Desert mysteries… two Arizona border updates

The shooting of Mexican national may have been filmed, according to the Sierra Vista Herald (Bisbee, AZ). Crossing the border is obviously not a capital crime (and, you’re supposed to have a trial and evidence and things like that first), but an administrative offense. For the record, I think this may have been a terrible mistake by a Border Patrol agent, but with more inexperienced agents along the border, it was likely to happen. I don’t fault the BP on this one, but I was bothered by the xenophobic and racist rhetoric that creates a situation where this is seen not as a tragedy, but as something almost desirable.

And who was in the middle of the desert a couple of weeks back?

The Arizona Star editorialized on the speculation today:

Whatever happened with the National Guard at the Mexican border two weeks ago remains a mystery. Sadly, however, the absence of facts hasn’t slowed the bombast and bravado from a variety of bloggers, politicians and others who are outraged.

I got a lot of feedback from Heidi Theiss, one of the more outraged of the bloggers. Heidi… woman of mystery … claims she has “sources” with more information than, well, anybody, I guess.

Heidi runs a allegedly “pro-military” (meaning get soldiers killed, and then whine about them ferriners) site called EuphoricReality.com. In her comments to me, she said she’d been on the Guatemala-Mexico border for five years. She’s also, according to Heidi, been in the Special Forces (I didn’t know women served in that unit), and has claimed to be on the CIA and Halliburton payroll. She’s made mistakes in the past, but doesn’t seem to know how to write a correction/retraction. Hell, if she claimed the sun rose in the East and set in the West, I’d look for a reliable source. 

As the Arizona Star editorial suggests, for all we know, the National Guard observers ran into a bunch of Minute Men running around out there. That particular scenario has been a concern whenever those city slickers show up out here. And, the Arizona desert is even more desolate than where I live.

Who is running around out in the hills where I live is sometimes hard to say. Yeah, there are drug runners and gun runners, some indocumenados and… hunters, old weird hippies, the burro lady, cowboys working late and who knows out there… mostly harmless folks. 

Our local sheriff’s department depends on both the Border Patrol and the Forestry Service (Big Bend National Park is in my county) to provide backup. None of these people are yahoos (well, at least not the ones who live in my neighborhood), and they’re doing the best they can. The National Guardsmen and women sent to provide backup are just there to do observations and handle routine clerical tasks – why Heidi, or any of the other commentators think they were supposed to fire on unknown people in the middle of the desert says more about the ignorance and stupidity of the commentators than about any knowledge of the situation… which I don’t, the National Guard doesn’t and the right-wing bloggers certainly don’t have. Not even ex-(or is it present) CIA-Halliburton-Special Forces-Mexico Jungle Fighting Heidi Theiss.