It is rare for me to so completely agree with the other team but I am siding with the Republicans on this Fast and Furious business. Whoever dreamed up the misbegotten scheme that allowed over two thousand weapons to cross the border and end up in the hands of the narco cartels needs to be severely horsewhipped.
Not only have their been zero arrests as a result of this program, except for some very low level stooges, the feds managed to lose track of most of the guns, which keep ending up at crime scenes on both sides of the border. About 700 had been recovered by the end of last year. This weaponry included some big fifty caliber machine guns, which were used late last year to fire on the Mexican Police. Serious stuff. A great way to deal with our sovereign neighbor to the south. Very respectful.
President Obama has invoked executive privilege for the first time, refusing to allow Attorney General Eric Holder to testify in this matter in front of Issa'a House committee. I think that is not only a shame but that it frankly stinks. We need to get to the bottom of this fiasco. Sure the Republicans are merely using it to score political gain, it's that ugly season. But the american public deserve to know what happened, how the plan that was hatched in the United States Attorney's Office in Phoenix went so incredibly awry.
Fast and Furious was in fact merely a continuation of a Bush era plan called Project Gunrunner that started in 2006. The Bush ATF allowed straw purchasers to buy automatic weapons and sell them to Mexican drug lords in an operation called Wide Receiver. Brilliant. The poor drug lords don't have enough weaponry.
So the GOP should not exactly crow here. But I have to wonder how the supposedly enlightened Obamaites managed to get co-opted and continue such a ludicrous gamble? Obama once again falls prey to the institutional, centrifugal forces in the Justice Department, just like he changed his tune and started taking orders from his own DEA on medical marijuana. He once again says one thing and does another. And the buck never stops here.
What makes it worse was the fact that his Attorney General initially denied that the gun walking ever took place. I think that light does need to be shined on this particular matter and believe that this President, who supposedly believes in transparency should expose it completely, in all its ugliness. We need to know exactly what happened so that we can be sure that nothing this stupid ever happens again.
"In sum, the gringo (American) government has been sending weapons to Mexico in a premeditated and systematic manner, knowing that their destinations were Mexican criminal organizations."
Manuel Jauregui, Reforma
4 comments:
I would like to know more about what Issa and his Committee know now and also what more Holder knows. It will probably come out in time, likely after the election.
I think serious political gamesmanship is at play here.
And, yes, it was an incredibly stupid program.
As eager as this hypocritical administration is to place blame on Bush , you can bet that, if the docs showed negative light on Bush (like he started it) and were devoid of negative info on the Obama administration, these saps would have readily produced these documents. It is obvious they were involved and lied!
They should have put tracking devices inside the weapons with the capability to remotely detonate them, if they wanted to reliably track the whereabouts of the weapons and the cartels.
The Bush era operation did track the weapons, however it never led to the cartel leaders and so the operation was stopped. The Obama era plan never tracked the weapons. That begs the question why were the weapons allowed to flow south of the border? What was the real objective? Gun control laws? Review admin statements regarding the guns & violence in Mexico and it seems plausible that it may have been their real aim.
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