Vehicle searches yield few weapons at U.S.-Mexico border

Searches of vehicles crossing into Mexico are yielding few weapons in what U.S. officials concede is a frustrating effort to slow the flow of guns to violent Mexican cartels operating across the U.S. border.

Almost immediately after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a stepped-up vehicle search program beginning in March 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials went five consecutive months — May through September — without recovering a single weapon in El Paso, within sight of the bloodiest battleground in the Mexican drug war.

Weapons seizures from vehicles moving through the Southwest border’s busiest crossings have increased to 310 so far in fiscal year 2010, up from 155 in fiscal year 2009, CBP records show. Besides guns, weapons include grenades and rockets.

Yet the seizures represent a tiny fraction of arms flooding Mexico from the USA, at a rate of 2,000 per day, according to Brookings Institution estimates.

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Vehicle searches yield few weapons at U.S.-Mexico border

What? Seriously? The U.S. government isn’t finding those guns being transported to Mexico that they said they would? Surely not…

What about all the Texas Gun Shows? Weren’t we, Texas gun owners, being accused of making *straw-man* purchases and abusing our Second Amendment rights? Weren’t honest Texas gun dealers subjected to accusations of impropriety and subjected to all kinds of BATF audits?

And about those Texas Gun Shows…weren’t they supposed to be a wholesale market for fully automatic assault weapons, grenades, land mines and myriad other weapons of war?

You would think a state like Texas, one that held the BATF and federal gun regulations in such low esteem would be flagrantly exploiting the U.S. - Mexican border weaknesses and transporting tons of guns to the cartels and bringing back loads of money in the process.

You would think.

“It is a challenge for us,” says Steven Stavinoha, director of CBP’s outbound search operations. He says the agency is revamping its strategy.

Stavinoha says federal authorities have been hampered by staffing limitations, spotty intelligence and gun smugglers who alter their operations to elude capture. “Smuggling organizations are able to adapt to our activities and use it against us,” he says.

OR…maybe the guns are coming into Mexico from Central America, or into seaports, or beaches. Just sayin’.

Maybe the guns are coming in on the same routes, via the same sources that are exporting drugs into America. It doesn’t seem to me that the DEA is doing all that great at stopping drugs from coming in, how can BATF be expected to stop guns from going out?

He says smugglers monitor search teams’ locations and redirect shipments to alternate crossings or wait for the teams to move to other locations.

Well, imagine that, the smugglers are monitoring your actions.

I am going to let these guys in on a little Op/Sec Intel that I tried to share with the military and the folks in charge when talking about how our troops are ambushed and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. military and ALL of our Intelligence agencies are fully and thoroughly infiltrated.

Bet on it. That is what PCness and liberalism have done for us.

The Taliban and al-Qaida have their operatives in high places within the military and intelligence agencies of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and everywhere else we operate. Some have even offered speculation that the infiltration extends to the highest office in the land.

The Mexican drug cartels have accomplished the exact same thing. Infiltration runs rampant in the drug and gun business. And think about this; the drug cartels and gun importers have more disposable income than the entire United States government.

Police departments are infiltrated. Governments themselves are also infiltrated and in many case, fully complicit in ALL of these actions, on both sides of the border, drugs and guns.

If the United States wants to win the war on drugs, guns and terrorism they must 1st LOSE a thing or two. Political correctness being first and foremost.

Long time readers know my opinion when it come to fighting, and winning a WAR. If you are not in it to win, by any means necessary, you are not going to win at all.

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Pakistan officials: U.S. missile attacks kill 17

MIR ALI, Pakistan - Two U.S. missile strikes — including one believed to be the largest ever using Predator drones — pummeled targets inside the main sanctuary for Qaida and the Taliban along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan on Thursday, killing 17 people, local intelligence officials said.

The drone attacks came amid the prospect of renewed political instability in Pakistan, with President Asif Ali Zardari facing calls for his resignation after the Supreme Court struck down an amnesty that had protected him from corruption charges.

The missiles rained down Thursday on North Waziristan, a haven for many militants including groups determined to push the U.S. and NATO out of Afghanistan. The second, bloodier attack involved five drones and 10 missiles — an unusually intense bombardment, officials told NBC News.

The strikes in North Waziristan are especially sensitive because they risk angering Afghan-focused militant groups who have agreed to be neutral as Islamabad cracks down on Taliban fighters in neighboring South Waziristan who have threatened the Pakistani state.

Pakistani officials said they were trying to establish the identities of the dead.

Full Story Here:
Pakistan officials: U.S. missile attacks kill 17 - Pakistan

Those Predator Drones and the Hellfire missiles they fire are a great things, they keep American fighting men from harms way! I am all for that too, any American life saved in battle is a good thing.

Several years ago I was at Ft. Rucker, Alabama and I had the opportunity to see a test firing of a Hellfire missile. It was a very impressive site! It was fired from an AH-64 Apache and you could almost see the grins on the gunslingers faces. They truly enjoyed their work!

Below is a Navy Seahawk firing a Hellfire missile.

I don’t know what todays cost of each individual Hellfire missile might be, but if these figures are accurate, we’re looking at approximately $68K every time one of these missiles is used.

Each Hellfire weighs 47 kg / 106 pounds, including the 9 kg / 20 pound warhead, and has a range of 8,000 meters. As of late 2007, some 21,000 Hellfire IIs have been built since 1990, at a cost of about $68,000 each. SOURCE

So, let’s do the math on this mission alone. The figures aren’t exact, the story may or may not be 100% accurate but, given a $68K price tag per missile, these 2 combined missions fired, as far as we know, a total of 12 Hellfire missiles. That would be a total missile cost of at least $816K, if the manufacturing costs quoted above are accurate.

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Naval Academy Changed Color Guard to Appear More Diverse at World Series

Naval Academy leaders are under fire after altering the composition of the military color guard at a World Series game last month so the group wouldn’t be made up only of white men.

The Navy Times and other media reported that two white midshipmen were removed from the performance in New York City and replaced with a Pakistani-American man and a white woman so the group would appear more diverse.

Capt. Matthew Klunder, commandant of midshipmen, disputed that version of events. He said he considered replacing two members but decided to add two extra people instead, expanding the group from six to eight members.

Only six people ended up participating in the Game 2 routine at Yankee Stadium, Klunder said, because one of the two additions — Midshipman 2nd Class Zishan Hameed — forgot parts of his uniform. The color guard performs in even numbers, he said.

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Naval Academy Changed Color Guard to Appear More Diverse at World Series

This is sheer lunacy. Our nation is being fully consumed in the conflagration that is political correctness. The same political correctness that I, and many others have not been at all bashful about addressing. The political correctness that we KNOW is killing this nation The political correctness that is emasculating America as surely as you’re reading this article.

We’re ALL equal. No one is smarter than another. There are no winners, we are all participants in the adventure of life. Fear perceived racism. Force universal acceptance and affirmative action. Those are the LIBBER mantras that gave us the massacre at Fort Hood.

Those are some powerful words, and they frighten the masses, but here is the hangup, they are NOT true, they are merely threats hung over our heads in an effort to force us to ALL be as one, and to all be the same.

Color guard members were upset by the decision to change the makeup of the group but were forbidden by the academy from discussing it, the paper said.

The Naval Academy volunteer group — which carries the American flag and other flags during ceremonies — has a total of 28 members. About 20 percent of the guard’s midshipmen are female and one-quarter are minorities.

Of course they were upset, their routine was interrupted for the sake of political correctness and appearances. Color Guard is NOT about actual color, race or gender. It’s about WHO can best present the colors and represent this nation.

I personally don’t care if the members of the Color Guard were black, white, brown or green, if the group that makes the best presentation ALL just happen to be black, I am not in the least upset by the racial makeup of their group.

Apparently the U.S. Navy was.

Just as apparently, the entire military is saddled by the most asinine ideas to come down the pike in a long time. We apparently can now fight wars in a politically correct fashion, with a military that is made up of equal numbers from ALL races, genders and religious beliefs.

Dear GOD, what has happened to America? And what has happened to the U.S. Military? We don’t fight any more, we participate. We don’t win wars, we change hearts and minds. And that is exactly why the United States of America isn’t united any longer.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this PCness that has overcome America has got to be stopped. It is destroying our nation, it is destroying our youth and it is, if the massacre at Fort Hood and the *official* reaction is any indication, tearing our military and it’s fighting readiness apart at the seams!

There is a video of the U.S. Navy Color Guard at the World Series showing the 6 members that made the presentation of the colors! It can be found on the original story.

Afghan president chooses warlord as running mate

KABUL (AP) - President Hamid Karzai chose a powerful warlord accused of rights abuses as one of his vice presidential running mates on Monday, hours before leaving for meetings in Washington with President Barack Obama and Pakistan’s president.

The selection of Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a top commander in the militant group Jamiat-e-Islami during Afghanistan’s 1990s civil war, drew immediate criticism from human rights groups.

A 2005 Human Rights Watch report, “Blood-Stained Hands,” found “credible and consistent evidence of widespread and systematic human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law” were committed by Jamiat commanders, including Fahim.

Karzai was “insulting the country” with the choice, the New York-based group said Monday.

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Afghan president chooses warlord as running mate

It has often been said, when you lay with dogs, you rise with fleas.

For those that don’t know it, President Hamid Karzai was nothing more than the most powerful, and the most acceptable war lord available at the time of the elections in 2004. Karzai cleans up well, he’s fairly well educated, he is articulate, he is, for the most part, pro America, and WE are the reason Karzai is in power today.

Under Afghan law, the president has two vice presidents.

Given the number of political assassinations, and all around civil unrest in that part of the world, it’s not a bad idea to have a vice president with an alternate *plan B* vice president as well. You’ve got to admit, these folks do assassinations well, and their internal security is not the greatest either.

The choice of Fahim could be an issue for Western countries invested in Afghanistan’s success, said Mohammad Qassim Akhgar, a political columnist and the editor-in-chief of the independent Afghan newspaper 8 a.m.

“Perhaps if Karzai wins the election Western countries are going to use this point as an excuse and limit their assistance to Afghanistan,” he said. “This is also a matter of concern for all human rights organizations who are working in Afghanistan and working for transitional justice.”

This might be an issue for the president, his hard line stance on torture, and the insistence that U.S. officials will not use torture. This may well play into a human rights quandary for Obama. How do you insist that WE don’t torture if we’re supporting those that do?? Don’t take me wrong, I personally don’t have an issue with enhanced interrogation, Obama and Company do, and we can’t have a POTUS that exhibits gross hypocrisy now, can we??

Aziz Rafiee, the executive director of the Afghan Civil Society Forum, said Karzai’s latest change of heart begged a question.

“If (Fahim) was a good choice, why did (Karzai) remove him” in 2004? Rafiee asked. “And if he was a bad choice, why did he select him again? The people of Afghanistan will answer this question while voting.”

Only time will tell, but that may be an excellent question…