She interviews an old source of mine, former DEA Resident Agent in Charge for Miami Tom Cash, who helped me understand the drug trade in Florida with a more honest perspective than the official DEA spin-meisters were accustomed to offering.

Today he's explaining the futility of the stated US policy of taking away guns from Haitian citizens:

"This is mission impossible," said Tom Cash, an executive with Kroll Inc., an international security company with offices in Miami. "I know of no country in the world that has been able to control the weapons in the hands of its citizens, including here in the United States."

...On Wednesday U.S. Army Gen. James Hill told the Associated Press that getting "the guns off the street" was a priority, and the U.S.-led multinational force would work with Haitian police to collect weapons, from "rusted M-1s to top-of-the-line Uzis."

So far, in their newly expanded role, multinational peacekeepers have gathered few weapons.

We have to learn to read between the lines. When a U.S. General says that it's a priority to disarm the populace, he is setting up a mission that he knows he can't accomplish. Why? Because it then sets up the pretext to continue the occupation indefinitely. It's just like the drug war: a mission that is not only doomed to fail, but is intended to fail, in order to justify police state powers.

The problem in Haiti isn't the guns, it's certain elements who have them: above all, Guy Phillippe and his band of criminals and mercenaries. He has only 300 troops. Round those guys up: they're the ones who already broke all kinds of laws, including the gun laws. But that would be too easy. That could be done in a week. And then there would be no fighting between them and the kids in the barrios... and no further justification for U.S.-French-Canadian-Chilean military occupation.

Washington wants a pretext to stay, because it knows full well that the newly-installed "prime minister" Gerard Latortue, does not count with majority or popular support, and cannot maintain power without the force of foreign guns behind him.

As Tom Cash says in this story:

"Did I miss something or did the police leave their arms, because I recall the armed rebels took over cities without any resistance from police," Cash said. "So how can we now talk about joining the Haitian police in ridding the country of arms when they couldn't even defend themselves before?"

That, of course, is a consequence of three years of economic embargo and a destabilization campaign to deny the elected government of Haiti the ability to defend itself even from a small clique of US-trained and armed mercenaries.

The policy is a crock. It's not credible. Of course, neither is the "government" that U.S. forces now try to prop up without popular support nor democratic mandate.