Hasta la vista, reconquista

Anybody else remember the dust up back in January 2006 about Mexican “soldiers” coming into the U.S. to protect drug shipments?  I just picked one right wing(nut) site from the time, to give you a feel for the kind of rhetoric that was floating around back then:

This one happens to be “ParaPundit”:

The U.S. Border Patrol has warned agents in Arizona of incursions into the United States by Mexican soldiers “trained to escape, evade and counterambush” if detected — a scenario Mexico denied yesterday.

The warning to Border Patrol agents in Tucson, Ariz., comes after increased sightings of what authorities described as heavily armed Mexican military units on the U.S. side of the border. The warning asks the agents to report the size, activity, location, time and equipment of any units observed.

It also cautions agents to keep “a low profile,” to use “cover and concealment” in approaching the Mexican units, to employ “shadows and camouflage” to conceal themselves and to “stay as quiet as possible.”

The bad President in the White House and the elite club of fools in the US Senate do not care about this sort thing.

Rafael Laveaga of the Mexican embassy in Washington DC would like us to believe that drug smugglers are just dressing up to look like Mexican soldiers. The head of the Border Patrol union thinks this claim is ridiculous.

After everyone from Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly and congress-varmits like John Cutherbertson of Dallas weighed in, it turns out the “ridiculous” claim by the Mexican embassy was… correct.

Direct from Fox news:

MEXICO CITY — Federal police said Friday they have arrested two drug smugglers who strained Mexico’s relations with the United States by disguising themselves as Mexican soldiers and confronting Texas lawmen.

Oscar Alonso Candelaria Escajeda and Ivan Gandara Trejo, were detained Thursday in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, according to a news release from the federal public security secretary.

It said that the two disguised themselves as Mexican soldiers and crossed the Rio Grande into Hudspeth County, Texas, in January 2006.

Texas lawmen spotted three vehicles, including at least one a military-style Humvee, and tried to halt them near Neely’s Crossing, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of El Paso, on suspicion they were loaded with marijuana.

The smugglers escaped back across the border without a shot fired, abandoning more than a half-ton of marijuana as they fled.

U.S. authorities initially believed the men were Mexican soldiers and the incident strained relations between the two nations before U.S. officials said they accepted Mexican assurances that the smugglers were only disguised as soldiers.

An official from Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said the two are believed to be members of the Juarez drug cartel. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

Candelaria Escajeda also faces drug smuggling and possession charges filed in West Texas in December 2006, the news release said.

Geeze, it’s not like Mexico doesn’t have military surplus stores. And, you can buy guns and trucks and stuff easily enough in Arizona and Texas.

DOH!

I want to watch the spin on this one, so will probably update and revise sometime tonight or tomorrow.