{"id":36915,"date":"2013-08-02T09:42:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-02T13:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=36915"},"modified":"2013-08-02T09:42:25","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T13:42:25","slug":"need-work-cartels-are-hiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=36915","title":{"rendered":"Need work? Cartels are hiring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several of you folks sent us links to the Fox News<\/a> story that some former soldiers have been convicted of some work that they’ve done for the Mexican drug cartels including “murder for hire” schemes;<\/p>\n

Michael Apodaca, 22, was a private first-class stationed at nearby Fort Bliss Army Base and was attached to the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade when he was recruited and paid $5,000 by the Juarez Cartel to shoot and kill Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana, a cartel member who had been outed as an informant for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Apodaca, who was the triggerman in the May 15, 2009, hit, was sentenced in El Paso District Court July 25.<\/p>\n

Last September, Kevin Corley, 29, a former active-duty Army first lieutenant from Fort Carson in Colorado, pleaded guilty in federal court in Laredo, Texas, to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire for the Los Zetas Cartel after being arrested in a sting operation. Ironically, that cartel was itself founded by Special Forces deserters from the Mexican Army.<\/p>\n

Arrested with Corley in connection with the case was former Army Sgt. Samuel Walker, 28. He was convicted of committing a murder-for-hire in November 2012 and sentenced to 15 years in prison June 21.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure how much marksmanship training Apodaca had received in an Air Defense Artillery unit beyond basic training, but it looks like he was a member of a gang before he joined the military according to a paragraph further down the article;<\/p>\n

A spokesman told FoxNews.com that current recruiting efforts are much more stringent than even four years ago, and that anyone sporting a gang-related tattoo is no longer accepted for enlistment.<\/p>\n

\u201cA person like Michael Apodaca would not even be allowed to enlist today,\u201d Army Maj. Joe Buccino, spokesman for the Fort Bliss Army Base in El Paso, told FoxNews.com. \u201cWe\u2019re more selective than during the height of Iraq.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article mostly blames soldiers’ low pay for the spate of cartel hirings, but that’s pretty hard to believe. Even the lower grades are making more money than I made at the height of my career and I was never tempted to engage in illicit activities. I think it’s more a function of society and since we don’t raise soldiers on farms somewhere in the Midwest, they’re a product of popular culture and it has little to do with the military. Just like suicides are more related to the culture than military service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several of you folks sent us links to the Fox News story that some former soldiers … Need work? Cartels are hiring<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}