Obama says he didn’t inform Mexico of U.S. gun smuggling operation because he didn’t know about it

I think obama did know about "gunwalker". I'm not so sure calderon didn't know too. And you can bet your ass holder knew what was going on.

The atf screwed the pooch on this. It's another example of a rogue agency gone wild. They planned to use the number of guns being trafficked to further encroach on our gun rights. The only thing they planned to leave out was that they allowed the guns to get to mexico.

We know about the Agent that was killed with one of these weapons, but how many innocent mexican citizens lost their lives because of the atf? There is no way that an operation like this could be implemented without the buy in of people way up the chain of command. This is going to lead to holder at the very least and probably to obama. I can't wait until there is hard evidence linking one or both of them to this mess. They are both scumbags and they are due...

by Richard Dunham - MySA

Under fire for an operation that allowed smuggling of U.S. weapons across the nation’s border with Mexico, President Obama said in an interview that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious.”

The Mexican government has complained that it didn’t know about the U.S. operation that allowed guns to illegally cross the southwestern border so they could track the weapons.

Obama told Univision‘s Jorge Ramos that President Felipe Calderon wasn’t informed of the operation because he — the president of the United States — wasn’t informed either. When asked whether he knew of the weapon smuggling plan, Obama responded that it is “a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.”

The investigation into the program comes after it was connected to two weapons that were found at the scene of a border shootout that killed U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December. Likewise, a gun smuggled from the U.S. were used to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent Jamie Zapata, but it has not been determined if it was part of “Fast and Furious.”

When President Calderon came to visit Washington recently, the two presidents came together on a policy to stop drug and weapon smuggling across the border.

“Our policy is to ram up the interdiction of guns flowing south because that’s contributing to some of the security problems that are taking place in Mexico and what we’re doing is trying to build the kind of cooperation between Mexico and the United States that we haven’t seen before,” Obama told Univision.

The president said his attorney general has been “very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them into jail.”

The controversial operation was the subject of a CBS News Investigation that reported ATF was allowing traffickers to bring weapons into Mexico in order to track them rather than arresting the traffickers. Obama said Holder has assigned an inspector general to investigate what happened, because he does not know who authorized the operation.

“Letting guns ‘walk’ is not something that is acceptable,” Holder said during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. “Guns are different than drugs or money when we are trying to follow their trail. That is not acceptable.”

Holder said he made this clear to attorneys and ATF agents.

Read the rest at the link above...

13 Mexican Troops Charged With Transporting Drugs

13? Those are the sacrificial lambs. They will take the heat off of the rest for now. If the truth be told the number should probably be 1,300 or even more. The drug lords have free reign in most of mexico, because they have purchased it from the government, the police and the military.

It's a smart move to sacrifice a few thugs once in a while. It gives the appearance that something is being done. When in reality, the corrpution continues...

Associated Press

The Mexican army has ordered three junior officers and 10 soldiers to stand trial on drug trafficking and organized crime charges.

Officials say they were caught with more than a ton of methamphetamines and 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of cocaine last week at a military checkpoint south of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.

The Defense Department said late Thursday it will not tolerate such acts.

The troops are charged within the military justice system.

Corruption is widespread among Mexican police. Some experts worry it could spread to the tens of thousands of soldiers assigned to fight drug traffickers across the country.

Playing Beanbag In Mexico

Can you imagine being a Border Patrol Agent and being ordered to go up against heavily armed drug smugglers with non-lethal beanbags? I can't. It's stupid, and it's dangerous.

Who ever ordered this should have to spend some quality time in the Arizona desert with some non-lethal rounds themselves. The job of a Border Patrol Agent has to be tough enough with a real weapon. Especially when the bad guys are being supplied weapons by another United States government agency, but that's a different story.

You can bet that Agent Brian Terry wasn't real thrilled with the order to use beanbags on drug running scumbags. That order probably cost him his life. I wonder if the guy who gave those orders feels it was worth it now? I hope not, good Border Patrol Agents aren't easy to find, and even harder to lose...

By John Hayward - Human Events

Who ordered the use of non-lethal weapons on the border?

Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and a team of fellow agents were patrolling Peck Canyon, on the Mexican border with Arizona, on the night of December 14, 2010. The team was on the trail of bandits who had been preying on illegal immigrants. Peck Canyon is a hotspot for smuggling activity.

Shortly before midnight, the team spotted a party of armed men crossing the border illegally. Their weapons included AK-47 assault rifles. The Border Patrol agents ordered these men to drop their weapons, but they refused.

Agent Terry’s team reacted to the invaders’ refusal to disarm by firing bean bags at them.

The invaders returned fire with hot lead, killing Agent Brian Terry. The Border Patrol switched to live ammunition, and killed one of the alien gunmen in the resulting firefight.

The government has strenuously denied that Border Patrol agents were instructed to use non-lethal weapons first. HSToday, the in-house newsletter of the Department of Homeland Security, ran a piece on December 30 that dismissed talk of bean bag guns as “increasingly bizarre Internet-fueled rumors.” An official from Customs and Border Protection issued a statement “to assist in dispelling the rumor.”

The piece goes out of its way to slam former Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado for keeping the bean bag story alive. Tancredo maintains that “[Homeland Security secretary] Napolitano and Border Patrol management are trying to hide” the fact that Agent Terry and his team were “under standing orders to always use non-lethal bean bag rounds first before using live ammunition.” He claims to have heard this directly from Border Patrol agents speaking off the record.

As government denials go, this one is extra-murky, with a side order of deniability. The CBP statement quoted by HSToday “personnel are trained to use the minimum force necessary to affect an arrest,” but they are also “trained and prepared for all situations and all threats and may deploy with less-lethal munitions as an option. Less-lethal munitions are not meant as a replacement for ‘live’ ammunition. All personnel performing in a law enforcement capacity are equipped with standard issue equipment, which includes a handgun.” None of which addresses the question of whether they were ordered to use non-lethal weapons first, under all circumstances… and if so, where that order originated.

Agent Terry’s chapter of the Border Patrol Council added that “reports circulating that Agent Terry and others were armed only with bean bag rounds and rubber bullets… were not true.” That’s never been the issue. Obviously they had real guns, because they killed one of the invaders in the firefight, and he didn’t go down with a ninja throwing star buried in his forehead.

Terry’s brother Kent told the Arizona Star that he finds the official government story deeply puzzling. “You go up against a bandit crew that is carrying AKs, and you walk out there with guns loaded with beanbags… I don’t get it,” he said, adding that Border Patrol agents “are professionals” who should “be able to use their judgment call on their own.”

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry served three years in the Marine Corps, and worked as a cop in Michigan for a couple of years after that. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that his “judgment call” for dealing with people lugging automatic rifles, on a night when he was tracking a gang of violent thieves, would have been to load his weapon with teddy bear guts. It’s much more plausible that someone imposed that protocol upon him. The kind of person who would declare passengers subduing a bomber on board an airplane in flight meant “the system worked” is the kind of person I would view as a likely suspect.

President Obama had a meeting with Mexican president Felipe Calderon yesterday, discussing the recent murder of Immigration and Customs agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico, and said he views American agents Mexico are “advisers” who should obey “laws in place in Mexico that say our agents should not be armed.” A newsflash for this terrifyingly oblivious President: our agents are being gunned down on the American side of that border. Mexico is a failed state whose incompetent and corrupt government is losing a battle against drug lords. It is a war zone, and any American agent who goes anywhere near it should go in hot. I strongly suspect Agent Brian Terry knew that.

Mexico’s President: ‘Anti-American Feeling in Mexico Is Growing’ Because of Public’s ‘Perception’ About Illegal Immigrants

This headline should have read "Anti-mexican Feeling in United States Is Growing’ Because of Public’s ‘Perception’ About Illegal Immigrants". Change just a couple of words and it has a brand new meaning. Why does mexico and calderon encourage mexican citizens to come here illegally? I can tell you, because it is a hell of a lot easier to prop up an economy with money from outside of the failing country instead of actually doing something about it. Illegals come here, make money, send it back to mexico and the mexican economy thirves. Money from the United States and drug money make up the lions share of the mexican economy.

mexico has huge natural resource reserves, timber, oil, natural gas, coal, gold. But they rely on criminal activity to keep their economy afloat. Can you imagine the wealth the country could enjoy under the proper leadership? calderon is just another in a long string of corrupt politicians using mexico for their own personal gain...

By Edwin Mora - CNSNews

mexican president felipe calderon, during his visit to Washington, D.C., this week, indicated that “anti-American” sentiment is growing in Mexico because of how the people there view Americans’ perception of illegal immigration.

Prior to going forward with immigration reform in the United States, “We need to change the general perception inside the public opinion in America and the public opinion in Mexico,” said calderon.

“My most serious concern is that bad feelings are growing on both sides of the border,” he added. “The anti-American feeling in Mexico is growing again.”

Meanwhile, he said, “the anti-Mexican or anti-Hispanic, or Latino, or immigrant feelings are growing here [in the United States].”

“What we need to do is remember each other – that we are neighbors, we are nice, and we are human persons,” said calderon. “We contribute to each other’s prosperity.”

Unless the public’s perception about immigration, in both countries, changes, “it will be impossible to persuade” people to implement immigration reform, said calderon.

The Mexican president’s comments were in response to a George Washington University student asking him to comment on what he thought was the “best solution” to deal with illegal immigrants in America. An estimated 13 million illegals are in the United States, many of them from Mexico.

calderon was questioned during a public forum sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In answering the student, calderon said the DREAM Act, which he referred to as “tough comprehensive immigration reform” would have been a good step in the right direction of dealing with illegal immigration in the U.S.

The DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act, which failed to pass during the lame-duck session of Congress in 2010, would have allowed young illegal immigrants who have been in the states for at least five years to acquire legal status if they pass background checks, attend college or serve in the military for at least two years.

Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico

Finally, a lame stream media outlet gives this story some coverage. This is a big deal and it shows the utter incompetence of the atf. They are basically supplying guns to the drug cartels and have been for quite a while. At the same time, they are using the guns they supply to pad the numbers and make the problem of American guns in mexico seem worse than it really is. It really seems like the guns supplied by the atf are the majority of what makes it south of the border...

By Sharyl Attkisson - CBSNews

WASHINGTON - Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief.

He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico?

"Yes ma'am," Dodson told CBS News. "The agency was."

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.

Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.

Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public.

"I'm boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we've been doing it every day since I've been here," he said. "Here I am. Tell me I didn't do the things that I did. Tell me you didn't order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn't happen. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn't happen."

Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.

ATF named the case "Fast and Furious."

Read the whole thing at the link above, it's an eye opener...

No guns for U.S. Agents in mexico...

obama is a pussy. calderon says our Agents can't be armed in mexico and obama goes right along with it. I would tell calderon to jam it up his ass.

We should keep our Agents at home then. Put them on the border, armed, with permission to shoot these drug dealing scumbags. We don't need to solve mexico's drug violence problem, we need to solve our own. Let calderon and his corrupt bunch of thugs take care of their own problems.

With the appropriate amount of force we can take care of things on our end. .308 rounds would be appropriate force when applied liberally

felipe calderón talks a lot of shit...

calderon says United States cooperation in the mexican drug war is "notoriously insufficient".

If we were allowed to do this by ourselves it would be more than sufficient, but currently our enforcement agencies can't even carry guns in mexico.

calderon's government seems to be pretty insufficient themselves. He has supposedly been fighting this war since 2006 and doesn't appear to have done anything but make it worse. Since calderon took office in 2006, there have been more than 34,000 violent murders in his country. And in that period of time we have given mexico in excess of $1.5 BILLION DOLLARS to help fight the drug war.

It seems we have done more than our fair share.

I have a better idea. Why don't we use the next BILLION dollars to seal our border. Put a man about every 50 yards with authorization to shoot anything that moves. In a matter of weeks, we no longer have a problem. mexico will still be screwed, but until they fix the massive corruption in their country, they will always be screwed...