Posted on 07/08/2012 5:39:42 AM PDT by marktwain
The American people finally have heard of Brian Terry. He is the best-known victim of Fast and Furious, an Obama administration conventional-weapons proliferation program. Between November 2009 and January 2011, Team Obama arranged for licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to straw buyers, who transferred them to known violent criminals in Mexico. Among these firearms, two AK-47s were found near Rio Rico, Arizona, where suspected smugglers fatally shot Terry, a 40-year-old former Marine, on December 15, 2010.
While Brian Terry epitomizes those whom Fast and Furious has harmed, he is not its sole casualty.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata, 32, was shot mortally in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Members of Los Zetas drug gang also ambushed ICE Agent Victor Avila, although not fatally. This Feb. 15, 2011 assault involved a rifle purchased in Dallas in another Obama administration “gunwalking” escapade.
Largely overlooked is this plan’s calamitous impact on Mexico, its people and U.S.-Mexican relations.
“Our federal government knowingly, willfully, purposefully gave the drug cartels nearly 2,000 weapons — mainly AK-47s — and allowed them to walk,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told NBC News. These arms were supposed to lead federal agents in Phoenix to the Mexican thugs who acquired them. Instead, Fast and Furious guns melted into Mexico.
Approximately 300 Mexicans have been killed or wounded by Fast and Furious guns, estimates former Mexican attorney general Victor Humberto Benitez Trevino. Relevant details are scarce. However, at least one case generated enormous headlines ... in Mexico. Here is what happened, according to a July 26, 2011 report by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).
On Oct. 21, 2010, Sinaloa drug cartel members kidnapped Mario Gonzalez, brother of Chihuahua state’s then-Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez. A video promptly emerged showing Mario in handcuffs, surrounded by five armed, masked captors. That Nov. 5, his tortured body was discovered in a shallow grave. Mexican police soon nabbed his suspected kidnappers in a shootout. Among 16 weapons seized along with eight of these hoodlums, serial numbers confirm that two were Fast and Furious guns. These also were tied to the kidnappings of two people.
Fast and Furious guns have befouled at least 200 crime scenes. Among them:
• Members of the La Familia drug gang fired at a Mexican Federal Police helicopter on May 24, 2011, wounding three officers and forcing an emergency landing in Michoacan, western Mexico. Five days later, four more helicopters attacked La Familia. They returned fire, striking all four choppers and injuring another two government agents. The police prevailed, killing 11 cartel members and arresting 36 — including those suspected of targeting the first chopper. Mexican authorities say La Familia possessed heavy-duty body armor and 70 rifles, including several Fast and Furious weapons.
• Two weapons purchased by Fast and Furious targets were recovered in Sonora on July 1, 2010 and tied to a “Homicide/Willful Kill — Gun,” the U.S. Justice Department declared last Sept. 9.
• Two Fast and Furious guns were linked to a February 2010 assassination conspiracy against Baja California’s then-Police Chief Julian Leyzaola.
• Four Fast and Furious guns were found on Jan. 8, 2010 and connected to a “kidnap/ransom.”
• Eleven Fast and Furious firearms were discovered in Atoyac de Alvarez after Mexican soldiers saved a kidnap victim on Nov. 14, 2009.
Team Obama’s defenders correctly argue that Bush administration investigators distributed some 450 guns in Mexico. But there are several key differences: No known deaths pertain to Operation Wide Receiver. Many of its weapons (unlike most Fast and Furious guns) featured radio-tracking devices. Also, Mexico’s government knew about and supported Wide Receiver.
In contrast, Issa and Grassley observed, “ATF and DOJ leadership kept their own personnel in Mexico and Mexican government officials totally in the dark about all aspects of Fast and Furious.”
“Fast and Furious has poisoned the well-spring of public opinion in Mexico as it relates to the cooperation and engagement with the United States,” Mexico’s envoy to America, Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan, declared May 31.
Issa and Grassley concluded that 1,048 of these weapons “remain unaccounted for.” Unlike carrier pigeons, these Fast and Furious guns will not fly safely home. Instead, for years to come, they will keep drawing blood in Mexico — and points north.
Deroy Murdock is syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
“If there is any justice in this world, Holder will be renditioned under NDAA. Hope he likes the weather in Guantanimo.”
Only Republicans are prosecuted to that extent.
Sandy Burgler was allowed to STEAL documents from the National Archives because he’s a Democrat.
I can’t remember the last time there was justice in this world.... perhaps right before we allowed Russia to take Berlin.
Hussein’s working overtime to FREE terrorists and land their VOTES.
“I would sure love to see what’s in the documents that Holder and Obama are going to such great lengths to keep out of the public eye”???
Let’s see, where to begin??
His bith certificate!!
His Social Security number!!
His school records!!
His writings as the editor of the harvard review!!
All concerned with Fast & Furious!!
His leaks of top secret info to help his campaign!!
I can go on here BUT you get the idea
Yep that’s right,
I don’t hate obammy cause he’s been the worst president EVER.
REcovery is pathetic, house values have tanked with this clown,jobs are non-existant, taxes and spending on liberal CRAP is at an all time high.
Noooo, I hate this marxist punk simply because he is a negro.
What a croc of crappola.
I'll take it a bit further for you. With government spending unchecked, is further taxation legitimate? With government regulation a vehicle for shakedowns, is further regulation legitimate?
How much improper action by government necessitates the withdrawal of our support of government? According to those who would govern us, there is no limit, because they act for the common good. In their eyes your refusal of acceptance is illegitimate and of no great concern ( they can not afford to acknowledge concern, because they can not acknowledge such weakness).
In fact, when pushed, they must attack your failure to accept the supremacy of government. To them there is ultimately no legitimacy in any serious dissent. This will continue to the bitter end. It's not going to turn out pretty.
Suspected smugglers? Not quite that simple...
FBI Criminal Informant Complicit in Brian Terry’s Death (PJM Exclusive)The rip crew was in Peck Canyon that evening with the intention of stealing money and drugs from a specific shipment of which they had prior knowledge.
(snip)
The rip crew knew to be in Peck Canyon that December evening because a CI working for the FBI found out about a smuggling run — from the FBI.
(snip)
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — through its own CIs and communications intercepts — was also aware of the planned assault.
Neither the DEA nor FBI warned Border Patrol about the expected criminal activity.
(snip)
The federal government will still not reveal if one of the two WASR-10 AK-pattern semi-automatic rifles located near the scene — provided to the Sinaloa cartel via Operation Fast and Furious — was the weapon that put a bullet through Brian Terry’s heart. The existence of a third recovered gun, an SKS carbine, has been disputed by the FBI despite the fact it had been talked about openly in the beginning of the investigation among federal agents.
Multiple sources tell PJM that this third weapon “disappeared” because it was the weapon carried by the FBI CI who ran the rip crew. When it was recovered near the scene of the murder and subsequently traced by the ATF, it traced back to the FBI CI via the gun shop in Texas where it was purchased.
Brian Terry’s murder was entirely preventable. The incompetence of the DEA and FBI let his Border Patrol unit walk into an ambush. After the ambush, it appears the FBI tampered with evidence to cover up that one of their informants was involved with the murder of a federal agent.
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