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Title: Hiring Narcos to Murder the Saudi Ambassador? If It's True, Tehran Is Pretty Dumb
Source:
Time
URL Source: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/20 ... ts-true-tehran-is-pretty-dumb/
Published: Oct 13, 2011
Author: Tim Padgett
Post Date: 2011-10-13 07:40:43 by CZ82
Keywords: None
Views: 2123
Comments: 15
Hiring Narcos to Murder the Saudi Ambassador? If It's True, Tehran Is Pretty Dumb Posted by Tim Padgett Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 4:56 pm If Iranian government operatives really did try to contract a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., as the Obama Administration alleges today, then they weren't just being diabolical. They were being fairly stupid. Granted, the Zetas – the drug mafia that Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar allegedly thought he was dealing with on behalf of Tehran – are certainly Mexico's most bloodthirsty: they are the narcos that brought beheadings and wholesale massacres of innocent civilians to the nightmarish drug war scene south of the border. But even the Zetas, founded more than a decade ago by former Mexican army commandos, know better than to venture north of the border and invite the kind of U.S. law enforcement heat that a political assassination of this magnitude would have brought on them. They're more than willing to murder high and low inside Mexico – the Zetas are the chief suspects, for example, in last year's assassination of Tamaulipas state gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre, and earlier this year a gang member killed a U.S. agent at a narco-roadblock in San Luis Potosí state – but they've rarely if ever directed that kind of mayhem inside the U.S. And for good reason: they've experienced the vast difference between cops, prosecutors and judges in Mexico, whom they can buy off or kill with impunity, and the U.S. judicial system. In 2005 and 2006, for example, Zetas murdered at least five rival gangsters in Laredo, Texas, just across the border from one of their strongholds, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. A number of Zetas were arrested and prosecuted as a result and sent away to U.S. prisons – which are a lot harder to break out of than Mexican penitentiaries are, and where you can't live the comfortable life that drug lords make for themselves inside Mexican lockups. Zeta leaders like Heriberto Lazcano, aka El Verdugo, or The Executioner, learned fairly quickly that the world across the Rio Grande was a different ballgame – and that if they didn't want to jeopardize their lucrative drug distribution networks in the U.S., it was best to avoid bloodshed there as well. (See "Day of the Dead: The Drug War Is Mexico's Tragedy. Now Its Survivors Are Fighting Back") One of my TIME colleagues in Mexico, Ioan Grillo, whose book, El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, is being published this month, agrees. “For the Zetas, political murder is done concretely to protect their own business interests inside Mexico,” Grillo told me today. “It's just not their modus operandi to carry out political murders in the U.S.” Had Arbabsiar actually been dealing with the Zetas – and not a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant who posed as a Zeta operative – they probably would have conveyed that reality to him fairly quickly. And they would have likely dismissed the $1.5 million that Arbabsiar allegedly offered the D.E.A. informant. Ditto for the opium the Iranians allegedly threw into the deal. The Zetas, after all, are part of a Mexican drug-trafficking, kidnapping and extortion industry that rakes in as much as $40 billion a year. To risk that kind of cash flow by carrying out a five-alarm international hit for a million and a half bucks seems a non-starter. It also seems an organization like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, for whom the Justice Department says Arbabsiar may have been working, should know better. Arbabsiar, who lives near Mexico in Corpus Christi, Texas, certainly should have been wiser. Or perhaps Tehran has been listening to all the right-wing hysteria about Mexican drug violence spilling across the border into the U.S. The problem: for the reasons I cite above, it's simply not true. The U.S. side of the border, in fact, is one of the safest corridors in America. According to the F.B.I., the four large U.S. cities with the lowest violent crime rates are all in border states. That's not exactly an indication that Mexican drug gangs like the Zetas are eager to rain down bombs and bullets further north in cities like Washington, D.C., where the Saudi ambassador assassination was supposedly to have taken place. That doesn't mean the Zetas aren't capable of atrocities outside of Mexico: just this year they murdered and beheaded almost 30 peasants on a ranch in northern Guatemala. But again, they commit them in the interests of their criminal business, and in drug transshipment countries like Guatemala where the police and judicial systems are just as weak as they are in Mexico. All of those considerations may make it harder for many to believe that the alleged Iranian terror plot that the Obama Administration foiled was all that adept or serious. I'm not suggesting that a rogue regime like Iran's isn't capable of this kind of conspiracy; but if the charges are true, it's a sign that the ayatollahs in Tehran are a pretty clueless bunch. And I have a suggestion for them: get Ioan Grillo's book translated into Farsi as soon as you can. Poster Comment: TIME magazine sure has went to hell... Parts of the article are total BS and look who their hero is......
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#1. To: CZ82 (#0)
I don't believe Iran did what is said about them. I thin HObama is lying again.
You're thinking right...;} The story is being trashed WorldWide. No one believes it. The Iranian? Been against the regime from the GetGo. A Cover for the 1027 to one Israeli Sgt Transfer. Note not a word about that? The First israel/Hamas Agreement? 8D
If only the GOP party was this wary about the stuff Bush put out there about Iraq we as a nation would not have ruined the world as much. Many Democrats under Bush after 9/11 were also pro Iraq war (in foreign policy the two parties seem to be identical) or were just too afraid to be labeled peaceniks/appeasers after 9/11 to vote against going to war in Iraq.
"This is what economic policy in the West has become--a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population." Paul Craig Roberts
If only the GOP party was this wary about the stuff Bush put out there about Iran we as a nation would not have ruined the world as much. They were and are Very aware. It's about the oil. The $. The USSAEmpire. When Ron Paul announces Paul Craig Roberts as his running mate, they'll have to shoot 'em on the spot.
You might be right about that James. I heard it mentioned once in the news.
Panetta was in Israel this weekend. Panetta to Bibi: "OK. Here's what we're gonna do." 8D And note Zero follow thru on that Iran tries to kill ambassadors in DC...none. To get the Meme out. Make the AgitProp successful, there has to be constant repetition. "In his latest Antiwar.com piece, Justin Raimondo asks some of the questions that mainstream reporters never seem to think of asking (or if they do, these doubts don’t ever make it past their more credulous editors): The long narrative spun by the indictment tells us everything but what we really need to know, which is: how is it that these two Iranian “terrorists” just happened to meet up with a Mexican drug cartel assassin who just happened to be a longtime DEA informant? I guess that would be giving too much away: far better to spice up the story with scary details, such as the conversation between one of the alleged plotters and the informant, in the course of which the former says “If you have to blow up the restaurant and kill a hundred Americans, well then f*ck ‘em!” So what was the point? Same as the AQ Vids. Distraction.
I meant Iraq and Bush's lies about their WMD and al-Qaeda links that the very same skeptics of Obama's claims about Iran's hit squad accepted without thought. In fact I am pretty sure Stone and his confederates on the other websites in the past argued that Iraq sent the WMD to Lebanon or some cargo ship that sailed in circles in the middle of the ocean so it could not be found and they argued this even after Bush admitted Iraq had no WMD.
"This is what economic policy in the West has become--a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population." Paul Craig Roberts
I meant Iraq and Bush's lies about their WMD and al-Qaeda links that the very same skeptics of Obama's claims about Iran's hit squad accepted without thought. In fact I am pretty sure Stone and his confederates on the other websites in the past argued that Iraq sent the WMD to Lebanon or some cargo ship that sailed in circles in the middle of the ocean so it could not be found and they argued this even after Bush admitted Iraq had no WMD. This is the Truman doctrine. Nothing has really changed (except for scope and scale) since 1947. But it's just now so completely dated. Everyone sees the plot. Even here at LF. And now the CFR has weighed in. Bifurcation now happens. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136402/george-packer/the-broken-contract The Broken Contract Inequality and American Decline
America never followed Paine's principles. Since the 1980s, Democrats and Republicans adopted neoliberal harshness. Bush I continued Reagan's policies. Clinton hardened them. Bush II much more, and Obama matched Star Trek by going where no administration went before. For decades, working Americans were sacrificed on the alter of unprecedented wealth transfers to Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and super-rich elites grabbing all they can and wanting more. Industrial America was hollowed out. Monopoly finance capital replaced it. Casino capitalism thrived. So did unbridled government-sanctioned fraud on an incalculable scale."
Bush???? Who's Bush????
"CHANGE" you can step in..... Your pretty dumb if you think that.
Your pretty dumb if you think that. Stone, your party and political movement kissed Bush's ass up and down for 8 fucking years. Now you claim to be independent thinkers? Fuck you and yours.
"This is what economic policy in the West has become--a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population." Paul Craig Roberts
My political movement despises Bush. I'm a conservative not a liberal.
It's still too early to forget that for much of Bush's time in office "conservatives" were in the seats of power. Fuck you.
"This is what economic policy in the West has become--a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population." Paul Craig Roberts
Are you on government assistance? If not, what kind of work do you do? If you don't work are you ashamed to admit it?
#2. To: A K A Stone (#1)
#3. To: A K A Stone, CZ82, mcgowanjm (#1)
(Edited)
I don't believe Iran did what is said about them. I thin HObama is lying again.
#4. To: Godwinson (#3)
I don't believe Iran did what is said about them. I thin HObama is lying again.
#5. To: mcgowanjm (#2)
A Cover for the 1027 to one Israeli Sgt Transfer.
#6. To: Fred Mertz (#5)
You might be right about that James. I heard it mentioned once in the news.
#7. To: mcgowanjm, A K A Stone (#4)
If only the GOP party was this wary about the stuff Bush put out there about Iran we as a nation would not have ruined the world as much.
#8. To: Godwinson (#7)
If only the GOP party was this wary about the stuff Bush put out there about Iran we as a nation would not have ruined the world as much.
#9. To: All (#8)
#10. To: Godwinson (#3)
If only the GOP party was this wary about the stuff Bush put out there about Iraq we as a nation would not have ruined the world as much.
My dogs have created more shovel ready jobs than the self appointed Messiah!!!
#11. To: Godwinson (#7)
I meant Iraq and Bush's lies about their WMD and al-Qaeda links that the very same skeptics of Obama's claims about Iran's hit squad accepted without thought. In fact I am pretty sure Stone and his confederates on the other websites in the past argued that Iraq sent the WMD to Lebanon or some cargo ship
#12. To: A K A Stone (#11)
I meant Iraq and Bush's lies about their WMD and al-Qaeda links that the very same skeptics of Obama's claims about Iran's hit squad accepted without thought. In fact I am pretty sure Stone and his confederates on the other websites in the past argued that Iraq sent the WMD to Lebanon or some cargo ship
#13. To: Godwinson (#12)
Stone, your party and political movement kissed Bush's ass up and down for 8 fucking years. Now you claim to be independent thinkers? Fuck you and yours.
#14. To: A K A Stone (#13)
#15. To: Godwinson (#14)
It's still too early to forget that for much of Bush's time in office "conservatives" were in the seats of power. Fuck you.
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