The title of this post is probably truer than most of the other coverage of this bizarre incident that you’ll see elsewhere.
What you’re probably going to hear is that Iranian terrorists were paying a Mexican Drug Trafficking Organization to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador, among other things.
The convoluted story is probably much different. As the New Yorker notes:
At least six countries are part of the story: allegedly, an American who also had an Iranian passport travelled to Mexico to meet with a member of a drug cartel (who turned out to be a confidential D.E.A. informant) to recruit a hitman to kill a Saudi Arabian and maybe also attack the Israeli embassy in Argentina. (A map with pins in it would help here.)
I sometimes wonder just how much crime we could eliminate if the DEA wasn’t so busy facilitating it.
Needless to say, some are always anxious to claim direct connections between drug trafficking and terrorism, and will imply that Mexican DTO’s are ready to participate in such activities.
Silvia Longmire is properly skeptical, noting somewhat tongue-in-cheek:
Maybe Los Zetas are crazy enough to do it, but for $1.5 million dollars? Add a couple of zeros to that figure, and maybe it’s a better possibility.
Update: Glenn Greenwald properly ridicules The “very scary” Iranian Terror plot
The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. […]
To begin with, this episode continues the FBI’s record-setting undefeated streak of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular “plot†hatched by some hapless loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a failed used car salesman in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. “For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents,†explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and “no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and no one was actually ever in any danger.’â€
add this to fast and furious and our claims of bureaucracies gone rogue gain support,,since you know that Leonhardt,Kerli and Holder had no idea that either one was happening.
On the contrary, I’m betting the timing of this is designed to soften the blow of the GOP going after Holder on Fast and Furious. Holder specifically held the press conference on this “major win†from their perspective – this’ll be seen as a vindication.
It is weird and rather suspicious. Kill the Saudi ambassador in America? Enlist Mexican gangs to do the dirty work?
I don’t know about you, but if I were an Iranian spymaster I would not view Los Zetas as a reliable tool. Nor would I view the Saudi ambassador to America as a very satisfying or interesting target. If I had infiltrated America and was looking to cause an incident, I would just blow up some civilians or crash a train or something. What does the Saudi ambassador have to do with anything, and how would his assassination strike fear into the hearts of my enemies?
No. It looks to me like the Obama administration feels besieged on all sides and is looking for a distraction. The economy sucks, the gunwalker scandal is getting louder, Solyndra is embarrassing, and people have had three years to figure out that the president either cannot or will not fulfill most of his campaign promises.
To quote Jello Biafra, “The Companies think it is time we all sat down, had a serious get together, and start another war.
The President? Oh, he loves the idea… “
I agree, Paul. While I certainly don’t know the specifics yet, it does smell like several of the other “terrorism” cases we’ve had…
Some have essentially boiled down to the FBI finding some disaffected moron who was mostly hot air and convincing them to come up with some hair-brained scheme, with the FBI being their partners all the way, and then arresting them and claiming that they stopped a major terrorist plot.
The DEA loves to do that kind of thing, too, with drug conspiracies. They must have salivated at the thought of a terrorism one. The Saudi Ambassador thing sounds more like a personal grudge — perhaps the only thing the DEA could get this Iranian-American pissed off about — as opposed to a directive from Iran.
Reading the story earlier it occurred to me that there was no reason for me to believe a word of it.
I’m not saying the story is a lie (how would I know?), just that I no longer have any sense of what to believe from our government, especially when it has to do with drugs or terrorism.
I probably should not have read this paper back in the 20th century.
Steve, your link goes to a “404” File not found error.
Always keep in mind that the DEA is suborned by CIA, and is usually its’ favorite ‘cover’ in messing around in foreign countries that have their own ideas about their own destinies, regardless of Uncle’s aims.
Case in point is Venezuela. It was under the cover of anti-drugs operations that the coup against Chavez was facilitated. And it’s why Chavez ‘pinged’ (slang for PNG a.k.a. ‘persona non grata’ as in “Get the f*ck outta my country!”) the entire DEA contingent when the coup failed. Other Developing nations took note, of course.
But this latest idiocy? I’m inclined to agree with Pete. It’s getting harder and harder to try to use ‘shiny objects’ to deflect the growing dissatisfaction of the electorate on the home front. And Holder’s attacking the dispensaries may delay the blowback from Fast and Furious, but that’s all it will do. The brakes on the steamroller have been let loose, and he’s right in its’ path. It may take a while, slowly, slowly inching forward, as Gub’mint always does when punishing its’ own, but it’s in motion now. And that means I expect in order for him to be allowed to go quietly and avoid the retribution that he sorely deserves, as is par for all Gub’mint wrongdoers lately, his resignation will come in about 6 months or so.
I am more and more reminded of the line from I, Claudius about all the poisons that lurked in the mud hatching out. A lot of government-derived ‘poisons’ have been kept just under the surface for all these years, nay, decades, and now the circumstances are ripe for their bubbling to the surface. And it really stinks when those bubbles pop open, don’t they?
One other thing to keep in mind about this story: The Zetas were trained by the top dirty-tricksters of the US military and intel agencies…ultimately for US purposes having nothing to do with Mexico’s welfare or sovereignty.
The Zetas would know when someone is trying to play them. They wouldn’t be so foolish to forget how those who trained them wanted them to be US cat’s-paws, not ‘free agents’. They’d smell a set-up like this a mile away.
Holder must really be reaching for straws if he thinks this will deflect the fallout from Fast and Furious. This is just too laughable.
“One other thing to keep in mind about this story: The Zetas were trained by the top dirty-tricksters of the US military and intel agencies…ultimately for US purposes having nothing to do with Mexico’s welfare or sovereignty.
The Zetas would know when someone is trying to play them. They wouldn’t be so foolish to forget how those who trained them wanted them to be US cat’s-paws, not ‘free agents’. They’d smell a set-up like this a mile away.
When I read this that’s exactly what I thought. Or something to the effect of “The only reason they let him walk away from that meeting was to see what he’d do.”
so is Holder Kap,,and Kerli,,but I am sick of laughing at them with so few,,so I am going to any comments section about F&F and attempting to keep people focused on the wrongness of selling that many guns to the enemy of your ally. A hundred guns sold to cartel agents and followed to their final destination is intelligence gathering,,thousands of guns and not tracking them at all is self serving gun running.
If we had not found out about the ATF selling the guns,,they would have used the extra guns available to the cartels as a leverage for more budget.
Remember also that the Zetas of yesterday are not the Zetas of today. Those that we trained have been thinned out a lot.
If we trained ’em right (an in my experience, we usually do), they passed all of that along to their recruits.
And, if you knew the Mex;ican psyche, you’d know they don’t pass anythng onward. It’s called “job security.” They share nothing beneficial to others, amongst themselves. How we trained them and what they did with it are like night and day.
That’s a disadvantage I’m glad we don’t share. Didn’t think about that, Ez. Certainly wasn’t that way in C.A.
…and you’re right I know nothing about the Mexican Culture (I prefer the term culture here, the human “psyche” is most definitely NOT the part responsible). My experience in Mexico is limited to one seriously fucked up day in T.J. when I was 17. That was 1977, if yer wondering.
TUT-TUT Dark,,you are too old to be listened too! I am glad us older guys listen too each other though.
With the DEA involved, we can expect things are screwed up in dozens of ways and that operatives are working in the background to cover up the DEA’s mistakes. This would make DEA involvement the Achilles-heel to pursue in making sense of a totally bizarre assassination plot.
The ATF gun running issue may be peripheral to the timing of the arrest, a part of something bigger. It’s no secret Israel wants to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Arbabsiar could be a double agent working for the Americans, or the double agent may have been the person who induced Arbabsiar to get involved in the plot. The real mission could be to provide yet another excuse for various nations so inclined to go to war with Iran. All of which would make the current scheme a more refined version of the Nigerian uranium-yellow-cake caper that the Bushists tried to use to justify the Iraq invasion.
Which may be why “Congressman Peter King (R-New York), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called the scheme an ‘act of war’ five times during a five-minute CNN interview.†Even the Democrats are rattling sabers: “It is a tremendous opportunity for the United States and the world to create pressure (on Iran),” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) said, “We have the opportunity to change the dynamics.”
Ref: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/12/us/iran-next-steps/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
“…change the dynamics” = get even more US Service personnel killed for oil. While making governments in the entire region ever more unstable, and liable to be taken over by Muslims hostile to future US peace entreaties. How frakkin’ dumb can you get? If you p*ss in the well, you can’t sanely expect any thanks from your neighbors…and you have no right to make faces at the taste.
One thing about declining empires is that they tend to be governed by increasingly out-of-touch rulers intent upon making their lunacy a reality. Just look at our prohibs; a perfect symptom of that…
> Steve, your link goes to a “404″ File not
> found error.
Oops! Thanks… I knew that, too.
The paper (Memetic Engineering – PsyOps and Viruses for the Wetware, by Michael Wilson) came from the very interesting web site of an outfit called 7 Pillars Partners. The site existed before the second US-Iraq war started, but their stuff was pulled, no longer linked shortly after that. I imagined (?) the blackout was because of the war or the changes coming about after 9-11. Whatever… The Wayback Machine had their stuff cached for quite a while after that, but now that cache is gone, too.
I cached the paper itself here.
I just found someone else who admires Wilson’s slant on things, and he’s got quite a bit more of it cached than I do. The first link is to the paper I mentioned, and there’s some info about the author, too.
Many, many thanks! I haven’t read much of this work, and am ashamed to admit I hadn’t known of it at all, but it’s the kind of thing that is like oxygen to me. Much obliged!
My pleasure.
The introduction to the cache of Wilson stuff that I found yesterday includes a comment about Wilson having been gentlemanly in correspondence, and that the cache was compiled without Wilson’s permission (not that Wilson objected, just that he hadn’t been asked, I guess). I only corresponded with Wilson once that I recall, and that was to ask his permission to cache some of his stuff. He said yes in a gentlemanly way. ;>)
It’s too bad you can’t count on things you find on the internet staying there. Not even on the Wayback Machine. I need to get better about local caching of worthy stuff in order not to have it go poof.
Steve, that’s WAY better than a 404 error. I had heard about this before. Richard Brodie and I are old friends, and I knew this was one of the inspirations for his book. He would never admit having seen it, but having read it again at this point I’m sure he was lying. I’m gonna send this off to him with a message: LOL!
And you’re RIGHT….this was floating around for a while then-BAM- gone. I was never able to find it again to confront Rich with….He-he! P.S. He also claims to have never heard of Dawkins and the original meaning of “meme’ (eg, as the smallest theoretical unit of memory).
You made an old psychologist smile, and your gonna help me give Brodie a fit! Thanks!
I mean it, Brodie made me look bad at a conference once over this when he was still pushing his book. Now I gnash my teeth whenever I hear the term “meme” used in that context!
The dea are nothing more that the equivalant of Nazi brown shirts running around creating trouble and when they bumble their own doing they feel this justifys their sad jobs. A question. How much does it cost to fly a helicopter with detection equipment and all the trimmings and toys to bust someone with four immature plants? Who ever is responsible for this should be brought up on something.By the way plant nettles they have a similar heat/light signature as mj.Plant every where.Like johnny .
On the update: I figured that this is another of those ‘low hanging fruit/groundfall’ jobs the Feebs have been doing lately. Can’t actually get to real terrorists…so they’ll make some. Straw men with pulses.
One more instance of a Fed agency that is need of some serious pruning, itself. For how long will it be before they create a Frankenstein’s Monster that gets away from them and can really do some damage? We’ve already seen what the BATF is willing to do to orchestrate stunts in order to justify their continued existence. (Recall Waco? Same kind of thing.) The Feebs, with vastly more resources, can make a vastly greater catastrophe. It’s just waiting to happen…
Thank God Jesus Buddha and Yeah even the Wiccan Gods cause reading all of this crap with DEA GOP Holder Fast and Furious infuriates me to no end thank the Gods I have cannabis TO CALM ME DOWN shit.
I too find myself having to increase my medication,,since my recommendation reads,,Ingest until medication occurs,,repeat as necessary,,the medicine hasn’t lost it’s effects but the necessary has increased.
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Terror plot or drug deal? DEA drug sting operation at the heart of the Iran ‘assassination’ plot:
“On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.â€
http://www.truth-out.org/fbi-account-terror-plot-suggests-sting-operation/1318603143
Going bored out of my mind on a Saturday night but I just thought up a funny one.
A drug dealer and a DEA agent are in a strip-bar and the drug dealer says to the agent, “Man, if I didn’t lose my last shipment to the feds, I’d be able to buy anyone of these girls!” and the DEA agent says, “I know, I sold that shipment and just bought one myself, here she comes now!”