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Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

The curious case of a country that sends its troops all over the world to “protect” the borders of other countries but strangely ignores its own border. Then again the government (through the CIA) was involved in drug running. So you want an unfortified border then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance_(book)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb

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Why not link to the actual article on the subject, which says that it was investigated multiple times and found to be false? Did I answer my own question?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

Even better, why not link to the far more expansive set of proven allegations, instead of "the CIA investigated itself and decided there was nothing wrong"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...

"U.S. Government Officials said in 1990 the Anti-Drug Unit of the C.I.A. "accidentally" shipped a ton of cocaine into the United States from Venezuela as part of an effort to infiltrate and gather evidence on drug gangs. The cocaine was sold on the streets in the United States. No criminal charges were made in this incident, however C.I.A. officer Mark McFarlin resigned and another C.I.A. officer was disciplined. The CIA issued a statement on the incident saying there was "poor judgment and management on the part of several C.I.A. officers""

i.e., it was a one-off mistake, and people were held accountable (even if not to the degree you feel appropriate), and it was not systematic as you and GGP are attempting to imply

The only part about this that was one-off was that they were caught. It's an open secret that the CIA has been involved in some form of drug running for decades.

Intelligence agency black budgets are a one-off?

Keep reading.

Of course black (classified) budgets are standard operating procedure.

That does not mean that the expenditures are for the same items and projects every year.

That's not the type of black budget being discussed.

The kind that funds itself.

I would hardly call the US border "ignored"

Your right about that. While the Feds have adjudicated their duties the state of Texas has had to step up and bring in state resources. Charging people with a misdemeanor trespassing charges as a last resort when the Border Patrol is hamstrung by politics. Why not build that wall? Just ask Poland about the value of a wall. Europe is finally realizing there is orderly migration on one hand and chaos by bandits on the other.

Really sad situation. Poor people deserve better. To spend their life savings on human smuggling is a pity.

Better that poor people should spend it on lawyers and application fees trying to get to the top of a decades long waitlist that may not even yield a visa?

From the perspective of a poor person, the coyote is a far cheaper option, with a higher likelihood of success. Do you really think that a wall is going to stop people who travelled thousands of miles? It might slow them down a little, but a quick youtube search shows people getting past most styles of the border barriers in about a minute or less

The CBP spends 18 billion dollars per year, which is up from 6 billion in 2003. This doesn’t look like a problem we can spend our way out of.

In every thread someone has to post that like it's some huge secret. It's been known for 40 decades. No one has ever looked at those links and said "this is shocking knews to me"

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