Back in December, border patrol Brian Terry was shot and killed by a group of Mexican thieves who were believed to have been preying on undocumented immigrants. The gun which was used to kill him was later traced to an Arizona gun store. Even more appalling, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives purposefully permitted the weapon to “walk” into the hands of drug lords and gun runners. It was all part of an ATF operation entitled Fast and Furious which allowed guns to be trafficked south of the border with the hope that they would lead authorities to high-level cartel operatives.

Special Agent John Dodson — the program’s whistle blower — told Univision’s Jorge Ramos yesterday that he found Fast and Furious morally reprehensible, pointing out that it might have led to the death of over a thousand people:

My motivation is simply because this isn’t what we signed up for, this isn’t what we do as law enforcement officers, as an agency, this is not what we do as ATF. My mission for coming out here was to stop this kind of activity. To prevent as much firearms trafficking as I can and then as I learned that my agency, as I believed, is perhaps contributing to that, at the very least condoning it, allowing it to occur right underneath our noses, if not contributing to it – I disagree with professionally, morally, ethically and I felt that I had an obligation of all these things to try and do something about it. [...]

We knew that these weapons were going to end up in crimes; they were going to a known criminal organization; that was the whole theory behind the case. So you have 1,800 guns that you let go, imagine if you only had one bullet for each gun, or you get one death for each gun, that is 1,800 people.

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is calling on Congress to hold hearings on the ATF’s efforts to stem the flow of weapons to Mexico. Ironically, it’s the NRA lobby that has so weakened the ATF and rendered it leaderless since 2006. The Washington Post recently reported that for “over nearly four decades, the NRA has wielded remarkable influence over Congress, persuading lawmakers to curb ATF’s budget and mission and to call agency officials to account at oversight hearings.”

Yet, according to The Hill, the NRA hopes that “the public discussion [about Fast and Furious] will help kill a request from federal regulators for more authority to track gun purchases in the southern border states.” That request would involve requiring gun dealers to report multiple sales of rifles and shotguns to ATF. According to the NRA, the reporting requirement “would flood the agency with even more reports of legal transactions, while likely driving criminal traffickers further underground.” Yet, experts argue that the proposal could save thousands of lives from drug cartel violence.

In 2010, MSNBC reported that Mexican cartels are taking advantage of lax U.S. gun laws which the NRA has lobbied hard for. At that time, around 80 percent of the 90,000 weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities were purchased in the U.S.

Watch the interview [in Spanish]:
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Staring into his magic neocon 8-Ball, Jackson Diehl writes that Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi’s “scorched-earth campaign to save himself has not only stopped and partially reversed the advance of rebel forces on Tripoli during the past two weeks; it has done the same to the broader push for Arab democracy”:

If he survives, the virus of repressive bloodshed and unyielding autocracy could flow back through the region.

Maybe it already has. Egypt has seen dangerous outbursts of violence the past couple of weeks, including sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians. Security forces in Yemen have attacked crowds in the capital, Sanaa, with live ammunition twice in the past week, and violent clashes have resumed between security forces and protesters in Bahrain.

Pro-democracy forces outside of Egypt and Tunisia have stalled. Algeria and Morocco have gone quiet. In Saudi Arabia on Friday, a “day of anger” advertised for weeks on Facebook failed to produce a significant turnout. And there has been no sign of rebellion in the Arab country whose dictatorship rivals Gaddafi’s for ruthlessness: Syria.

This is, to put it charitably, unconvincing. While it’s true that Qaddafi’s eventual survival or non-survival, and the manner in which that’s achieved, will impact the calculations of authoritarian rulers in the region and the world, it’s fortune telling of the most arcane sort to suggest that the failure of the international community to step in and remove Qaddafi has caused the Middle East revolutions to stall. As if to refute his own point, Diehl quotes “one well-informed source” who lists a number of obstacles to Egyptian democratic reform — none of which have anything to do with Qaddafi.

But what’s really interesting here is this: Jackson Diehl, a huge supporter of the Iraq war, has, as far as I know, never acknowledged any of the war’s numerous negative consequences (which my colleagues and I detailed in a report last year, The Iraq War Ledger). These are not theoretical consequences, but real, actually existing consequences. It’s very hard for me to take seriously Diehl’s warnings of the possible consequences of non-intervention in Libya when he himself has yet to acknowledge the real, actually existing consequences of intervention in Iraq.

Especially when he finishes up his piece by suggesting that U.S. intervention in Syria wouldn’t be such a disaster, either. These people have learned nothing.