Posted on 06/16/2011 10:53:57 AM PDT by jazusamo
Pay attention to this era-defining event: The 2,000+ weapons are implicated in an estimated 150 shootings of Mexican officers and soldiers, two American officers, and an unknown number of civilians.
On October 5, 1986, a former U.S. Air Force C-123 transport plane was shot down in Nicaragua. The pilots and radio operator perished when the plane crashed, but a former U.S. Marine who was a cargo handler on the aircraft was able to parachute to safety. He was captured by the Nicaraguan government.
The former Marine, Eugene Hasenfus, claimed to be a cargo handler for the CIA. His capture and trial began the unraveling of what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair, which saw 14 Reagan-era officials indicted and eleven convictions for a plot that traded arms to Iran for hostages and illegally funded Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels.
On December 14, 2010, a special unit of the U.S. Border Patrol came across a group of heavily armed suspects near Rio Rico, Arizona. The Border Patrol team identified themselves as law enforcement officers, at which point the armed men open fire. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was hit in the pelvis by a single bullet and died the next morning. One of the suspects was captured, and two AK-pattern semiautomatic rifles recovered at the scene were identified by serial number as weapons that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) — acting in concert with and with the blessing of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — allowed weapons smugglers to purchase at U.S. gun shops. The weapons were just two of more than 2,000 firearms that ATF supervisors and the highest levels of DOJ management allowed to be “walked” across the border to narco-terrorist drug cartels in Mexico, in a scandal that promises to be more damning and deadly than Iran-Contra.
The ATF named their operation Fast and Furious, but it will go down in history by its more descriptive title: “Gunwalker.”
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding hearings this week on Gunwalker, and seems to be squaring up for a political duel with the Obama administration, which is seeking to block all access to official information about the operation. To date, the information collected by the committee has come from ATF whisteblowers, agents inside the operation who fought against senior government officials who were “giddy” over the death and violence from the roughly 2000+ weapons that they allowed smugglers to take across the border — weapons that seemed to be raising the body count in what was arguably becoming a Mexican civil war.
A damning and detailed 51-page report — The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents (.pdf) — was released by the committee on Tuesday. The report captured testimony from ATF field agents who fought with their supervisors over orders that flew in direct contradiction to their primary order: to always follow the suspect with the gun and always interdict to keep the weapon from being used in a crime.
The report’s findings:
“DOJ and ATF inappropriately and recklessly relied on a 20-year-old ATF Order to allow guns to walk.” The agencies misrepresented the intention of the order to justify their actions.
“Supervisors told the agents to ‘get with the program’ because senior ATF officials had sanctioned the operation.” At least one agent was cautioned that if he didn’t stop complaining about the dangerous nature of the operation, he would find himself out of a job, and lucky to be working in a prison.
“Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix.” ATF officials were seemingly unconcerned over the deaths of Mexican law enforcement officers, soldiers, and innocent civilians, noting that you had to “scramble a few eggs” to make an omelette, in a callous disregard or human life.
Senior ATF personnel including Acting Director Ken Melson, and senior Department of Justice officials at least up to an assistant attorney general, were well aware of and supported the operation.
Department of Justice officials hid behind semantics to lie and deny that they allowed guns to be walked across the border.
When asked by the Oversight Committee how many of 1,750 specific weapons that “walked” under orders of the ATF and DOJ could have been interdicted if agents were allowed to act as they were trained, the agents answered they could have stopped every single one.
The more than 2,000 weapons that the Obama Justice Department allowed to be delivered to Mexican narco-terrorist cartels are thought to have been used in the shooting of an estimated 150 Mexican law enforcement officers and soldiers battling the cartels. Two American law enforcement officers have also presumably fallen prey to these weapons, along with an unknown number of civilians on both sides of the border.
President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice has purposefully armed narco-terrorist drug cartels that have been accused of bombings, ambushes, mass murders, public executions, and the assassination of police, politicians, and civic leaders.
Obama’s Justice Department armed the enemy of our neighbor and ally, providing enough arms to equip ten infantry companies, or two battalions, of violent drug dealers.
Iran-Contra was a misguided attempt to trade arms for hostages and supply a covert supply of arms to rebels fighting against a communist dictatorship during the Cold War.
Gunrunner was an attempt to develop enough gun-running evidence to bring down a cartel, and instead supplied thousands of arms to drug cartels locked in a life-or-death struggle with a key U.S. ally and trading partner.
You tell me which is worse.
Well said. The first operation fought for freedom while the second fights against it.
Wow, you made the same point I was trying to get at more clearly in about half the words!
Won't happen.
No. All the gun dealers were in on it with the ATF. It was the higher-ups who wouldn’t allow any arrests or interdiction of the straw buyers that caused the agents to blow the whistle. Many of the gun dealers complained that nothing was being done to stop obvious potential crime and they wanted out of the operation.
“Imagine if 0bama sold arms to Iran and used the money to fund a rebel army in South America. Would you say that was a bigger deal than ATF allowing lots of guns to hit the streets?”
You mean rebels against a Communist dictator like his buddy Hugo Chavez? HA, like that’d ever happen! (He’d be funding Chavez; he would’ve funded Castro as well. And we’ve seen how he sucked up to Brazil’s Communist leader at our expense.)
BHO et al love Communists. Reagan and North did NOT. Arms were traded to free hostages, Iran had long been an ally until fairly recently at that time, AND it didn’t have a fanatical, lunatic Twelver as leader who was racing full speed to build & launch nukes to obliterate Israel first and us (if possible) second.
BHO et al care nothing about our safety or securing our borders, view illegals as additional Democrat voters, and create/promote chaos & violence as a Progressive tactic to take our republic (and us) down. It’s also never mentioned how many terrorists and suitcase nukes have come across our porous borders.
As far as ATF “allowing lots of guns to hit the streets”, that’s wildly understated. The ATF, at the behest, or with the blessing, of BHO, Holder, Napolitano et al, aided and armed lawless, murderous thugs to kill our citizens & border protectors as well as public officials of our ally.
This sounds a lot like Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal. While Iran-Contra did not bring down Reagan's presidency, it did result in the resignation of the National Security Advisor (Adm. Poindexter), and the firing of Col. Oliver North.March 24, 2011:Will there be any lower-level resignations/firings over this?
Question: What is worse, selling arms to Iranian rebels and diverting the profits to support Contra rebels in Nicaragua, or supplying arms to Mexican drug cartels to track the routes taken in order to lead back to the cartel HQ?-PJThe former led to the resignation of Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger and the firing of Adm. Poindexter and Col. North. It almost brought down a presidency.
What will the latter lead to?
Exactly. “Gunrunner” is not “Fast and Furious”, but that’s how the media and the Democrats will blur the issue and lie about the outcome. That stooge from Holder’s office made me want to shoot my TV and then when Congressman Clayborne apologized for Issa I had to go running to keep my head from exploding.
Hostages were thrown in on the deal - but the money raised was via selling arms to Iran.
The Iran that Reagan traded with was the same Mullah ruled Ayatollah Khomeini inspired regime. Iran was our ally under the Shah - the guy they drove out of the country. That they were not then on the brink of having nuclear arms doesn't detract from who they were and what they believed. It is the same people in power.
I repeat.....
Imagine if 0bama sold arms to Iran and used the money to fund a rebel army in South America. Would you say that was a bigger deal than ATF allowing lots of guns to hit the streets?
“We need a new “honest” ‘truthful’ Non-Muslim Presid
Glad we have some brave guys in Congress like Issa and King who are doing investigations into the treachery of our enemies.
I only hope they carry it through to it’s inevitable conclusion.
Obama is right in the middle of this mess.
“The Iran that Reagan traded with was the same Mullah ruled Ayatollah Khomeini inspired regime. Iran was our ally under the Shah - the guy they drove out of the country. That they were not then on the brink of having nuclear arms doesn’t detract from who they were and what they believed. It is the same people in power. “
I’m intimately aware of the history of Iran in those times. But even Khomeini said Ahmedinejad is a nut (and that’s saying something). We have a president now who’s doing worse than selling arms where this Iran is concerned.
As far as the Constitution, what do you think about a president who sanctioned (maybe personally planned) a mission to tear down one of the most vital of our Bill of Rights?
Contra was misguided and should have been done differently as you said, but we did NOT have a leader who hates our Constitution and all whom it protects. In fact, he has said so by his words and actions - many times.
I would be loathe to compare BHO to Reagan in any way.
No need to get revisionist history and try to claim the Iran Reagan dealt with was ‘recently our ally’ it was recently the deposer of our ally, the Shah; or that it was just arms for hostages - it was also arms to raise cash to fund a rebel army.
The Constitution is what it is.
My affinity for the person in power doesn't temper the blow to the Constitution.
They say your friends stab you in the front.
The Executive branch raising money on its own to fund a rebel army absent legislation to do so is about as bad as it gets.
Gunwalker is small beans, Constitutionally speaking, to the Executive taking on the power to raise and spend money itself.
I think that’s Cummings but yeah, what a stooge.
I was one month away from going back to Iran for a two-year contract (many of my friends were already there) when the revolution happened. Ours was a joint venture with the Shah. I simply meant that only a few years before, Iran had been our ally. Now it’s a 32 year enemy. No revisionist history on my part.
As I said, I agree with you that Contra should’ve been done differently, i.e. going to Congress. Since we were still in the Cold War and it wasn’t fashionable then to smooch with Communists, Reagan could’ve made a case to Congress to fund anti-Communist freedom fighters.
I admitted he was misguided, but who here would dispute that Reagan loved America or that BHO hates it and plots its destruction?
Also, motives and intentions mean a great deal to me, and considering a large motive of Gunwalker was to do away with our right to bear arms as well as further reduce our border security, I view it as clearly sinister and yet one more treasonous act (of many) by the traitor in chief.
There was little political will to go after Iran Contra, because it was anti-Communist Reagan loved America and Reagan was loved by America.
Congress rejected funding the Contras.
Right or wrong (I think it was wrong) it was their call to make under the Constitution.
For Obama, Calderón, a Meeting of Minds
Leaders Disagree on One Issue: Urgency of Reinstating U.S. Ban on Assault Weapons April 17, 2009
But Obama indicated that while he favors reinstating the U.S. ban on assault weapons, which Congress allowed to expire five years ago, the move would face too much political opposition to happen soon. He said better enforcing existing laws to prevent arms smuggling would have a more immediate effect on keeping U.S. weapons from Mexican cartels. "I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment rights in our Constitution, the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners who want to keep their families safe to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we know, here in Mexico, are helping to fuel extraordinary violence," he said in a news conference with Calderón at Los Pinos, the presidential compound. "Now, having said that, I think none of us are under the illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy."
yes, yes, it should’ve been Congress’ decision, strictly speaking. I don’t recall, but sounds like libs controlled it then.
And one last time, I well know Iran wasn’t an ally once the Shah was gone (thanks to Jimmah Carter), I was only saying it had happened relatively recently and Khomeini wasn’t a believer/advocate of bringing about the return of the Mahdi by causing worldwide bloodshed and carnage.
Just an aside, that’s all.
It was a secret attack on the 2nd amendment...Pure and Simple....
There has been NO plausible explanation of how giving up the guns could have possibly brought down the drug cartels...Nada!
Let’s phrase that a little more accurately:
Facilitating a covert war on another country vs. facilitating a covert war on our country?
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