Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Obama: Good U.S.-Mexican relations demand we spare guilty and let innocent die

“President Barack Obama is attempting to block the execution in Texas on Thursday of a Mexican man because it would breach an international convention and do ‘irreparable harm’ to US interests,” Guardian.co.uk reports.

Humberto Leal Garcia “was convicted in 1994 of the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl in San Antonio. Few question that he was responsible for the killing but the Texas authorities failed to tell Leal…that under the Vienna convention he was entitled to contact the Mexican consulate when he was arrested.”

Ah. So he did it. But overlooking a procedural step informing this monster of his entitlements under international treaty was overlooked. But he still did it. This big, brave piece of cowardly offal raped and killed a little girl. And 15 years later, the rabid animal is about to be put down—except Obama worries the Mexican government will get mad at us if we do.

How telling that he does not place his emphasis or concern on an operation conducted under the authority of his administration that has resulted in estimates that up to 150 Mexican nationals may have been killed—people who were never given due process and their day on court, that is, people who were legally innocent. And how many more Mexican and U.S. citizens have suffered on our side of the border remains to be seen.

But while occupying their concerns with a treaty-driven entitlement technicality, the administration has stonewalled Congress every step of the way on basic matters of Congressional authority, U.S. law, Mexican law…nope, no chance of doing “irreparable harm to U.S. interests” there…

That may be changing though—at least as far as the administration’s ability to keep up with the directed non-cooperation and at the same time keep the noise level down on it. From Fox News:

While the investigation continues into the U.S. operation that helped send thousands of guns south of the border, Mexican lawmakers say they'll press for extradition and prosecution in Mexico of American officials who authorized and ran the operation.

Not that the administration has any intention of allowing that to happen—but if they do, we can only hope the Mexicans advise the errant masterminds of their right to contact the U.S. consulate—you know the same consulate the administration left in the dark about Project Gunwalk…uh…we haven’t established that, have we? So far, the only thing we know for certain is, as far as U.S. entities go, it was ATF’s Mexican attaché they deliberately left out of the loop.

Probably just a technicality…no?

UPDATE: Dave Workman weighs in.

Also see:

A Journalist’s Guide to ‘Project Gunwalker' Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four for a complete list with links of independent investigative reporting and commentary done to date by Sipsey Street Irregulars and Gun Rights Examiner.

Note to newcomers to this story: “Project Gunrunner” is the name ATF assigned to its Southwest Border Initiative to interdict gun smuggling to Mexico. “Project Gunwalker” is the name I assigned to the scandal after allegations by agents that monitored guns were allowed to fall into criminal hands on both sides of the border through a surveillance process termed “walking” surfaced.

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Castigo Cay

My special guest today on The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance Radio was Matthew Bracken, author of the new near-future adventure Castigo Cay. The program ought to be posted later tonight, generally by 6:00 pm Pacific time, on the NBC1260 website.

In the mean time, go here to learn more about Bracken's newest novel, as well as his earlier "Enemies" trilogy, all of which I gave strong thumbs-up reviews for.

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