Grenades made in the United States and sent to Central America during the Cold War have resurfaced as terrifying new weapons in almost weekly attacks by Mexican drug cartels.
Sent a generation ago to battle communist revolutionaries in the jungles of Central America, U.S. grenades are being diverted from dusty old armories and sold to criminal mafias, who are using them to destabilize the Mexican government and terrorize civilians, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials.
The redeployment of U.S.-made grenades by Mexican drug lords underscores the increasingly intertwined nature of the conflict, as President Felipe Calderón sends his soldiers out to confront gangs armed with a deadly combination of brand-new military-style assault rifles purchased in the United States and munitions left over from the Cold War.
Now go watch this Rachel Maddow video of us spending billions arming and training Afghan soldiers how to use weapons:
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Team America, fuck yeah!
Someone in America right now will one day give birth to a son or daughter who will be killed by one of those M-16s.
El Cid
Hey, I wonder if we’ll ever get any blowback from training and funding and diplomatically aiding all those crazy warlord terrorist fundamentalist Muslim mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s?
bkny
oh, you don’t have to wait that long … quite likely, some kid just graduating to be deployed later this year.
El Cid
By the way, and it should be needless to say, the only way to stop this enormous Mexican violence — or at least to reduce the incentive for it — is to remove the multi-billion dollar US consumer market which drives it by decriminalizing and legalizing currently illegal drugs.
By our asshole ‘drug war’ policies we make Central and South American nations (and elsewhere) bear the costs of narco-trafficking and paramilitary violence so that our market demand for illegal drugs will be satisfied at high profits.
And please, please god don’t let our idiot foreign policy establishment cite Colombia as a good example of militarist drug war policies.
very reverend crimson fire of compassion
Only slightly OT, Nazi ex-marines are patrolling this side of the border outfitted with military fatigues, body armor and gas masks, and carrying assault rifles, according to the NYT. Link, because I can’t find the edit function to embed it properly, nytimes.com/aponline/2010/07/17/us/AP-US-Neo-Nazi-Patrols.html?hp FYWP
Corner Stone
How can this be blamed on the firebaggers and/or liberals?
Otherwise I can’t really see the point.
AhabTRuler
@El Cid:
@Corner Stone:
Sadly, I think that you two libtards are missing the point completely, and very likely, intentionally. All your distractions can only be purposed to one end: to make us forget the one truly critical danger that faces the republic: inflation, probably caused by Jane Hamsher’s (intentional) abuse of Soros bucks. You WATBs won’t be happy until you get your rainbow-sparkly pony…of DOOM! You should go to Argentina and marry Glenzilla!
TORA, TORA, TORAPUMA, PUMA, PUMA!Corner Stone
@AhabTRuler: Clear!!…bzzzt!…Again! Clear!!…bzzztt!…Ok! We’ve got a pulse!
Whoa, sorry bout that. But your criticism of the holy libtard trifecta was enough to cause an infarction in the myocardial area.
I do hope for your sake you understand that Glenzillians are now making their way via Soros/UN black helicopters with the intent of firebagging your ass when they catch up with you.
She’s pure evil you know. And more powerful than Scientology.
licensed to kill time
The car bomb that was set off in Juarez the other day is a very troubling escalation of tactics by the cartels, too.
Myles SG
Hey, I wonder if we’ll ever get any blowback from training and funding and diplomatically aiding all those crazy warlord terrorist fundamentalist Muslim mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s?
Screw off, bud, we were trying to win the Cold War, and frankly the jihadist idiots of today are chump change compared to the existential threat of Communism.
Beating the Russians was the supreme imperative; and frankly, I couldn’t have cared less what the blowback was.
Corner Stone
@licensed to kill time: They have running gun battles and walk into hospitals to execute people.
I agree car bombs are bad, but IMO hardly an escalation.
Corner Stone
@Myles SG:
HAHAHAHAHA!!
Thanks for the least effective spoof I’ve seen in a while, bud.
licensed to kill time
@Corner Stone:
I said escalation of tactics. I know they are already ruthless and deadly and completely unconcerned with killing innocent bystanders. Car bombs are a new tactic as far as I know.
Corner Stone
@licensed to kill time: Don’t have the links but I believe they’ve used them to assassinate police bigwigs in the past 2 years.
But, I’m not arguing about. They’re murderous bastards.
El Cid
@AhabTRuler: Both. I am worried about the hyperinflation we risk with cocaine and heroin. If we don’t take action to cure the deficit.
El Cid
@Myles SG: No. We experienced much more domestic harm from that blowback than we did from a Soviet attack, because they never attacked. And I think the Soviets would have been worse off suffering the consequences of supporting their Afghan allies. They were falling apart any way, despite Team B lies. I wish you, the little prince, could stay at Yglesias’ or move to your preferred Dubai.
Bill Murray
@El Cid: But if we did that, the banks would no longer be able to launder those huge narco-trafficking profits and we’d need another bailout
Jim
There is a profound irony in the US approach to its neighbours. The common conservative meme that the US is threatened by a tide of violence just outside its borders is the exact opposite of what is actually happening.
Mexico, Jamaica and Canada all have gun violence problems (to varying degrees) that are fed by the steady stream of weapons exported from the US. Perhaps they would be safer if they were not systematically destabilizing their neighbours for profit.