“I didn’t do nothin’ and I’ll never do it again…”

If you’re wondering why so many down here (myself included) have a jaundiced view of Plan Merida, and the whole “War on (some) drugs” story, it’s because it’s painfully obvious that the United States is not willing to do anything substantial beyond providing taxpayer funding to businesses that might profit from the human control biz:

Mike Marizco in The (Mexico City) News:

A community college graduate, 23 years old, slim, the fat still evident on his baby-faced cheeks, with a pretty bride and a newborn baby, is the face behind the killers of Mexico’s drug cartels.

And I’m hoping it wasn’t that boyish appearance that led to the failed opportunity to make an example of the arms traffickers that are decimating the northern border.

Much of this story is metaphorical old hat: U.S. firepower acting as the fuel for Mexico’s violence. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or ATF, estimates 90 to 95 percent of weapons used in crimes in Mexico came from the United States. I’m guessing that stat is simply a weaselly way of saying 100 percent, but I won’t digress.

Varela looks like an all-American kid… He wasn’t simply running semi-auto AKs and handguns down. He ran at least two .50-caliber machine guns to Columbus, New Mexico. He must have been doing a great job for Vicente Carrillo’s people, decided to push it beyond legal U.S. guns, maybe hit the big time. Last April, he went down trying to buy an M-60 from undercover cops in Phoenix.

Mexican Army units identified one of the .50-cals as being used to kill a police commander in Juárez, Francisco Ledesma Salazar.

That’s where the story takes a particular twist. Even though ATF agents in their highly-vaunted “Project Gunrunner” arrested Varela, he never faced federal weapons trafficking charges.

Instead, the young man only faced two state charges, neither of which had anything to do with arms trafficking, a crime I don’t believe the state of Arizona has the capacity to enforce. Instead, Varela was sentenced last Friday to two-and-íhalf years in state prison on one fraud and one forgery count.

…

But our problems in Arizona are only beginning. If Feds can’t – or won’t – prosecute easy, big cases like this one, what possible chance will they ever have of bringing this place under some kind of control?