Posted on 05/04/2003 10:04:53 PM PDT by JackelopeBreeder
Another day, another learning experience. (I meant to post this strange screed Saturday night, but it took a good 24-hours for my brain to digest what I saw.)
Lesson Number One: Border Patrol agents (at least in Cochise County) are not like the rest of us. Their anatomies have been altered – certain appendages have been replaced with oversized spheres of solid cobalt steel. And that goes for the female agents as well; they’re just allowed to carry them in a pouch on their belt.
Lesson Number Two: Twenty years in the Army, which included two years trotting around the Korean DMZ, will not prepare you for the realities of our southern border.
My original purpose for going to the border was to observe another flight test of American Border Patrol’s brand new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) along with a photographer from USA Today. Everything went just fine in that department, The UAV did its thing and the photographer got plenty of pictures. I spent most of my time acting as target, standing on approximately the same spot where old Coronado first entered this country.
Things started getting weird after we packed up the UAV, the satellite links, etc., and headed back to civilization. The photographer wanted additional pictures, so I ended up guiding her to Naco via the Border Road – accidently as I missed the unmarked turn off back to the highway. Two agaves next to a manzanita bush…okay…
Folks, this is the scariest twelve miles of road I have ever seen in my life – worse than anything I saw on the DMZ. It was bad enough in broad daylight; I can only imagine what it’s like at night. On second thought, I don’t want to imagine what it’s like at night.
The Border Road is not paved. The last time it was “improved” Fred Flintstone was at the controls, dragging a big log behind a brontosaurus. There are hazards on that road that would disable an Abrams tank. Two of our vehicles were damaged on this trip.
This is when things began to look like the desert version of the really ugly scenery in “Apocalypse Now”. Wrecked vehicles that hadn’t quite made it through the fence. Big holes everywhere in the fence. Trenches running up to the fence that had me flashing back to “All Quiet on the Western Front”. Along one stretch of several hundred yards, there’s a ditch about five feet over the Mexican side of the fence. It’s about three feet wide and four feet deep. Hundreds of illegals or smugglers can hide there and then just come bolting over the fence en masse any time the road is clear – which is most of the time. They would only be in exposed view for maybe ten to fifteen seconds.
Trash everywhere. If extraterrestrials landed here tomorrow, their first impression would be that water bottles and jugs were some sort of strange seed pod from some indigenous plant.
Along some stretches the brush comes right up to the fence – visibility zero. Anyone with evil intent could put a bullet in your ear from less than ten feet. Somewhere along this stretch, a group of Mexicans jogged across the road just in front of me – headed south. About a mile later, I bumped into an agent I know. I told him about the runners and he told me they had probably dumped a load of drugs for later pick up. He and his partner went to check it out.
We were stopped by agents three more times, all wanting to know why we were on the Border Road. All wanted to know more about the UAV and how it could help. On the third stop, something hit me right between the eyes. Here is one ugly civilian running around on a road that is usually only used by the Border Patrol. In plain sight in the cab of the truck is one Winchester Defender 8-shot shotgun, one AR-15 with scope, and one .45 Ruger Vaquero poking out of its holster on the passenger seat. None of the agents so much as batted an eyelid or asked me about their presence. This struck me as strange, since my face usually upsets dogs, small children, little old ladies, and law enforcement of any jurisdiction.
I had to ask. I was told that if I had been unarmed it would have been highly suspicious. Only a complete moron drives the Border Road unarmed. One told me that if he had seen me unarmed, he’d have hauled me in for criminal stupidity.
On a lighter note, I think I saw the most beautiful woman in this country Saturday. She is a sultry brunette with big dark eyes – you could lose your heart and soul in them – and most likely of Hispanic origin. If I were ten years younger (okay, twenty) I would be crawling naked on my belly through cactus begging for a date. She wears a green uniform, a badge, and a Glock. She should be wearing a bikini in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit edition and making more money than all us Freepers combined.
Instead, this young beauty is protecting our sorry fannies.
We MUST continue to pressure our elected Public SERVANTS [national AND local] to S T O P this flagrant disregard and disrespect for the will of American Gringos(citizens) who, in the eyes of our invaders, are sooooo weak and pathetic they can't even defend the borders of their own nation.
I bet our "silent servant", electricity, would be useful in making this fence hard to get over...
How about just a continuous stretch of high voltage triple strand concertina (properly staked with apron) for the first line of border, folowed by a 50 meter "dead zone" of raked sand and filled with AP mines for the second row, and lastly those towers using GSR coupled to ground mounted 20mm Vulcans. All towers manned by National Guard. End of problem, guaranteed - and people would be volunteering for duty.
Why should they be upset? Your possesion of them violates no federal law, it sounds like you are a Gringo, making you an unlikely canidate for a Coyote, or even a drug runner in those parts. The peones that the coyotes are smuggling in couldn't even aford one of those weapons, and as I said you're a Gringo, so unless you bear a striking resemblance Osama, or Saddam, the federales, particularly the BP, have no potential beef with you. I guess you are in Arizona, although you don't say, but either AZ or NM has no problem with your possesion of a (very) small arsenal either, AFAIK.
I however have a big problem with you. You didn't get, or at least didn't post, a picture of the Border Patrol babe. Like Mr. Liddy, I love women with guns. :)
If she's wearing a Glock, she isn’t BP.
Park Service?
I know that border. I lived along it and I ran it more than a few times. So long as this is Xanadu no walls or towers are going to keep any one out.
Those valleys have been a passageway to the north since men hunted mammoth in the valleys with spears and rocks. The ancient porchteca, Aztec merchant princes, regularly traveled up the San Pedro to the Gila and across to California. For three hundred years Apaches and Commanches used it to raid deep into Mexico, until raiding trails were beated into smooth wide roads. Geronimo and Juh crossed at will despite the best efforts of Crook's patrols. The Clantons, and other border riffraff, used those trails to bring stolen cattle up from ranchs below the border.
420 miles of wall, manned 24 hours a day might slow but won't stop the immigrant surge. Those willing to risk the Camino del Muerte won't be stopped by a wall. If anyone starts shooting women and children on my border I would be back down there in a heartbeat. It isn't going to happen.
We have chosen to have a welfare state and this is one of the costs. We have few choices but the best are to (1) End the welfare state and (2) Have a robust guest worker policy. They will still come but at least we can make order out of the chaos and have some controls.
Now that's telling. That we as Americans have to be armed to drive along our southern border.
When do you think any of BP are going to get that word to our elected officials?
When ASU goes to the FINAL FOUR?
Electricity would make it harder to cut too.
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