This incredible story just broke earlier today, and no one in officialdom on either side of the border has had time to comment. It's Sunday, after all. But this I guarantee you: some calls have already been placed from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and the recipients are not going to enjoy the remainder of their early December weekend.
As the ugly details of the DEA-run money laundering operation unfold in the days ahead - and unfold they will - this story is not going to play well anywhere. Not at the White House, not on Capitol Hill, not at Los Pinos. Felipe Calderón goes ballistic every time he talks about Fast and Furious or Wide Receiver, and why shouldn't he? Perhaps 50,000 of his countrymen have been killed in the last five years, many of them with AK-47s and AR-15s sold to the cartels inside the United States. While he's busy responding to an inane war crimes case brought against him and members of his cabinet at the International Criminal Court in The Hauge - the handiwork of sophomoric Mexican "intellectuals" looking for their 15 minutes of fame - he now learns that his partner to the north is washing hundreds of millions of dollars of blood profits. The blood, by the way, is 100% Mexican.
A few weeks ago a Senate committee held hearings on the misfired (pardon the pun) arms sales operations. George W. Bush must answer for Wide Receiver. It occurred during his second term, and the record establishes that he personally authorized the sale of several hundred military grade weapons to the cartels. The second operation, Fast and Furious, ran from 2009 to January 2011, on Barack Obama's watch. The president and his attorney general, Eric Holder, say they knew nothing about either operation until a whistle blower disclosed their existence. With yesterday's revelation of a drug money laundering program run directly from Washington, that excuse will now have less appeal. When the ship runs aground, the man on the bridge must answer. That's why he gets the big bucks.
Attorney General Eric Holder should be fired post-haste, and his boss, Barack Obama, should publicly apologize to Mexico. Neither will happen. Alas, the 2012 elections are only 11 months away. But another pleasant speech by American ambassador Anthony Wayne as the U.S. delivers more early Christmas gifts to Mexico under the Mérida Initiative later this week will not placate legislators and politicians, either here or in the States.
At the American Constitutional Convention of 1787, a concerned citizen approached founding father and signer Benjamin Franklin and asked him, "Mr. Franklin, what have we, sir, in this new constitution - a monarchy or a republic?" History tells us that without hesitation, Franklin replied, "Well, it's a republic, if you can keep it." With today's news of federal law enforcement agents once more running amok, working alongside the narco terrorists who pose a threat to every free nation on the face of the earth, perhaps we should reflect on Franklin's implied warning. And Mexico - the long suffering and bloody Republic of Mexico - will surely have reason enough to do the same.
Postscript: I'll wait to see if the Los Angeles Times delivers up another editorial on the disclosures about DEA's money laundering work. It was quick enough to blame Felipe Calderon a few days ago for almost everything gone wrong in Mexico's drug war.
U.S. agents launder drug money for Mexican cartels
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