U.S. Smuggling WMDs into Mexico?
Jul 5th, 2006 | By Michel Marizco | Category: General News, Immigration, Organized Crime, Politics
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THE BORDER REPORT
Officials with the Government Accountability Office released a report today on how they were able to successfully sneak "enough radioactive sources in the trunks of their vehicles to make two dirty bombs," but what they failed to note is that they broke Mexican law in order to do so.
Relax, I know and you know and the Lord knows Mexicans sneak plenty of everything into our country, but we're talking about international laws here.
According to their own report, the GAO purchased the radioactive material, drove into Canada and Mexico, then pulled a U-turn back to the United States to do their undercover investigation. At no time did they let the Mexican or Canadian authorities know they were doing so.
Imagine if they'd been stopped. Don't think the Mexicans wouldn't be thrilled to pull over a carload of U.S. officials operating without country clearance with a trunkload of radioactive materials. My god, it'd generate headlines for weeks.
Rather than having our investigative arm of Congress driving around with radioactive material in hopes of catching U.S. port officials unawares, may I suggest we avoid an embarassing international incident and focus on problems that really do exist rather than create these alarmista fictions?
Their report, heavy on the details, fails to note whether they let the Mexican goverment know they were making a run for the border starting in that country with the WMD materials. They made the same type of bomb-run into Canada during the same time period, July to December 2005.What's also interesting is that this report didn't seem to be ordered by any member of Congress. Did the GAO initiate this by themselves?
I noticed they jumped on the terrorism bandwagon, saying they conducted the investigation because "given today’s unprecedented terrorism threat environment and the resulting widespread congressional and public interest in the security of our nation’s borders, GAO conducted an investigation testing whether radioactive sources could be smuggled across U.S. borders."
Is it getting to close to budget-justification season again?
Terrorists can strike anywhere, at any time. They could drop a kilo of heroin in the Central Arizona Project and give 2 million people the jitters. They can bomb a Safeway at rush hour or blow up a federal building with the same materials used to make meth. Why are inner-border threats not addressed?
That's not to say Customs and Border Protection gets off the hook.
In the Canadian border attempt, the Customs and Border Protection officer identified the radioactive substance but didn't question the validity of the permissions the undercover GAO investigators handed over to him.
At the border crossing with Mexico, the CBP official again failed to question the falsified documents.
Boom.
What are we paying these inspectors for? I sit in that line for an hour or more while they search Every. Single. Car. One. At. A. Time.
Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, every press release closes with a paragraph stating that CBP is dedicated first and foremost to guarding the nation's borders against terrorists.
But the whole GAO report smells like exagerrated horsehit to me and I'll explain why.
GAO argues terrorists could enter the country with radioactive material and distribute enough particles in the air to contaminate an area. They call it a weapon of mass "disruption."
But they purchased the material in Washington, D.C.
So, if terrorists want to make a dirty bomb, the materials are readily available in the United States already.
There's no need to smuggle the bombs in from Mexico, anybody apparently, can do it right here.
