America's Mexican Border Wars

[Tosh Plumlee]

Task Force 7 reported this back in March that it was in the works.... but the media drifted into the Swine flu coverage rather that report the Task Forces reports to the Pentagon... The killings will continue.... we set on our thumbs and do nothing... Its here the War is on our soil....


MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Sinaloa cartel may resort to deadly force in U.S.

Authorities say Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, the reputed leader of the Mexican cartel, has given his associates the OK, if necessary, to open fire across the border.
By Josh Meyer

May 6, 2009

Reporting from Sells, Ariz. — The reputed head of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel is threatening a more aggressive stance against competitors and law enforcement north of the border, instructing associates to use deadly force, if needed, to protect increasingly contested trafficking operations, authorities said.

Such a move by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted fugitive, would mark a turn from the cartel's previous position of largely avoiding violent confrontations in the U.S. -- either with law enforcement officers or rival traffickers.

Police and federal agents in Arizona said they had recently received at least two law enforcement alerts focused on Guzman's reported orders that his smugglers should "use their weapons to defend their loads at all costs."

Guzman is thought to have delivered the message personally in early March, during a three-day gathering of his associates in Sonoita, a Mexican town a few miles south of the Arizona border, according to confidential U.S. intelligence bulletins sent to several state and federal law enforcement officials, who discussed them on the condition of anonymity.

The Sonoita meeting is considered one of several signs that Guzman is becoming more brazen even in the face of a Mexican government crackdown on his activities and continued turf rivalries with other traffickers.

Information from informants, wiretaps and other sources have prompted a flurry of warnings to authorities in U.S. border states, instructing them to use extreme caution when confronting people suspected of smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants from Mexico or ferrying weapons and cash south from the United States, officials familiar with those warnings said.

Some U.S. intelligence officials suggested Guzman was on the defensive because of enforcement efforts on both sides of the border and because he can no longer afford to ditch valuable cargoes when challenged by rivals or authorities.

Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Mexican smugglers were also under pressure because their Colombian partners were no longer extending them credit. "There's a need to get the cash back itself quicker and faster," Leonhart said.

U.S. authorities say Guzman has become increasingly intent on gaining dominance over smuggling routes in Mexico and the United States. To do so, they say, he has escalated his assault on some rival smugglers while forging alliances with others.

"Chapo is at the forefront of the efforts to control the routes into the United States," said Thomas M. Harrigan, the chief of operations for the DEA.

He said virtually all of the violence remained in Mexico, but U.S. authorities were alarmed that attacks on police, soldiers, government officials, journalists and other potential opponents had intensified near the border.

How much risk that poses to U.S. authorities "depends on how desperate the cartels become to move their cargo in the U.S.," said Dan Wells, commander of the Arizona Department of Public Safety's Intelligence Bureau.

So far, the contrast has been stark -- near-daily violence in Mexican border towns with relative tranquillity on the U.S. side, according to data and interviews with law enforcement officials in the region.

For example, Ciudad Juarez had 100 times as many homicides in the 14 months ending in February as neighboring El Paso, which is roughly half its size. In 2008, Nogales in Mexico's Sonora state had 40 times as many homicides as Nogales, Ariz., which is roughly one-ninth as populous.

Deeper into the United States, narcotics agents say they have seen little evidence of spillover from Mexican drug war violence beyond an increase in ransom kidnappings related to collection of drug debts.

But near the Mexico-Arizona border, Robert W. Gilbert, chief patrol agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Tucson sector, said confrontations between law enforcement and suspected traffickers -- and among traffickers themselves -- had grown more violent.

A shootout occurred several weeks ago when one group allegedly tried to hijack another's load of drugs on one of the main roads leading north to Phoenix. Two of the suspected traffickers were wounded.

"Times have changed," Gilbert said. "The tactics, the aggressiveness. We're victims of our own success." Now, he said, "they'll fight us."

An internal report from the agency, obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, appears to support Gilbert's assessment. It shows reported weapons-related assaults against border officers rose 24% last fiscal year, compared with 2007, and assaults involving vehicles rose 7% in the same period.

Among areas with sharp increases in assaults was the Tucson corridor, the report said. Mario Escalante, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, said there were 113 assaults against agents in the sector between October and March, and an additional 26 last month.

"They're losing money and they are frustrated, and they are using other tactics to get their loads across," Escalante said.

The tactics include throwing barrages of rocks at agents, ramming their cars into agents' vehicles and sometimes shooting. He said the Guzman warning had put agents on edge.

When authorities stopped a vehicle in Douglas, Ariz., several weeks ago, traffickers on the Mexican side of the border "laid down suppressive fire" to stop U.S. officials from advancing, enabling the vehicle to make it back across the border with a load of marijuana intact, one Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said in an interview.

Arizona Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard said there appeared to be a shift in the rules of engagement on the part of traffickers affiliated with Sinaloa and other cartels.

"They've got to get the dope through, or they won't get paid. . . . These guys are under orders. . . . They have rules of engagement and they follow this direction."

One member of the Shadow Wolves, American Indian trackers who patrol the Tohono O'odham reservation for the Department of Homeland Security on the Arizona border, said that in the past, weapons were largely used by traffickers to protect themselves from bandits.

"But lately, [the bulletins have warned] that they've been carrying them to engage law enforcement," the tracker said.

[Tosh Plumlee]

AP IMPACT: Mexico's weapons cache stymies tracing

AP – In this April 24, 2009 photo, seized weapons sit on racks in a seized weapons warehouse at the Secretary …



By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO and MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writers E. Eduardo Castillo And Michelle Roberts, Associated Press Writers – 47 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – Deep inside a heavily guarded military warehouse, the evidence of Mexico's war on drug cartels is stacked two stories high: tens of thousands of seized weapons, from handguns and rifles to AK-47s, some with gun sights carved into the shape of a rooster or a horse's head.
The vault nestled in a Mexican military base is the government's largest stash of weapons — some 88,537 of them — seized from brutal drug gangs. The Associated Press was recently given rare and exclusive access to the secure facility.
The sheer size of the cache attests to the seemingly hopeless task of ever sorting and tracing the guns, possibly to trafficking rings that deliver weapons to Mexico. And security designed to keep the guns from getting back on the streets is so tight that even investigators have trouble getting the access they need.
The warehouse — on a main drag in northeastern Mexico City near the horse racing track — is surrounded by five rings of security. There are two military guards at the door and five more are in the lobby. Inside, another 10 soldiers sort, clean and catalog weapons. Some are dismantled and destroyed, a few assigned to the Mexican military.
The guns are stacked to the two-story ceiling in a warehouse the size of a small Wal-Mart. The rifles lie on 22 metal racks; the pistols hang from metal poles by their triggers.
The cavernous warehouse is impeccably clean, the only smell coming from the coffee the soldiers prepared for their rare visitors. The clash of metal and sounds of the soldiers at work echo off the walls.
The security, bolstered by closed-circuit cameras and motion detectors, makes the warehouse practically impenetrable, said Gen. Antonio Erasto Monsivais, who oversees the armory.
In all, the military has 305,424 confiscated weapons locked in vaults, just a fraction of those used by criminals in Mexico, where an offensive by drug cartels against the military has killed more than 10,750 people since December 2006. But each weapon is a clue to how the cartels are getting arms, and possibly to the traffickers that brought them here.
The U.S. has acknowledged that many of the rifles, handguns and ammunition used by the cartels come from its side of the border. Mexican gun laws are strict, especially compared to those in most U.S. border states.
The Mexican government has handed over information to U.S. authorities to trace 12,073 weapons seized in 2008 crimes — particularly on guns from large seizures or notorious crimes.
But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which handles the U.S. investigations, is at the mercy of local Mexican police for the amount and quality of the information.
"Many of these rural municipalities that may come into a gun seizure ... may not even know anything about tracing guns," ATF spokesman Thomas Mangan said.
A police officer in Mexico submits a description, serial number and distinctive markings of the gun. The weapons are then turned over to the military for storage in one of a dozen armories such as the one in Mexico City.
When U.S. investigators need additional details, as they often do, the request goes back to the original police officer, who must retrieve the gun from a military vault — sometimes hundreds of miles away.
Mexican police must ask permission each time they need to look at a stored gun, Monsivais said. Even if that permission is granted, the investigator cannot go past the metal fencing separating a reception desk and the shelves holding the guns. A soldier has to bring out the requested weapons.
The security, language differences and bureaucracy add up to a painstaking process, said J. Dewey Webb, special agent in charge of the ATF's Houston Field Division.
"The military does a very good job when the weapons come into their custody of securing them," he told the AP. "Because of the systems in Mexico, it's very difficult for us to get in."

Webb said recent talks between the two countries were beginning to ease access, but also noted other problems.
Many mistakes are made because of difficulty translating technical terms about firearms, Webb said. A Spanish-language version of eTrace, the Web-based method of submitting tracing information, won't be available until next year.
About a third of the guns submitted for tracing in 2007 were sold by licensed U.S. dealers.
U.S. agents need the information to track the gun back to the manufacturer and determine when it was made and what wholesaler it was shipped to, ATF spokeswoman Franceska Perot said. Agents follow the gun to the local licensed dealer who sold it and determine the buyer.
ATF offices around the U.S. are swamped with tracing requests, trying to determine who actually bought the weapons and whether they were part of a firearms trafficking scheme. The ATF has sent an extra 100 agents to Houston to help unclog the 700-weapon backlog as part of its Project Gunrunner.
The seized weapons are kept in the vaults as long as they are needed as evidence, Monsivais said. Most have been there for years, an indication of how slow criminal investigations proceed and how few crimes are ever solved.
Indeed, the ATF gave the AP data showing the average "time to crime" — the time between when a gun was sold and when it was seized in a crime — is 14 years.
That's an average of four years longer than guns in American crimes, the ATF said. The older the street age, the harder it can be to track how the gun wound up at a crime scene.
When the criminal investigations are complete, most of the weapons are destroyed and melted down. Some of the more powerful arms, such as M16 machine guns and sniper rifles, are added to the military's own arsenal. Showpieces are destined for museums.
Most of the guns traced were originally sold by U.S. dealers in border states, with more than half purchased in Texas. Not only does Texas have the most gun dealers of any state, it makes up 1,200 miles of the 2,100-mile U.S.-Mexico border, with many of the established drug and trafficking routes.
Details on the 2008 tracing requests are not yet available.
It's less clear how cartels are getting military-grade weapons. Amid the shelves of pistols and rifles, there is a 9 mm grenade launcher and a portable shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launcher.
Such military-grade weaponry represents a tiny fraction of the seized weapons. But Monsivais said he's most worried about the rising caliber of assault rifles and semi-automatic guns that have been found.
"There are weapons that have a lot of firepower and great penetration, like the .50-caliber Barrett ... which can penetrate armored vehicles, body armor, and that normally only militaries use," Monsivais said.
Thirty percent of AK-47 assault rifles seized have been modified to become fully automatic. He said about three of every 1,000 AR-15 assault rifles have been modified to take .50-caliber bullets, the kind of high-powered ammunition designed for sniper rifles.
"In my experience, I had never seen a modified AR-15 rifle," Monsivais said. "It's something new, and it is to a certain extent worrisome that they can have and use this type of weapon." ___

[Tosh Plumlee]

one hour interview Drug War, Intel Task Force Ops, Washington DC....


user name: wplumlee
password: tosh


http://meria.net/2009/miscellaneous/meri...in-the-us/

[Tosh Plumlee]

Taken from an April 29, 2009 article from the AP:


"....In all, the military has 305,424 confiscated weapons locked in vaults, just a fraction of those used by criminals in Mexico, where an offensive by drug cartels against the military has killed more than 10,750 people since December 2006. But each weapon is a clue to how the cartels are getting arms, and possibly to the traffickers that brought them here. ....". (estimates from law enforcement over 10,000 in one year. (2008-09)


If I recal right the Swine flue epidemic to date has killed less that a 300 world wide.

[David Guyatt]

But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which handles the U.S. investigations, is at the mercy of local Mexican police for the amount and quality of the information.

"Many of these rural municipalities that may come into a gun seizure ... may not even know anything about tracing guns," ATF spokesman Thomas Mangan said.

A police officer in Mexico submits a description, serial number and distinctive markings of the gun. The weapons are then turned over to the military for storage in one of a dozen armories such as the one in Mexico City.

Oh really. The ATF have difficulty tracking a weapon's unique serial number which is stamped on the weapon for ---- oddly enough ---- solely the purpose of tracking weapons.

The words crap and bullshit spring to mind. But then again this is the ATF, who are, it seems, staffed by politically blind monkeys - see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil.

[Tosh Plumlee]

David. You might want to listen to the interview with Meria Heller. It covers some of your thoughts well. I posted this the other day but nobody picked up on it..... not much interest in this so called "Drug Wae".

User ID wplumlee
Password tosh

http://meria.net/2009/miscellaneous/meri...in-the-us/

[David Guyatt]

Tosh, I couldn't get your User ID and password to work?

[Magda Hassan]

Nor could I. I tried a few combinations too.

[Tosh Plumlee]

I'm sorry guys My mistake;\

User Id wplumlee2006

Password tosh

been some long days

[David Guyatt]

Thanks Tosh. That works well.