Interesting Data Point

I picked up the current issue of Tucson's alt.weekly, and ran across an opinion piece concerning a local artist whose subject matter is the border and narcotics trafficking.  Near the bottom of the piece was this, however - and bear in mind, this is the local lefty rag:

Consider the scandal du jour, the "Fast and Furious" sting operation in which U.S. agencies secretly facilitated the purchase and transmittal of thousands of weapons from U.S. gun dealers to Mexican drug cartels. It may seem like an isolated instance of bad judgment, corruption or incompetence, but it's really a perfectly logical dynamic of a vast industry that annually generates somewhere between $350 billion and $500 billion—a massive, global current of cash that actually kept some banks afloat during the 2008 financial crisis.

A high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel has testified that his organization received from U.S. and Mexican authorities guarantees of immunity and all the weapons it would need to crush its competitors—an ongoing initiative that's resulted in an incredible escalation of violence in Mexico over the past few years.

It's quite possible that "Fast and Furious" was not a sting at all, but was intended to aid the Sinaloans in their efforts to recapture the quieter "good ol' days" when they enjoyed a virtual monopoly.

(Emphasis in original.)  Hmmm.  When even your team isn't covering for you anymore....