all weapons transferred globally in 2007.
The United States is also by far the world's largest provider of security assistance, a substantial portion of which involves cash support, subsidized weapons transfers, and military training. During the Bush administration alone, Washington provided over $108 billion in security assistance to scores of countries under over a dozen separate programs. Much of this aid has been provided to countries viewed as actual or potential partners in waging the "global war on terrorism," with little attention paid to human rights, nonproliferation, or arms control concerns.
As the Bush administration enters its final weeks in office, it is a good time to reassess current U.S. arms transfer policies and practices to determine whether such important issues as human rights and conflict prevention are being given adequate consideration in determining who gets what weaponry from the United States.
Curbing weapons transfers to undemocratic regimes and human rights abusers is sound policy not only on moral grounds but also on national security grounds. While these sales are often justified on the basis of their purported benefits, from securing access to overseas military facilities to rewarding coalition allies in conflicts such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the alleged benefits often come at a high price. By propping up repressive regimes and fueling regional arms races, arms transfers often promote the very instability that they are meant to reduce. And in too many cases, arms and military technology sent to allies of the moment end up in the hands of U.S. adversaries down the road, as happened in the cases of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Islamic fundamentalist fighters in Afghanistan. Last, but not least, these ill-considered transfers undermine the global reputation of the United States and are, in turn, impediments to winning the "war of ideas" in the Muslim world and beyond.
A new policy should not seek to reduce arms transfers as a goal in and of itself, but rather to strike a balance between short-term political and military considerations and long-term U.S. interests in peace and stability. In many cases, seeking to enhance the role of human rights and conflict prevention in U.S. arms transfer policy will involve complex trade-offs, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, where massive "train and equip" programs are central to the goal of reducing the direct U.S. military presence in those nations, although the new military and police forces in those nations have far to go in meeting basic human rights standards.
While the sheer volume of U.S. arms transfers is a matter of concern, the real question is how these weapons end up being used. Are U.S.-supplied arms and training helping fledgling democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide for their own security in ways that can reduce the need for American "boots on the ground?" Do U.S. weapons exports to potential adversaries like India and Pakistan or Turkey and Iraq increase the likelihood of local and regional conflict? Are adequate measures being taken to ensure that the accelerating flow of U.S. weaponry onto the global market is not being diverted into the hands of anti-U.S. forces? These are the kinds of questions that should be addressed by any new arms transfer policy.
Finally, as part of a "fresh start" for U.S. foreign policy, the new administration and the new Congress should take a serious look at participating in multilateral efforts to curb destructive and destabilizing weapons exports. The most important current initiatives in this regard are the new international ban on cluster munitions (which has been endorsed by over 100 countries) and the pursuit of a global arms trade treaty would establish more rigorous human rights conditions for weapons exports.

Summary of Findings

We're #1

• The United States is the world's top arms-supplying nation, having entered into over $32 billion in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements in 2007-a nearly three-fold increase over 2005.
  
• During 2006 and 2007, the United States provided weapons and military training to over 174 states and territories, up from 123 states and territories in 2001, the first year of the Bush administration. While many of these transfers were relatively small deals completed under the commercial licenses granted by the State Department, a number of key countries of strategic significance were added and/or restored to the U.S. client list during the Bush years, including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia.
  

Fueling Conflict

• Of the 27 major conflicts under way during 2006/07, 20 involved one or more parties that had received arms and training from the United States.
  
• Total U.S. transfers to areas of active conflict exceeded $11 billion in 2006/07. The five biggest recipients were Pakistan ($3.7 billion), Turkey ($3.0 billion), Israel ($2.1billion), Iraq ($1.4 billion), and Colombia ($575 million).
  

Arming Human Rights Abusers

• More than half (13) of the top 25 U.S. arms recipients in the developing world during 2006/07 were either undemocratic governments or regimes that engaged in major human rights abuses. This represents a one-third reduction from 2005, when 18 of the top 25 U.S. recipients fit these categories. But even given this positive change, the current pattern of U.S. sales remains in stark contrast to the Bush administration's pro-democracy rhetoric.
  
• Total U.S. arms transfers to undemocratic governments and/or major human rights abusers totaled more than $16.2 billion in 2006/07, and the top recipients were Pakistan ($3.7 billion), Saudi Arabia ($2.5 billion), Iraq ($1.4billion), United Arab Emirates ($983 million), (Kuwait ($879 million), Egypt ($845 million), Jordan ($474 million), and Bahrain ($308 million).
  
• The majority of the undemocratic and/or human rights abusing governments armed by the United States are in the two regions viewed as "central" to the war on terrorism: the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Bahrain) and South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan).
  

Subsidizing Weapons Sales

• U.S. security assistance funding has nearly doubled over the past eight years, from an average of $6-$8 billion a year prior to the first Bush term to an average of $14-$15 billion a year during the Bush administration.
  
• Of the over $108 billion in security assistance funding authorized from FY 2002 to FY 2008, over a third-$39.7 billion-was disbursed through new programs like the Afghan and Iraq Train and Equip programs, the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP), the Pentagon's Section 1206 program, and the Coalition Support Fund program of assistance to countries fighting alongside U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. All of these programs are authorized and implemented by the Pentagon, and all of them are markedly less transparent and accountable than traditional security assistance programs supervised by the State Department.
  
• Of the top ten U.S. arms recipients in the developing world, five-Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, Egypt and Colombia-rely heavily on U.S. government subsidies to purchase U.S. weapons. These countries track closely with the top recipients of U.S. security assistance during the Bush administration (FY 2002 to FY 2009), which are as follows: Afghanistan ($29.7billion), Iraq ($27.9 billion), Israel ($21.6 billion), Egypt ($14.9 billion), and Pakistan ($9.7 billion). These five countries alone account for over 83 percent of all security assistance disbursed by the Bush administration in the FY 2002 through FY 2008 budgets.
  

Recommendations

The next president and the new Congress should:

• Develop a new arms transfer policy directive within its first six months in office establishing clearer criteria for arms transfer decision making that strike a balance among military, political, economic, human rights, and nonproliferation objectives.
  
• Establish common standards of transparency and accountability for all arms transfer and security assistance programs, including required reporting on amounts disbursed, countries served, and weapons systems and training provided.
  
• Reverse the trend toward situating security assistance programs within the Pentagon budget, on the grounds that the State Department is best equipped to mesh the competing interests that U.S. foreign and military policies are meant to address.
  
• Endorse and/or ratify key international initiatives like the treaty banning anti-personnel land mines, the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), and the proposed global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
  

[Tosh Plumlee]

Your tax dollars are working for the drug cartels and our elected officials know it. However, we can not upset relations with Mexico it might hurt the NFTA trade agreements and too the pocketbooks of some elected officials and their "off the books' election funding.

Crooks on both sides of the border are coning us and we are to stupid to see this.



Tracing the Bad Gun Math

Submitted March 30, 2009 - 9:04 pm by Bill Conroy
A big part of the argument being made by the U.S. and Mexican governments with respect to the source of guns in the possession of Mexican narco-trafficking groups is based on statistics related to so-called gun traces conducted by the ATF.
But if you follow the media narrative on this, as well as the U.S. government’s own proclamations, you soon discover that the math being practiced is right out of Alice in Wonderland, via the Mock Turtle: Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.
I didn’t want to weigh a story down with this funny math — and I expect that is what the practitioners of this arithmetic alchemy are counting on — but for those who are interested, here is a run down of the madness being packaged and sold to us as fact.
From a Feb. 27, 2009, report from the U.S. Department of State:
As of November 12, 2008, GOM [Government of Mexico] security forces had seized 39,437 illegal firearms, including the record-breaking seizure of weapons believed to belong to the Zetas of the Gulf cartel.
[Presumably that is for the year 2008, since the figure comes from a State Department report that offers a review of statistics from 2008.]
A Feb. 28, 2009, CBS/Associated Press story, however, presents a different set of facts, based, in part, on Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s statements:
"We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico," President Calderon told AP. "Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades."
[Calderon’s two-year, 25,000 gun-seizure figure is remarkable in that it is considerably less than the State Department’s figure for less than one year.]
That same CBS/AP report offers up the following so-called facts:
The ATF says more than 7,700 guns sold in America were traced to Mexico last year, up from 3,300 the year before and about 2,100 in 2006.
The report fails to make clear whether the years in question are calendar or fiscal years, [and for the U.S. government, the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, three months prior to the end of the calendar year]. Presumably the CBS/AP report was just imprecise and meant to refer to fiscal years, since that is generally the basis on which the ATF and other government agencies report their statistics.
The New York Times, in a March 25, 2009, story then offers up this gem of a statistic, divorced of any context:
On top of that, 90 percent of the guns used by Mexican drug cartels originated in the United States, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
We have to ask here, 90 percent of what? Does the Times mean 90 percent of guns traced by ATF, since Mexicodoes not have a gun tracing system, or do they really mean to say 90 percent of all guns used by drug cartels? If so, the ATF must then have an inventory of all the guns still in the “cartels’” possession, right? Wonder how they got that?
The Wall Street Journal does a bit better than AP in it’s precision over the nature of the year being described in a March 2, 2009, story that includes this bit of data:
The number of U.S. guns in Mexico is growing. The Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, says more than 7,700 guns sold in America were traced to Mexico in the fiscal year ending last September. That's twice the 3,300 recorded the previous year [fiscal 2007]and more than triple the 2,100 traced the year before that.
So it looks, indeed, as though the AP report was, in fact, referring to a fiscal year in presenting its ATF gun-trace figures.
However, the New York Times, again, seems to be working from a different set of books, as it reports in a Feb. 26, 2009, story, the following:
In 2007, the firearms agency [ATF] traced 2,400 weapons seized in Mexico back to dealers in the United States, and 1,800 of those came from dealers operating in the four states along the border, with Texas first, followed by California, Arizona and New Mexico.
Again, that 2,400 figure is some 900 guns shy of the 3,300 gun traces the Wall Street Journal reported for that same year — assuming the Times is working with fiscal-year numbers, though the ambiguity helps to cover the imprecise reporting.
But both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal gun-tracing figures from fiscal 2007 don’t match the numbers reported by the ATF in a Feb. 7, 2008, congressional testimony, and included in the recent White House press release trumpeting it’s expanded border protection plan:
In FY 2007 alone, approximately 1,112 guns which originated in Texas, Arizona and California were submitted for tracing from Mexico. For all other U.S. States in FY 2007, approximately 435 guns were submitted for tracing from Mexico.
By my math, according to the congressional testimony, the tally of guns submitted to ATF for tracing in fiscal 2007 is 1,547 — far short of the marks reported by both the Times and Journal.
Based on all that, on what basis do we get to the regular claim in the mainstream media that 90 percent of the guns used by the “cartels” originate in the U.S.? It just doesn’t add up.
But don’t expect the bad math to stop, because there is an agenda to push and press deadlines to meet.
Investigators say nine out of 10 guns retrieved from crime scenes south of the border are traced back to U.S. gun dealers.— Reuters, March 23, 2009

[Tosh Plumlee]

What about the

By Todd Bensman - Express-News

Most of the weapons found in the largest gun seizure in Mexican history have been traced by federal ATF agents to Texas retailers.
The Mexican army's raid on a Reynosa stash house in November found a trove of drug cartel weapons that included 540 rifles, 165 hand grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition, TNT and other munitions.
Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said they were able to trace 383 serial numbers from rifles seized in the raid and that 80 percent of those weapons came from licensed firearms dealers in Texas, primarily along the border.
ATF officials declined to provide the names of specific retailers on grounds that public disclosure could compromise investigations that could lead them to smuggling rings.
The remainder of the firearms came from licensed dealers in seven other U.S. states, among them Michigan, Illinois, Louisiana and Virginia. It was unclear why trace information for other weapons counted in the stash house was unaccounted for, said the ATF's Texas spokeswoman, Francesca Perot.
Mexican officials have repeatedly cited the Reynosa seizure as emblematic of the southern flow of powerful firearms from U.S. retailers, about which they have long complained to their American counterparts.
Responding to Mexican pressure to do more to stem weapons smuggling to drug cartels, President Barack Obama last week ordered 170 more agents to the border to crack down on gun smuggling.
The agents, who more than double the ranks of investigators who have pursued smugglers and their “straw buyers” who purchase weapons for the cartels at licensed retailers, will be deployed mostly in Texas, the center of illegal gunrunning from the U.S.
The traces of the Reynosa guns “created a substantial number of leads,” said Robert Elder, assistant special agent in charge of the ATF Houston field division, which has jurisdiction over hundreds of miles of border. “That is going to be a top priority for the folks that are going to be joining us.”
To deal with the problem, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder this week plan to attend an arms-trafficking conference in Mexico.
The bust in Reynosa, across the Rio Grande from McAllen, came after a Nov. 7 gunbattle with the Gulf Cartel's paramilitary enforcers.
The army raid uncovered a depot under the control of a notorious cartel lieutenant named Jaime “Hummer” Gonzalez Duran, who ran all aspects of the drug trafficking business — including enforcement to collect debts or eliminate rivals — between Reynosa and McAllen, according to interviews with FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration officials.
For at least two years before the weapons seizure, the DEA's Houston office had been after Gonzalez and his cell, in an investigation known as “Dos Equis.”
Gonzalez and 11 associates were indicted on federal trafficking charges in September. In October, a confidential FBI memo obtained by the San Antonio Express-News warned border police that Gonzalez and his group of Zetas hit men were amassing weapons for attacks against U.S. law enforcement.
The memo said one of Gonzalez's safe houses was discovered in Mission. It was stockpiled with assault weapons and tactical vests.
“Each cell leader has been personally instructed by Hummer to engage law enforcement with a full tactical response should law enforcement attempt to intervene in their operations,” the memo said.
Shortly after the FBI sent out its alert, DEA agents told their Mexican counterparts where they believed Gonzalez was hiding out, said Houston-based DEA Special Agent Violet Szeleczky.
Within 24 hours, Mexican authorities captured Gonzalez in the Reynosa gunbattle.