[Appenianags]

I'm still trying to understand why are we arming drug dealers? Have we been importing crack cocaine into this country the past 30 years, too?

In all three cases (the two under Bush and the 1 under Obama) the goal was to catch higher up people in the cartel red handed with the guns. Sure, they could catch the low level mules but that doesn't really do anything to stop the cartels so the idea was to work with Mexican police to arrest them once the guns were delivered to cartel officials in Mexico (that way you have rock solid proof of a crime). The problem is the Mexican police were both incompetent and corrupt as they either failed to track the mules on their side of the border and in some cases even tipped off cartel members. The basic idea of catching the middle management guys instead of just the hired mules was nice but the big weak point in all three operations was the Mexican police not doing their jobs. Also these were local office operation in Arizona so it's hard to tie them to high level officials in either administration so, once again, we're back to nothing more than election year partisan BS.