Perfectly reasonable to me that there are drug smugglers in Arizona. But, absent the drug smugglers, it's also perfectly reasonable that there are guys in the hills eating food and shooting guns. It's Arizona.In a phone interview, Babeu told TPM that when he spoke about the cartels controlling parts of the state, he meant they control movement. Babeu says cartels have scouts and other surveillance set up to monitor activity, and when the sheriff and his staff aren't around to patrol, especially in the rural parts of his county, smugglers operate freely. Babeu's website includes news items about drug spotters on hilltops and in caves in Arizona.
"Often times during our patrols out there, we would find cold food and a box of AK-47 rounds, you know, and some other things," Babeu said. "There wasn't a confrontation or a shooting, but we find these pieces of intel, that we know clearly there was somebody here on this high point. And they left because they saw us coming up 45 minutes ago. So that's the kind of stuff that we have, that we're asking for additional help and resources."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Evidence Aplenty
Arizona sheriff Paul Babeu raises the alarm:
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Babeu's website includes news items about drug spotters on hilltops and in caves in Arizona.
Hill and gully rider, hill and gully!
From the "hilltops" link:
If they're on the hilltops, it doesn't take a detective or law enforcement to tell you they have a tactical advantage. We need help in Arizona."
It's time to take back our hilltops, America! With big guns, big, big guns.
Isn't it rich?
Are we a thrill?
Me here alone on the ground,
You on the hill.
Send in the drones.
but we find these pieces of intel
He will be going on about humint and comint next. Put down the Tom Clancy book!!
Precisely what hill-climbing help does Arizona need? Walking poles?
They just need to flatten that state out, a bit.
Perhaps the coal-extraction industry can help them there. This is a job for PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.
But then the city of Mesa would have to change its name to More Of The Same.
That's O.K., they could be M.O.T.S. the Hoople.
~
Kind of seems to me that if they're always forgetting to take their ammo with them, they're not much of a tactical threat.
What, is it the Mexican Alzheimer's Front or something?
Presumably the cops who are so scared they're begging for help managed to scare those guys off.
How about if the US gun dealers stopped selling AK-47 replicas and ammunition to Mexican drug cartels? Would that help?
It actually would have eight or ten years ago. The small arms trade is so globalized and the cartels have so many connections in various capitals that it's just way too late.
Shut down the flow of Bushmaster M4s and Norinco AKs and you'll get RPGs and PKMs from any one of a dozen arms traders.
It's now a 21st century civil war, a battle for access to international commerce, and the government is, frankly, losing...
It's actually a pretty typical example. People were screaming about the flow of weapons south ten, even twenty years ago. Governments teamed up to deny it was significant, or even important. By the time they were willing to get out of denial and recognize the problem represented by the flow of weapons to the drug cartels, the options for acquiring weapons had multiplied and metastasized to the point where even if you shut down the primary source, you still have the dual problem of way too many weapons already in theater and way too many sources available to the cartels.
Their core competency, after all, is breaking borders. Drugs, weapons, people. It really doesn't matter what the product is. The important thing to understand is that the Mexican government is NOT in charge of Mexico, they only fill the roles the cartels aren't interested in....
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