SF Chronicle Story Repeats AP 'Fast & Furious' Misinformation

NewsBusters ^ | October 5, 2011 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

Bush also did it!

Bush also did it!

That is the current talking point desperately being promoted by the Associated Press, and now picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle, to try to explain away the selling of guns to members of the Mexican drug cartel by the Obama administration. The only problem is that the Associated Press left out a key detail as pointed out by Katie Pavlich of Townhall. First the misleading claim by AP:

The federal government under the Bush administration ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers — the same tactic that congressional Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama's administration for using, two federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

When Bush, a Republican, was president, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Tucson, Ariz., used a similar enforcement tactic in a program it called Operation Wide Receiver. The fact that there were two such ATF investigations years apart in separate administrations raises the possibility that agents in still other cases may have allowed guns to "walk."

[PJ-Comix]

I'm curious as to how many other media outlets will repeat this AP misinformation.

BUSH ALSO DID IT!!!

[G Larry]

Bush didn’t make the weapons available and then intimidate legitimate gun dealers into conducting illegal transactions.

Bush monitored illegal transactions and then TRACKED the weapons going South.

No similarity at all!

[Oberon]

Maybe. I wonder how many Americans died when Bush (maybe) did it.

[skeeter]

... however, the key difference between Operation Fast and Furious under Obama and Project Gunrunner under Bush is that under Obama guns were allowed to go back into Mexico without interdiction or arrests. According to Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, straw purchaser arrests and prosecutions have been way down under this administration, so much so it's almost as if the Obama Justice Department has no interest in prosecuting illegal straw purchasers at all.

Under Bush the guns were apprehended before crossing the border into Mexico. A rather key difference to leave out.

[BitWielder1]

If everything Bush did, whether true or false, was wrong by definition, how can it be used as an excuse by the current administration to do even more of it?

[Michael.SF.]

Logic amongst democrats has never been in abundance.

[skeeter]

After all these years even consumers of the AP’s crap and leftist readers of the Chronicle have to know that its not a reporters job to defend one political party at the expense of the other.

[DBrow]

So indict them both and have them chatter on the stand, under oath. No biggie.

[Erik Latranyi]

The DOJ put this fabricated story out so their supporters in the media, that have been mute on Fast & Furious, could cover for Obama.

This clearly demonstrates the insidious nature of the media and how that media is absolutely a wing of liberalism and the DNC and no longer an independent watchdog of government.

[WOBBLY BOB]

you are racist to ask that question!

[shortstop]

Yep, this story was in today’s St. Petersburg Times. Big surprise.