The State Is Not Anti-Corruption
William Norman Grigg
LewRockwell.com
November 9, 2010
“There is …no human right, natural or Constitutional, that we have not seen nullified by the United States Government.
Of all the crimes that are committed for gain or revenge, there is not one that we have not seen it commit – murder, mayhem, arson, robbery, fraud, criminal collusion and connivance.”
~ Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State
“If you ever f**k with me, you know who we are,” arms dealer Nicholas Bickle told an associate during a drive in the Nevada desert. “We’re the government, we’ll catch you.”
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
- {openx:49}
Prior to his arrest in October, Bickle was a Navy SEAL who allegedly ran a small arms smuggling ring, importing at least 80 AK-47s from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the machine guns – which were manufactured in Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Iraq – were embossed with the letter “j,” an abbreviation of the Arabic word “jaesh,” which refers to the military. The ATF has charged Bickle and two of his colleagues – Andrew Kaufman, Jr. and Richard Paul – with violations of federal firearms registration laws.
Apparently, selling firearms without government permission is a far more serious offense than murdering people abroad on the government’s orders.
“There’s still Iraqi sand in this sh*t,” Paul boasted to a supposed buyer who was actually a federal informant. The task of importing the untraceable weapons was simplified by the fact that SEALs don’t have to submit their personal effects for inspection when they fly into the country. In addition to the machine guns, Bickle’s little group also sold American-made, military-issue handguns. A search of Paul’s home in Colorado turned up night-vision goggles and a small stash of C-4. At least some of the weaponry was reportedly destined for Mexico.
Bickle’s little business was busted in familiar fashion: One of his customers was a “Cooperating Informant” on the ATF’s payroll. A fourth member of Bickle’s organization, a convicted drug trafficker facing charges of domestic violence and robbery in Nevada and referred to as “Co-Conspirator A” in the indictment, also cooperated with the ATF.
Fresh food that lasts from eFoodsDirect (AD)
The whole affair seems like the plot of a bad episode of NCIS (as if there were any other kind). The showbiz vibe is enhanced by the odd but somehow appropriate fact that Bickle conducted some of his sales meetings by cell phone while in Chicago working on the set of Transformers III (alas, Bickle’s arrest won’t prevent Michael Bay’s impending cinematic atrocity).
As is so often the case with the disposable diversions peddled by Hollywood, the most interesting aspects of this melodrama – the backstory, as it were – is being left on the cutting-room floor. It’s entirely possible that the smuggled weapons could have eventually found their way into the hands of criminal gangs here or in Mexico. But there’s a much stronger possibility that they’ve already been used by U.S.-created death squads overseas.
Five years ago, as resistance to the U.S. occupation coalesced within Iraq, the Bush Junta began discussing what it blatantly called the “El Salvador Option”: The creation of U.S.-equipped sectarian death squads that would do the filthy work of beating down Sunni insurgents.
To that end, Special Forces teams – acting under the orders of the Sainted General David Petraeus – trained and equipped Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Shi’ite guerrillas, and unleashed them to slaughter, torture, and terrorize Sunni villages and neighborhoods. The most notorious of those death squads, the “Wolf Brigade,” acquired such a fearsome reputation that American interrogators were able to break recalcitrant prisoners with the mere suggestion that they would be delivered into the hands of the Iraqi unit.
