Guns, Drugs And The Trouble With Borders

The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

The column that brought these passions to the fore was Monday's column about how American guns coming illegally over the border into Mexico are fueling bloody violence by drug cartels.

The Washington Post reported that 100 percent of drug-related killings in Mexico are carried out with smuggled American weapons, according to Mexican police. About 2,000 enter Mexico each day, according to a Mexican government study.

The guns are "crucial tools in an astoundingly barbaric war between rival cartels that has cost 4,000 lives in the past 18 months and sent law enforcement agencies in Washington and Mexico City into crisis mode," the Post reported.

Several readers weren't buying it at all, suggesting that the story was looking for problems in the wrong place. "Guns are not to blame for a failed drug prohibition policy," wrote gunownerdan. "The 'War On Drugs' is a drug gang''s best friend. How else can they have a monopoly on billions of dollars in black market profits?!?"

"The root of Mexico's drug cartel problem isn't guns from the US," wrote Sevenveils. "It is the vast corruption of the Mexican government that has created an healthy environment for drug cartels. When it comes to patrolling the US Mexican border, the Mexican police aren't in that picture. Perhaps Mexico should build a fence to keep the gun smugglers from illegally entering Mexico."

Sounding a common theme, gunownerdan also wrote, "I love my AK-47! All responsible, freedom-loving American families should have one."

Mr. Snowflake Takes Some Heat

Another column that got readers' blood boiling was Thursday's news that the Washington Post had swiped a sampling of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's daily missives to staff (known as "snowflakes" because of their frequency) during his last four years running the Pentagon.

In May 2004, he considered rebranding the war America was fighting, weighing whether to redefine terrorism as a "worldwide insurgency." The goal of the enemy, he wrote, is to "end the state system, using terrorism, to drive non-radicals from the world." He then instructed his aides to "test what the results would be" if the war on terrorism were renamed. Apparently, those tests weren't so positive.

In the same memo, he complained that oil wealth had at times detached Muslims "from the reality of work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed," he wrote. "An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."

The word "war criminal" was bandied about a lot, but ultimately some readers thought there was too much fuss. "Why are we still talking about this whining liar?" asked Candide777. "When he''s indicted, let me know."

Same goes for roger_inkart, regarding the Muslims comment: "Hey, the guy is allowed to have an opinion on the matter. I'm not sure I disagree. Now, with that said - the problem I have with Rumsfeld is that he's a lying, arrogant, hypocritical, incompetent megalomaniac with more concern for his own ego then the US military, America''s reputation and the well-being a security of the nation's citizens. Other than I have no problem with him."

A NOTE TO READERS: The Skinny is available via e-mail. Click here and follow the directions to register to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.