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Grenades from Contra war being used now in Mexico violence

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Enrique Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-20-10 10:50 AM
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Grenades from Contra war being used now in Mexico violence
Edited on Tue Jul-20-10 10:51 AM by Enrique
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071606252.html

(...)

The majority of grenades have been traced back to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, according to investigations by agents at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and their Mexican counterparts. ATF has also found that almost 90 percent of the grenades confiscated and traced in Mexico are more than 20 years old.

The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush sent 300,000 hand grenades to friendly regimes in Central America to fight leftist insurgents in the civil wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, according to declassified military data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Federation of American Scientists.

Not all grenades found in Mexico are American-made. Many are of Asian or Soviet and Eastern European manufacture, ATF officials said, probably given to leftist insurgents by Cuba and Nicaragua's Sandinistas.

One of the most common hand grenades found in Mexico is the M67, the workhorse explosive manufactured in the United States for American soldiers and for sale or transfer to foreign militaries. Some 266,000 M67 grenades went to El Salvador alone between 1980 and 1993, during the civil war there.

(...)
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Pavulon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-20-10 10:53 AM
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1. I would bet the majority of weapons are
ak variants from central and south america and m16Ax rifles imported legally from the US to mexican LEO agencies.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-20-10 10:56 AM
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2. I heard about it this morning, maybe on Laura's show.
Iran Contra is going to be with us forever. :grr:
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