Posted on 06/23/2011 11:04:53 AM PDT by jazusamo
The Post prints an attack on Issa that no other paper saw fit to run: an anonymous hit job concocted by the Obama administration. And The Times finally talks Gunwalker ... by attacking the GOP. With a debunked lie.
To date, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley have led the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious: a multi-agency scheme that allowed known straw purchasers to buy an estimated 2,000 firearms and to smuggle them into Mexico, into the hands of the narco-terrorists of Mexican cartels. An estimated 150 Mexican police officers and soldiers have been killed by the weapons.
Issa and Grassley have been operating in a near vacuum, with very little coverage from the media. This is stunning considering the scope of the plot, which seems to have originated at the highest levels of government. But on Tuesday, two of the largest and most influential news organizations finally saw fit to address the matter head-on.
By targeting the messenger.
The Washington Post has printed a character assassination piece targeting Issa which PJM sources confirm had been shopped around to other news outlets and blogs by the Obama administration since the House Oversight Committee hearings last week.
The administration-authored Post story attempts to claim that Rep. Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform which issued the damning report last week about Gunwalker, had been briefed about the program a year ago and had no objections to it at that time.
The evidence for this claim? There isn’t any.
According to a well-placed source, the hit piece the Post ran had been shopped by the administration to several other news organizations. All passed on it, since there was no credible attribution for the story.
Only the Washington Post would run it. Additionally, an article written last week in the Wall Street Journal had already challenged this narrative:
An April 2010 email from an ATF agent in Mexico City to a bureau official, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, discussed plans to provide a classified briefing to Mr. Issa’s own committee about several cases, including Fast and Furious. A spokesman for Mr. Issa said that the congressman wasn’t briefed on specifics of the operation and that staffers who attended the briefing don’t recall the operation being mentioned.
High-level “Cliff’s Notes” briefings of overall programs are often the content of routine briefings, but project-level details — such as the walking of guns to Mexican cartels — would not have been in a typical briefing, if specific projects were mentioned at all.
Contacted for their reaction to this Post hit piece op-ed by PJM, Issa’s staff released the following statement:
For six months, Justice Department officials including Attorney General Holder have denied knowledge that gunwalking in Operation Fast and Furious took place. With the truth now beginning to come out, opponents of this investigation are incredulously trying to assert that Obama administration political appointees at the Justice Department were ignorant — yet Congress was in the know on the details of Operation Fast and Furious.
The April 2010 ATF briefing on weapons smuggling by criminal cartels included a staff member of the Democratic staff of the Oversight Committee who has been working for Ranking Member Cummings on the Fast and Furious investigation. This Democratic staff member has never indicated to Republican staff that he had any prior awareness of the gunwalking that took place in Operation Fast and Furious and the recollections of Republican staff who attended this briefing have already been reported in the Wall Street Journal. This irresponsible and false accusation is indicative of a Justice Department bereft of leadership and rattled by the revelations of its own misconduct.
The New York Times aided the administration pushback by publishing an unsigned op-ed that went to bat for the White House … by blatantly lying. They presented as truth a claim that had been thoroughly debunked — months ago:
If Congressional Republicans are really intent on getting to the bottom of an ill-conceived sting operation along the border by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, they should call President Felipe Calderón of Mexico as an expert witness.
Mr. Calderón has the data showing that the tens of thousands of weapons seized from the Mexican drug cartels in the last four years mostly came from the United States. Three out of five of those guns were battlefield weapons that were outlawed here until the assault weapons ban was allowed to lapse in 2004. To help him stop the bloody mayhem, he is pleading with Washington to re-enact the ban and impose other needed controls.
The Times is once again trying to propagate a variant of Obama’s 90-percent lie.
Perhaps we should be encouraged: they’ve ratcheted down the deception level to a still erroneous 60 percent. The fact remains: no more than eight percent of the weapons recovered from the cartels have originated in the United States, and that figure may still be wildly inflated.
In addition to the blatant statistical falsehood, the editorial attempted to claim that the assault weapons ban that was part of the 1994 crime bill affected anything remotely like a “battlefield weapon.” The law did not ban any real military weaponry.
Not one military weapon.
Nonetheless, the Times did utter a few watered-down admonitions of the Obama administration officials who have hatched the most deadly incompetent law enforcement operation in U.S. history.
The Obama administration is lashing out through its media surrogates against those wishing to discover who was behind the potentially felonious debacle that is Gunwalker. One can only wonder what they are trying to hide, and who they are trying to protect.
mark
The MSM is very powerful with the squishy middle, (independents).
The average independent doesn’t know that Bush tried to head off the bursting of the housing bubble and that Barney Frank is a key player stopping any constructive action to reign in Freddy and Fannie.
If the MSM reports it, the average independent will take it as gospel. If you try to correct them, you’ll be challenged with: “Where did you hear THAT, Faux News?!”
The left may be stupid, but they are incredibly cunning, and evil.
bflr
The next phase is so predictable: court jesters like Chris Matthews and the entire CNN on-air staff will now launch an all in effort to conflate the Bush administration program with the Holder instigated program, the one electronically tracking and seizing weapons before they made the border, the latter helping to get the weapons across the border and into murderous use! ... Proving yet again that the democrats empower their political posse through the slaughter of what they deem 'lesser human beings'. And if anyone doubts it, look at the decmocrap party's forty year history using abortion as a mean of empowerment.
Any doubts left about the collusion between the media and the dimrats?
Looks like Issa is dead on target and getting very close to the truth.
Yep, the leftist pundits in the broadcast media will pick up on these lies from these rags and support Zer0 and thugs.
We’ve got to get rid of Obama next year in November!
As a young man I made a conscious decision NOT to join any criminal organization...that included political parties.
“Proud independent (non-aligned) voter for 45 years.”
Good for you. You’re such a wonderful person, and obviously a cut above the rest of us.
That is what you were trying to say, right?
If the MSM reports it, the average independent will take it as gospel. If you try to correct them, you’ll be challenged with: “Where did you hear THAT, Faux News?!”
The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.
The last desperate act of the cornered rat.... fubo and his criminal enterprise are toast...
“The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
Couldn’t agree more. America’s problems are so deep, and of such a magnitude, that I don’t think they can be overcome. Here are the top 4 issues in order of importance:
#1 - A broken, leftist, public school system. Kids are not educated, but they are indoctrinated.
#2 - A media populated by graduates of that school system. Media members have no problems slanting, distorting, and outright fabricating for the agenda.
#3 - Breakdown of the moral fiber of the country. Children are not parented, and getting yours is seen as the ultimate goal. Doing what’s right is viewed as quaint and at times, counterproductive.
#4 - Business leaders who suffer from that loss of moral makeup. What’s good for the country or community is seldom a factor in any business decision.
“...and yes, I am a cut above the apparatchiks in BOTH parties.”
Look, it’s clear you wanted to show how superior you are. Alignment to a party is merely a means to an end. Most people have some disagreements with their chosen party. I’m fiscally conservative, to a point, and a little less socially conservative than most here. But, I align with the GOP because there’s a better chance of a good outcome with them than with liberal Democrats, (redundant, I know, there are few moderate Democrats).
Those that voted Democrat in 06 and 08 to punish Republicans, punished the country.
MOST independents don’t have a guiding set of principles. The are soft and easily led. Independents aren’t superior, in most cases, they are gutless.
(remind you of anyone?)
Your top 4 issues are very similar to the goals of the communist party outlined long ago. See my homepage for those already achieved, it probably needs updating actually.
No, I wanted to show that you paint with too broad a brush. If I'm so easily lead and without morals, why am I here at FR and why do I contribute to its existance?
Hmmmmm...
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. - check
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks. - check
18. Gain control of all student newspapers. - check
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. - check
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. - check
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press. - check
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. - check
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.” - check
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.” - check
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.” - check
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. - check
Hmmmm, and that was just a quick run through with an eye towards my top 4. It appears the commies are winning.
“No, I wanted to show that you paint with too broad a brush. “
Most generalizations are proven to be wrong in specific cases. But, a proper generalization is true in most cases. Most independents are members of the squishy middle. If that were not the case, members of both parties wouldn’t bother running to the middle when it’s election time.
Don’t blame the media, blame the Republicans in Congress for not holding Obama accountable...
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