One of the left’s standards is to denounce the “gun culture,” the gun dealers and the gun runners and the gun smugglers who put weapons in the hands of people who just can’t wait to use them to kill and wound people indiscriminately.
Oddly enough, two such incidents have occurred recently, and the standard denunciations and howls for new laws and draconian penalties has been sorely lacking.
In the Mediterranean, Israel seized a freighter that was heading to the Gaza Strip, after stops in Syria and Turkey. On board they found a plethora of heavy-duty ordinance, including Chinese-made C-704 anti-ship missiles (with instructions written in Farsi, the language spoken in Iran).
The details are a bit fuzzy — most certainly deliberately so. The Victoria is registered out of Liberia, like so many ships do to avoid taxes and regulations. It is owned by a German company, who in turn had turned over management to a French company. And she left the Syrian port shortly after two Iranian warships had paid a visit.
Here’s one scenario: Iran loads up the weapons on their warships, then sends them through the Suez Canal to deliver them to the Syrian port (to protect them from Israel intervening — the Israelis would have few qualms about boarding a freighter, or striking against a land shipment, but wouldn’t be so willing to openly take on Iranian warships). The weapons are transferred to the Victoria, which Iran had hired through several cutouts to conceal their participation). Israel finds out about it anyway, boards the Victoria, and finds Iran’s latest little gift to Hamas (the terrorist group that is also the legally-elected government of the Gaza Strip) intended to kill Jews.
Well, that won’t happen now. But don’t expect any major consequences for Iran or Hamas. Killing Jews? Not that big a deal.
On a more domestic front, for some time we’ve been told for some time now that the Mexican drug cartels have been getting a lot of weapons from the US. There is a very hefty flow of weapons across the border to the south (maybe we’re trading guns for illegal aliens or drugs or something), and it’s our fault that Mexico is in an undeclared civil war right now — in addition to our demand for illegal drugs, of course.
Well, now we know why the Obama administration is so convinced that gun-running into Mexico from the US is so prevalent and dangerous — because they’ve been doing it.
OK, that might be an exaggeration, but just barely. The ATF (an agency that has NEVER been known to go “off the reservation” and “go rogue” and screw things up in ways that get a lot of people killed) was engaging in a “sting” where they allowed guns to be sent into Mexico — deliberately passing up on opportunities to confiscate the weapons and arrest the smugglers in order to manage to put together the “big picture” and maybe catch some higher-ups in the Mexican cartels.
That those guns might (and were) used in the killings of innocent Mexicans wasn’t much of a concern, nor was the thought that there is already plenty of evidence and charges against the cartels.
But the important thing here is, it made certain that the Obama administration was being accurate when it talked about how guns from the US were flowing to the cartels — it just omitted the tiny little detail that it was the US government policy to assist in it.
No wonder the Mexican government is a bit miffed at the US of late.
