Elections in Georgia: U.S. and NATO Lose their “Geopolitical Chess Queen”

Global Research
John Robles

It is no secret that Saakashvili is the “West’s man in the Caucasus” the darling of Hillary Clinton and Obama’s US State Department, NATO headquarters and the Pentagon and the intelligence services of the UK and the US. He is yet another despotic dictator that has murdered, oppressed, strangled, tortured and subjugated his people with the support of the West in exchange for advancing their geopolitical agenda in yet another region far removed from their own borders yet where they want control.

As there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, Saakashvili has a lot to worry about and had better stock up on ties.

Saakashvili was one of the crowning jewels in NATO’s and the West’s consolidation of power and control after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The loss by Mikheil Saakashvili’s party in parliamentary elections in Georgia may spell the end for his regime and a return to democracy in Georgia. It may also spell the warming of relations, soured by Saakashvili, between Russia and Georgia. For the West the elections may be the first step towards his removal from power, the loss of a queen, in their game of geopolitical chess.

Suffering an unexpected blow at the polls in the parliamentary elections, tie-eating Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in the middle of the night conceded defeat, opening the trap-door beneath his own feet and paving the way for real change and real democracy in Georgia, but pundits and experts are already saying that he will undoubtedly find a reason to dissolve parliament and call for new elections.

The blow to the plutocratic despot is one that the West cannot allow to stand as they have too much to lose and have invested far too much to quietly just go away, lose their influence and simply mothball all of their plans for the integration of Georgia into the Western sphere.

It is no secret that Saakashvili is the “West’s man in the Caucasus” the darling of Hillary Clinton and Obama’s US State Department, NATO headquarters and the Pentagon and the intelligence services of the UK and the US. He is yet another despotic dictator that has murdered, oppressed, strangled, tortured and subjugated his people with the support of the West in exchange for advancing their geopolitical agenda in yet another region far removed from their own borders yet where they want control.

The VOR’s Dmitry Babich has already gone into the hypocrisy of the West with regard to Saakashvili, so I won’t go into that right now. Suffice it to say that the hypocrisy when it comes to Saakashvili is total and all-encompassing and characterizes total anti-Russian hysteria by the West, something they need to propagate to continue to have support for their intrusions on the sovereignty of the countries in the region and to justify their aggressive military build-up and the expansion of NATO into the Caucasus.

What the complete loss of power of the Saakashvili regime will mean for the West and for Saakashvili himself is hard to predict exactly: the opposition has shown leniency toward him, so it is possible he may remain in some sort of position of power for the mid-term. However, what few have focused on is that his loss may open the door to prosecution and punishment for the crimes he has committed against his own people and against innocent civilians.

These crimes include the recent revelations that his “security” apparatus was responsible for torturing and illegally detaining people opposed to his regime and a plethora of charges that could be brought in relation to how his regime has stifled dissent and cracked down on anyone opposed to his regime. But that would only be the start: there are those who have accused Saakashvili of crimes that could be tantamount to treason for selling out his country to the interests of the West. Although prosecution for such a crime is unlikely, that would be one possibility which would end in his execution.

The biggest worry for Saakashvili and his Western paymasters right now should be whether Saakashvili will end up having to face the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. According to an article regarding a European Union-Commissioned Report on the invasion of South Ossetia in 2008 by Russia Today, back in October of 2009, citing Interfax, Nestan Kirtadze, international secretary of Georgia’s Labor Party concluded that:

“The commission accused Saakashvili of war crimes. Namely, of unleashing active hostilities, of a massive, wide-scale military operation in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval and the use of prohibited types of weapons, of shelling and destroying non-military facilities, and of attacking military personnel from the peacekeeping mission that was mandated by the United Nations.”

As there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, Saakashvili has a lot to worry about and had better stock up on ties.

The winners of the parliamentary elections have said that they will normalize relations with Russia, with the West screaming indignantly about “Russian influence” as they once again conveniently ignore their own attempts at influencing the country.

As we might recall, Georgia shares almost half of her borders with Russia and has classically fallen into Russia’s sphere of influence. We should also remember that until Saakashvili came to power Russia and Georgia shared a rich and proud history and very close ties and good relations in trade, economic and other areas of cooperation, education and more. This was beneficial for the peoples of both countries.

Saakashvili was one of the crowning jewels in NATO’s and the West’s consolidation of power and control after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Who would have ever thought that the country that gave the world the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ Joseph Stalin would become a pawn of Western expansionism?

The fall of Saakashvili would mean many things for many people. For one, tens of thousands of refugees from Georgia that have fled to Europe and other countries could finally return home. It would also mean the utter failure of Hillary Clinton and the West’s plans at geopolitical domination in Russia’s backyard, a nice retirement present and the crowning failure of her diplomatic career.

Regardless of all my musings it is too early to count our chickens. Saakashvili is still in power and will do everything possible, including killing his own people, to stay in power. We will probably see attempts to dissolve parliament, call for a recount of the vote, which he will win, and a massive crack-down on the Georgian opposition. Saakashvili has too much to lose to quietly acquiesce, and has shown he has no qualms about taking his country down into the abyss with him.
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U.S. warned European governments not to support Palestinian state

JTA

The United States reportedly warned European governments in a memorandum not to support a Palestinian bid for increased status at the United Nations.

The memorandum, which was seen by the British newspaper the Guardian, called giving the Palestinians enhanced non-member state status "extremely counterproductive" and threatened "significant negative consequences" for the Palestinian Authority, including financial sanctions, the newspaper reported on Oct. 1.

The memorandum, sent by U.S. officials to representatives of European governments at the United Nations General Assembly last week in New York, said that Palestinian statehood "can only be achieved via direct negotiations with the Israelis." It called on the European governments to block Palestinian attempts to be recognized as a non-member state.

It also asked each government where it stands on the issue and said the U.S. was interested in knowing whether the European government had been approached by Palestinian representatives.

The Palestinians reportedly will wait until after November's U.S. presidential elections to make their bid in the General Assembly, where the United States does not have a veto, for the new status. They will, however, press for a vote by the end of the year and expect the issue to pass by a "comfortable majority," according to the Guardian.

Mexican Diplomat Says America Pretty Much Invited The Sinaloa Drug Cartel Across The Border

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

Leaked emails from the private U.S. security firm Stratfor cite a Mexican diplomat who says the U.S. government works with Mexican cartels to traffic drugs into the United States and has sided with the Sinaloa cartel in an attempt to limit the violence in Mexico.

Many people have doubted the quality of Stratfor's intelligence, but the information from MX1—a Mexican foreign service officer who doubled as a confidential source for Stratfor—seems to corroborate recent claims about U.S. involvement in the drug war in Mexico.

Most notably, the reports from MX1 line up with assertions by a Sinaloa cartel insider that cartel boss Joaquin Guzman is a U.S. informant, the Sinaloa cartel was "given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago," and Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for information used to take down rival cartels.

An email with the subject "Re: From MX1 -- 2" sent Monday, April 19, 2010, to Stratfor vice president of intelligence Fred Burton says:

I think the US sent a signal that could be construed as follows:

"To the [Juárez] and Sinaloa cartels: Thank you for providing our market with drugs over the years. We are now concerned about your perpetration of violence, and would like to see you stop that. In this regard, please know that Sinaloa is bigger and better than [the Juárez cartel]. Also note that [Ciudad Juárez] is very important to us, as is the whole border. In this light, please talk amongst yourselves and lets all get back to business. Again, we recognize that Sinaloa is bigger and better, so either [the Juárez cartel] gets in line or we will mess you up."

In sum, I have a gut feeling that the US agencies tried to send a signal telling the cartels to negotiate themselves. They unilaterally declared a winner, and this is unprecedented, and deserves analysis.

Bill Conroy of Narco News reports that MX1's description matches the publicly available information on Fernando de la Mora Salcedo — a Mexican foreign service officer who studied law at the University of New Mexico and served at the Mexican Consulates in El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix.

In a June 13, 2010, email with the subject "Re: Get follow up from mx1? Thx," MX1 states that U.S. and Mexican law enforcement sent their "signal" by discretely brokering a deal with cartels in Tijuana, just south of San Diego, Calif., which reduced the violence in the area considerably. 

It is not so much a message for the Mexican government as it is for the Sinaloa cartel and [the Juárez cartel] themselves. Basically, the message they want to send out is that Sinaloa is winning and that the violence is unacceptable. They want the CARTELS to negotiate with EACH OTHER. The idea is that if they can do this, violence will drop and the governments will allow controlled drug trades.

The email went on to say that "the major routes and methods for bulk shipping into the US" from Ciudad Juárez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas, "have already been negotiated with US authorities" and that large shipments of drugs from the Sinaloa cartel "are OK with the Americans."

In July a Mexican state government spokesman told Al Jazeera that the CIA and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers" as much as "try to manage the drug trade." A mid-level Mexican official told Al Jazeera that based on discussions he's had with U.S. officials working in Ciudad Juárez, the allegations were true.

WikiLeaks has published 2,878 out of what it says is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails (dated between July 2004 and December 2011) obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas.

MKO terrorists work with Mossad

Federal Jack


The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), which has often collaborated with the Israeli spy agency Mossad against the interests of Iran.

SEC Sues the One Rating Firm Not on Wall Street’s Take

Bloomberg
William D. Cohan

The Securities and Exchange Commission, it seems, has finally lost its mind.

In April, motivated by what I consider pure maliciousness, the SEC initiated a “cease and desist” administrative proceeding it deemed “necessary for the protection of investors and in the public interest” against Egan-Jones Ratings Co., a privately owned, 20-person firm based in Haverford, Pennsylvania, and against its principal owner, Sean Egan.

Egan-Jones, founded in 1995, is one of nine ratings companies that the SEC has accredited as “nationally recognized,” allowing the firm to rate the debt of sovereign nations, companies and asset-backed securities, among others. Notably, it is the only one of the nine that gets paid by investors instead of by the issuers of securities.

The bigger and better-known ratings companies -- Standard & Poor’s (owned by McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP)), Moody’s Corp. (MCO) and Fitch Ratings Ltd. -- are paid by the Wall Street banks that underwrite the debt securities of corporate issuers. That is, the companies are beholden to the sellers of the products they are supposed to pass judgment on, not the buyers. That’s akin to allowing the Hollywood studios to pay the nation’s film critics for their opinions.

Shopping Around

We all saw the result in 2007 and 2008. A major cause of the financial crisis was that S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, while being paid hundreds of millions of dollars by Wall Street, gave AAA ratings to complicated, risky securities that turned out to be anything but AAA. If a big bank didn’t like a proposed rating, it just shopped the deal until it found a firm that would provide something it liked better.

Who can forget this memorable April 2007 instant-message exchange between two S&P analysts, Rahul Dilip Shah and Shannon Mooney?

“Btw, that deal is ridiculous,” Shah wrote to Mooney about some mortgage securities they were asked to rate.

“I know, right . . . model def(initely) does not capture half the risk,” she replied.

“We should not be rating it,” he answered.

“We rate every deal,” Mooney replied. “It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”

You would have thought that after the crisis exposed this kind of abhorrent behavior -- to say nothing of the obvious conflict of interest -- the SEC would have considered scrapping the issuer-pays model on ratings. You might have even thought the SEC would have sued S&P, Moody’s and Fitch for their reckless conduct.

Alas, such obvious steps are out of the question at an SEC headed by Mary Schapiro, who previously led the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s self-financed, self-serving watchdog organization. (When Schapiro left Finra, it gave her a $9 million bonus).

True, for a while, the SEC put on a good show of wanting to reform the ratings companies. It held round-table discussions with interested parties to discuss rectifying the horrific shortcomings of S&P, Moody’s and Fitch. Robert Khuzami, the SEC’s chief enforcement officer, suggested in an interview with Reuters a year ago that the SEC was considering a lawsuit against S&P for its role in the financial collapse. But in the end, nothing changed. The issuer-pays model is still the dominant architecture for the ratings firms.

Debt Downgrade

Now, incredibly, Egan-Jones is the sole rater that the SEC has decided to attack. The trouble for the firm started on July 16, 2011, when Egan-Jones downgraded the U.S.’s sovereign debt by one notch, to AA+ from AAA. Egan-Jones cited “the relatively high level of debt and the difficulty in significantly cutting spending.” Two days later, the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations contacted the firm seeking information about its rating decision. (The next month, S&P also downgraded the U.S.’s sovereign debt, but neither Moody’s nor Fitch did.)

Then, on Oct. 12, Egan-Jones received a call from the SEC notifying the firm of a Wells Notice, an indication that it was being investigated. On April 5 of this year, Egan-Jones again downgraded the U.S. sovereign debt, to AA from AA+. On April 19, leaks started emanating from the SEC that it had voted to start an “administrative law proceeding” against the firm. And on April 24, the SEC filed its complaint.

Just what does the SEC object to so vehemently about Egan- Jones? The commission claims that on its 2008 supplemental application to be a “nationally recognized” ratings firm, Egan- Jones “falsely stated” that it had already rated the credit of 150 asset-backed securities and of 50 sovereign-debt issues. The SEC claims Egan-Jones “willfully made these misstatements and omissions to conceal the fact that it had no experience issuing ratings on ABS or government issuers.” The SEC intends to fine Egan-Jones and to possibly censure Sean Egan -- neither move would be good for business.

Egan says the SEC is making a mountain out of a molehill. He says the paperwork requirements to comply with the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act, which had been passed by Congress in 2006, was still being worked out, and that the SEC has had no problem with his firm’s annual applications since then.

His lawyer, Alan S. Futerfas, told the Wall Street Journal that the SEC knows that Egan did rate the securities in question but it is “saying he didn’t disseminate it publicly.” Futerfas continued: “It’s a very technical argument the SEC is using; it’s not substantive. There’s nothing in this complaint that suggests or alleges that any rating was without integrity or was not accurate or was not predictive.”

If he is right, that raises a question: Is the SEC retaliating against Egan and his firm for downgrading the U.S. sovereign debt?

Principled Stand

Egan told me he is determined to fight the charges because “the issuer-paid rating firms were identified as a significant source” of the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, and yet the SEC’s “response has been to hobble, in any way possible, the most vocal counterbalance to those inflated ratings.”

Egan is standing on principle even though his legal fees will probably far exceed a fine if he loses. “Anybody who looks at this would realize that this is wrong,” he said. “It provides an opportunity for a spotlight on what’s been going on over the recent past, and hopefully it will change so that it’s a more even playing field.”

Don’t get your hopes up for that, Mr. Egan.

(William D. Cohan, the author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View. Subscribe to receive a daily e-mail highlighting new View editorials, columns and op-ed articles.

Today’s highlights: the editors on the Obama administration’s transparency shortcomings and on the resurgent European debt crisis; Noah Feldman on the Supreme Court’s torture case;Albert R. Hunt on Obama’s biggest liability in debating Romney; Simon Johnson on how to assess the soundness of banks; Richard Vedder asks why colleges are too big to fail.

To contact the writer of this article: William D. Cohan at wdcohan@yahoo.com.

To contact the editor responsible for this article: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net.

Judge tosses Occupy Chicago park arrests

Chicago Tribune
David Heinzmann

The mass arrests of Occupy Chicago demonstrators that city leaders held up as a model for how to respect protesters' rights has been ruled unconstitutional and tossed out of court by a Cook County judge.

In a 37-page ruling issued today, Associate Judge Thomas Donnelly ruled the October 2011 arrests were unconstitutional because the city routinely chooses not to enforce the curfew for events the city supports, such as the 2008 Election Night rally for President Barack Obama. The judge noted that no arrests were made at that event, even though it went well past curfew.

Russia tells NATO to stay away from Syria

Reuters
Gabriela Baczynska

Russia told NATO and world powers on Tuesday they should not seek ways to intervene in Syria's civil war or set up buffer zones between rebels and government forces.

Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov

Moscow further called for restraint between NATO-member Turkey and Syria, where violence along their shared border has strained relations between the former allies.

Tensions have flared since a mortar round fired from inside Syria struck the territory of Turkey. Ankara has threatened to respond if the strike were repeated.

When asked by Interfax if Moscow worried whether the tense border situation could prompt NATO to intervene to defend Turkey, its easternmost member, Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov warned against any such step.

"In our contacts with partners in NATO and in the region, we are calling on them not to seek pretexts for carrying out a military scenario or to introduce initiatives such as humanitarian corridors or buffer zones."

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, one of Assad's most caustic critics, recently lashed out at Russia for blocking efforts at the U.N. Security Council to exert pressure on Assad and said Moscow's stance allowed massacres in Syria to continue.

Turkey has floated the idea of setting up "safe zones" inside Syria to protect civilians from the conflict but that would also have to be approved by the Security Council.

Russia and China have vetoed three Security Council resolutions condemning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and have blocked attempts to impose further sanctions on his government or intervene more directly in the conflict.

Ankara has repeatedly complained of artillery and gunfire spilling over the border into Turkey, leading to threats of retaliation.

"We believe both Syrian and Turkish authorities should exercise maximum restraint in this situation, taking into account the rising number of radicals among the Syrian opposition who can intentionally provoke conflicts on the border," Gatilov was quoted as saying.

The West accuses Russia of supporting Assad in the bloody 18-month conflict and imposing a stalemate in the Security Council as violence in Syria has spiraled.

Moscow says Syrians themselves should decide their fate and says it will veto any Security Council resolution that could serve as a springboard for military intervention.

Russia accuses the West of overstepping its mandate when it set up a no-fly zone in Libya last year, leading to the fall of Muammar Gaddafi to a popular uprising and insurgency.

Western diplomats in Moscow say Russia seems to believe Assad may still successfully cling to power though they see Russia's dialogue with some Syrian opposition groups as an attempt to secure its interests there if he were overthrown.

(Editing by Thomas Grove and Mark Heinrich)

YouTube Removes Undercover Video Showing Whole Foods GMO Misinformation

Natural Society
Anthony Gucciardi

Youtube has pulled an undercover ‘Organic Spies’ video questioning Whole Foods employees as to whether or not any of the products within Whole Foods contained GMO ingredients. Created to show how even the employees themselves are misinformed (or even dishonest) about the very real presence of Monsanto’s GMOs in a store like Whole Foods that is supposed to promote health and wellness, the Organic Spies video received over 100,000 views in a few short days.

The video has since been removed due to apparently ‘violating the Terms of Service’, according to the genetic Youtube message that appears in place of the original video. As Infowars.com’s Aaron Dykes explains, this could be due to a third party complaint (such as Whole Foods demanding it be taken down), but it is not known as YouTube no longer tells the user of the third party identity. In other words, videos like these can be taken down without a trace of who is responsible.

You can see a re-upload of the video below:

One thing is clear, however. Whole Foods definitely has its eye on the video, attempting to perform ‘damage’ control through PR statements. Whole Foods even responded to the video after it became viral on the internet, stating on their blog that they certainly do carry GMOs within their store and that their employees questioned in the video were misinformed:

“The YouTube video showing our store Team Members giving conflicting responses to a question about GMOs reminds us that while we try to keep all our 70,000 Team Members up-to-speed on the latest information, clearly we need to do more. Some products in our stores DO contain GMOs – just like any other food store in the country, due to the pervasiveness of GMOs…”

Whole Foods Should Abandon GMOs, Monsanto

Just to be clear, I do believe that Whole Foods offers consumers a pretty considerable selection of organic non-GMO options at their stores. Many items contain the Non-GMO Project verified sticker, and they are certainly multitudes more in touch with real food than the average grocer. That said, it is important that we always keep corporations in line when it comes to protecting the health of ourselves and our families.

Ever since the recent French GMO study found that Monsanto’s GMOs (and Roundup) were contributing to tumor growth and organ damage, the international alarm over GMOs has been louder than ever. This is the perfect time to spread the word over carriers like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s who still carry GMOs within their ‘natural health’ stores. After all, GMOs are not natural by any stretch of the word.

The success of the Organic Spies video signifies a serious paradigm shift in the way the average individual looks at an average business. Whole Foods, like virtually all other corporations who focus on selling direct to customer, depends entirely on the purchases of the consumer. If consumers literally demand that Whole Foods removes tumor-linked GMOs from their stories, stopping a major flow of income to Monsanto and other biotech giants, then they will be forced to comply.

Iraq: Ten Years, a Million Lives and Trillions of Dollars Later

Global Research
Dennis Kucinich

Ten years ago today the debate over the Iraq War came to Congress in the form of a resolution promoted by the Bush Administration. The war in Iraq will cost the United States as much as $5 trillion. It played a role in spurring the global financial crisis. Four thousand, four hundred, eighty eight Americans were killed. More than 33,000 were injured.

As many as 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed. The monetary cost of the war to Iraq is incalculable. A sectarian civil war has ravaged Iraq for nearly a decade. Iraq has become home to Al Qaeda.

The war in Iraq was sold to Congress and the American people with easily disproved lies. We must learn from this dark period in American history to ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes. And we must hold accountable those who misled the American public.

On October 2, 2002, the day the legislation to authorize war in Iraq was introduced, I sent and personally distributed a memo to my colleagues in Congress refuting point-by-point every reason given by the Bush Administration to go to war.

On October 3, 2002, I held a press conference with 25 Members of Congress and then presented an hour long explanation to Congress on the House Floor, refuting the lies upon which the cause of war was predicated.

It was clear from information publicly available at the time that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), that Iraq had no connection to 9/11, and that Iraq was not a threat to the United States. Anyone who wanted to look could have seen the same information that I did.

Yet some of America’s top political leaders bought into the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld drumbeat of war. Two leading Democrats were among those taken in by the White House hype and the WMD argument:

“I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people … [I]ntelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists including Al Qaeda members.” Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), October 10, 2002.

“September 11 was the ultimate wake-up call. We must now do everything in our power to prevent further terrorist attacks and ensure that an attack with a weapon of mass destruction cannot happen. … the first candidate we must worry about is Iraq… [Saddam Hussein] continues to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices.” Leader of the Democratic Caucus in the House, Richard Gephardt (D-MO), October 10, 2002.

Even the most trusted newspapers around the country blindly repeated as fact grossly incorrect assertions by leaders of both parties.

“No further debate is needed to establish that Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator whose continued effort to build unconventional weapons in defiance of clear United Nations prohibitions threatens the Middle East and beyond.” The New York Times, Editorial Board, October 3, 2002.

Notwithstanding the blizzard of disinformation, one hundred thirty three Members of Congress voted against the resolution that authorized the use of military force in Iraq, including nearly two-thirds of the Democratic Caucus in the House. Seven Republicans, including Ron Paul (R-TX), also voted against the resolution. In the Senate, the vote was 77 to 23 in favor of a war of choice.

Ten years ago Congress voted to wage war on a nation that did not attack us. That decision undermined our fiscal and national security. To this day we are suffering from the blowback. While most of the troops are home, the United States maintains a significant presence in Iraq through the State Department and its thousands of private security contractors.

The war against Iraq was based on lies. Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis were sacrificed for those lies. The war in Afghanistan continues. New wars have been propagated in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia pursuant to the never-ending “War on Terror”. This mindset puts us at the edge of war against Iran. Ten years and trillions of dollars later, the American people by and large still do not know the truth. It is time to usher in a new period of truth and reconciliation.

Dennis Kucinich is US Congressman from Ohio

Reports Of Mexican Special Forces Serving As 'Death Squads' In The Drug War

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

Mexican Army Special Forces

Ciudad Juárez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas, was perhaps the most dangerous place in the world between 2008 and 2011 as a “cartel turf war" led to more than 10,000 murders.

But U.S. and Mexican officials told Stratfor that the surge of killings can be partly attributed to Mexican special forces and hitmen who were acting as U.S. informants.

One email from a Mexican diplomat—identified by Narco News as Fernando de la Mora Salcedo—to Stratfor describes special-operations and intelligence units, embedded within the larger Mexican military force being sent to Ciudad Juárez in 2008 and 2009, that would carry out “surgical strikes” against low-level criminals.

The major groups of killers have left the city, scared shitless, to take refuge elsewhere for an indeterminate amount of time... The military will surgically remove cells that had been previously identified, but for whatever reason were not taken down yet. Periods of adjustment will ensue, but the military will fill any void left in terms of territorial control, ultimately causing the competing [drug trafficking organizations] to wait/give up.

The aim of the special forces, according to the Mexican diplomat, was to "give some breathing room to the [cartel] bosses so that they can issue orders to calm things down" and continue to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the border into the U.S. with less social violence..

Narco News' Bill Conroy notes, in the definitive piece about the units he calls "death squads," that the "military cartel" was present in 2008 based on an analysis of murder cases in Ciudad Juárez.

Conroy noticed that "the murders in Juárez are, in almost all cases, not the result of random violence or shootouts between rival drug gangs. In most cases, they are cold-blooded assassinations, often involving coordinated teams of armed, sometimes masked, men who are making use of intelligence, surveillance and paramilitary-like tactics to take out their victims."

Hitmen from Ciudad Juárez were also given the ability to cross borders and kill due to their relationship with U.S. officials, according an email with the subject "Re: INSIGHT-MEXICO/US-Mishandling of ICE informants-US714."

The email cites a "U.S. Law enforcement Officer with direct oversight of border investigations" who says that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was "handling big hitmen from Juárez and letting them kill in the U.S."

An analyst then notes that Stratfor previously covered the subject of cartel hitmen who were also ICE informants.