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7/25/2007: “Guard’s Border Mission to be Halved” — The number of National Guard troops along the Arizona-Mexico border will be trimmed in half by the end of next month. As the presidentially mandated Operation Jumpstart mission begins its second year in support of the U.S. Border Patrol, the number of troops is being reduced as planned. It will be trimmed from 6,000 to 3,000 nationally and from 2,400 to 1,200 in Arizona, said National Guard Capt. Kristine Munn. The pullout began July 1 and is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 1.

Hired Guns at the Border? The Contracting Has Begun: I take it that a private contracting company, DynCorp International of Virginia, is sending out press releases (basically advertising itself) hoping to be hired by Homeland Security in this border region. It is offering ‘to train and deploy 1,000 private agents to the U.S.-Mexican border within 13 months, offering a quick surge of law enforcement officers to a region struggling to clamp down on illegal immigration.’

It’s starting to look like that movie we’ve already seen too many times during the Bush/Cheney regime. A caller to the Ed Schultz show named “Captain Bob”, former USMC officer, informs us that a fellow jarhead he’s friends with is working for Blackwater, and that Homeland Security is currently working on a contract negotiation with them to patrol the US-Mexico border. They’re (right at this very moment) arranging for Blackwater personnel to be deputized! Where did this money come from?

7/26/2007: “Senate Passes $3 Billion For Border Patrol” — The money approved Thursday would go toward seizing “operational control” over the U.S.-Mexico border by using additional Border Patrol agents, vehicle barriers, border fencing and observation towers. In addition, there is Cornyn’s effort against people who overstay their visas. Graham said the $3 billion would pay for “more boots on the ground, more people patrolling our border making it harder for somebody to come across illegally. We should have done this a long time ago.” The deal, approved by an 89-1 vote, resurrects a GOP plan to pass some of the most popular parts of Bush’s failed immigration bill. That includes money for additional Border Patrol agents and fencing along the southern border.

Was this the plan all along? Starve the beast until the clamor for border security grew loud enough that they could justify outsourcing it? Let’s check the archives:

2/9/2005: “Bush budget scraps 9,790 border patrol agents” — President uses law’s escape clause to drop funding for new homeland security force — Officially approved by Bush on Dec. 17 after extensive bickering in Congress, the National Intelligence Reform Act included the requirement to add 10,000 border patrol agents in the five years beginning with 2006. Roughly 80 percent of the agents were to patrol the southern U.S. border from Texas to California, along which thousands of people cross into the United States illegally every year.

But Bush’s proposed 2006 budget, revealed Monday, funds only 210 new border agents. The shrunken increase reflects the lack of money for an army of border guards and the capacity to train them, officials said. Retired Adm. James Loy, acting head of the Department of Homeland Security until nominee Michael Chertoff takes over, said funding only 210 new agents was a “recognition that we need to balance those things as we go on down the road with other priorities.” The White House referred questions about the border agents to the Homeland Security Department.

Saudi Arabia is responsible for the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq¹, and in terms of funding², has for decades been facilitating the flow of funds from collection plates to madrassahs in places like Pakistan, and also to finance jihad³ – holy war – in countries like Iraq. When the topic of fundamentalist Islam, or what the far right refers to as Islamofacism, is brought up in political discussion, the common mistake that is made, perhaps willfully on the part of those who make it most often, is to discriminate based on factors outside the realm of religion. A case in point being the frequent naming of groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, none of whom represent a US partner in trade, as opposed to the Saudi government with whom certain US firms profit through oil/gas services contracts⁴. Any question regarding why our foreign policy is incoherent in this regard, can be answered quite simply by identifying which states we already do business with, and which states we do not.

To recreate the circumstances that provided us leverage in establishing such a rich arrangement with Saudi Arabia would be extremely difficult, as the preface to all this was a perceived threat of invasion during the first Gulf War, where Saudi Arabia feared the ability of Saddam Hussein to invade their kingdom just as he had Kuwait. US protection from this threat is what kicked open the door, and as we are realizing the hard way in Iraq, without such circumstances in place prior to the use of force, the opportunity for rich trade agreements, particularly in the oil/gas services industry, become much more difficult to secure. Going on over four years now, we are no more closer to securing such deals with Iraq as we already have in place with Saudi Arabia than we were before the government of Iraq was first elected⁵. The pattern up to this point is unmistakably one of purposeful delay, as the Iraqi parliament understands all too well what is expected of them. At the end of 2006, Iraqi politicians saw that the American public turned on its President and his policy in Iraq. This correctly indicated to them that the best strategy would be to neglect the goal of reaching an agreement on the disbursement of energy resources, and whether or not foreign companies would be granted contracts to extract it. Continue reading →