I think there is a lot of historical precedent for this, bad historical precedent, in the late 1800s deep south during the reconstruction period prior to the formation of the KKK.

I understand that military tribunals and summary executions for "disloyalty to the republic" were fairly common, with federal edicts enforced brutally by what was often a combination force of US troops and federally appointed local marshals.

Right now in Mexico, they functionally have Army administered summary roadside executions for such crimes as suspected assault weapon ownership.

The response currently in Mexico and then in the 1870s deep south was terrorism, in the south by the Klan while they quickly built up a political base and were the dominant political force in much of that area for close to 70 years, asserting states rights and functional independence while never really having official independence. Some would say that the feds never really beat the Klan in the deep south, but their influence was diluted by the eventual mass migrations back and forth throughout the country which left pockets of Klan influence in all northern states, and large regions of non-Klan control in all southern states, especially Florida which had been attractive to immigrants from the Caribbean and the north for a long time.

The issue on this with the Arabs is over who started it and why. Padilla is an interesting case and personally, I think he was the "John Doe" at the OKC bombing but of course would never be able to prove it, except that Padilla has been so fucked with in isolation cells and dope therapy that he would probably throw in a confession to killing MLK and Kennedy just to even things out from a political standpoint, and maybe get a candy bar from the guards.

I think there is another issue on the killing of Brian Terry that nobody in the federal government wants to face, and that is an issue that would be relevant whether or not the shooters used a gun in that operation that came from the fast and furious program or not.

The particular Sinaola cartel that had been the beneficiaries of the F&F operation were working hand in hand with the State Department and elements of the DEA (although I had been told that certain DEA offices were kept out of this). Cartel lawyers have documented the cooperation and used it in court when their people got arrested elsewhere, however the idea was this thing of "using one cartel to fight the others", apparently as a result of secret meeting in Mexico between US officials and the Mexican cartel. The Cartel leadership took this as a high level authorization to engage in drug cartel activities.

Read all of the related documents carefully folks. "Fighting the other cartels" does not mean cage fights, legal battles in court, or some euphemistic symbolic thing, it means sending crews of hitmen to go out and kill agents, sympathizers, and even government officers who are aligned with an enemy cartel. It is quite plainly, a death squad war. Quite often those death squads are hired directly from off duty law enforcement, and on BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER, on duty official law enforcement officers who are sympathetic and helpful to a particular cartel.

The deals made between prosecutors, law enforcement and the cartel lawyers are usually laid out with very clear understandings. You are talking about smart, realistic amoral people who know how to make deals with each other, you are not talking about unrealistic inexperienced naive idealists like we have looked at in the past, or even with what is prevalent in the Arab world. Nobody in the cartel world expects their 99 virgins for a suicide bombing, but they might expect 99 relatives to be slaughtered if they screw up the delivery of a multimillion dollar drug shipment where "all legal arrangements have been made, so it is entirely on you (and your 99 relatives) to make sure not to screw this up."

So while the cartel "smugglers" and security people are going through the motions of running the dope as a clandestine operation, they get bold and lackadaisical about secrecy when they figure "all of the arrangements are made higher up anyway". When a group of BP agents come to harass the shipment, and then suddenly get rude, it is seen as either enemy cartel action or extreme insubordination, both of which are punishable by instant death in the cartel world, and its not like someone there is unaware of the rules.

Thing is, the prosecutors and US government officials "higher up" were given everything that the cartel promised in the deal. The cartel promised hellfire and brimstone on enemy cartels, they promised information on US suppliers of weapons (just basically confirming who the straw-boy purchasers were) and effectively were running a quasi government level registration process on the guns since the cartel has acted as a defacto government in several parts of Southern Mexico.

The cartel got "protection" for their activities, including smoothly handled shipments of weapons heading south, and at this point, undisclosed lack of interference with shipments heading north, but it is pretty clear to me that the cartel shooters realistically interpreted their agreement with the US government as implicit permission to deal with interference using measures of extreme prejudice. For all anyone knows, Brian Terry was associated with just another enemy cartel and had been using his badge to try and horn in on a cartel shipment that he was not associated with. Now out of respect for his family, I would point out that would be an assumption made by ANY cartel shipment supervisor who was interfered with in the desert, and not a reflection on my belief in Brian Terry's personal character or outlook on life. In all reality, he could have been just another federal employee following orders and doing his job to his utmost ability.

The issue then is not where a particular gun came from, but who pulled the trigger and why, the WHY being the big issue here. The reason WHY is clear, and made clear by tracing the origin of the weapons: the killing was performed by a cartel security team that felt they were authorized to carry out the combat action.

While that authority did not get bestowed on them directly by the US government, the information we have so far about F&F clearly demonstrates that a portion of the US government did clearly align themselves with an organization that carried out such activities on a regular basis and was "authorized by the agreement to carry out cartel related business", which is clearly documented in submissions made by the cartel lawyers in various openly reported cases.

I can't cite the various sources on this, but within the next few hours when this posting gets plagiarized through several alphabet agencies, the people doing the plagiarization can probably more easily cross reference the documentation than I can.