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Posted on 02/07/2012 12:55:16 PM PST by Kaslin
Whether Operation Fast and Furious was a legitimate law enforcement operation, as the Department of Justice claims, or was part of a plot to impose gun control, it was radically different from all other border gun operations in one crucial way. Operation Fast and Furious was the only border gun operation that was undertaken with the full intention of the straw-purchased guns leaving the control of law enforcement officers and reaching the armories of drug cartel murderers. That fact alone should lead to the impeachment or administrative removal of everyone, from field agents to political appointees and elected officials that knew or should have known about the plot.
But that is only half of the horror story.
Operation Fast and Furious was specifically conceived so that “walked” guns would be recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Their serial numbers would be provided to the ATF by Mexican authorities for tracing. Regardless of motive, the entire operation was premised on weapons being recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and law enforcement agencies are well aware that criminals primarily abandon weapons only after they’ve been used in serious felony crimes such as murder or attempted murder.
Operation Fast and Furious was conceived knowing that Mexican nationals would be sacrificed in significant numbers if the tracing operation had any chance of working.
Operation Fast and Furious allowed more than 2,000 weapons to “walk,” indicating that those in charge of the operation were willing to let thousands of Mexican nationals die in an effort to identify the ringleaders of a cartel’s weapon acquisition team.
The Department of Justice claims that they did this so that they could trace the weapons to higher-ups in the cartels and take down entire gun-smuggling networks. Decent people can disagree on many aspects of crime fighting and the amount of risk we should be willing to absorb to fight crime, but we should all agree that no criminal network is worth sacrificing the lives of hundreds or thousands of victims. Yet that is precisely the way Operation Fast and Furious was designed to work.
The first question is obvious, and yet remains unasked by the media and unanswered by the Obama administration and Department of Justice:
But as disturbing as the conception of the plot was, it was merely an idea, if one that most would agree is objectively evil in design. It should have died stillborn on the proverbial drawing board. Somehow, this idea was not just allowed, but someone with significant political and operational clout within the Justice Department was able to shepherd this high-risk and inarguably lethal program from idea through planning and budgeting into execution. This strongly suggests high-level sponsorship within the Department of Justice. This demands answers to a second question:
We know that Operation Fast and Furious depended entirely upon hundred or thousands of walked weapons being recovered at crime scenes so that weapons could be traced, and that those crime scenes would almost certainly be murders. We know that such a high-risk, low-reward program could not have be conceived or approved at a local level, and that it must have had high-level sponsorship within Justice. It is reasonable to make the assumption, unless proven otherwise, that such approval could only come from the level of a deputy attorney general or higher.
President Barack Obama is the very definition of a “political creature,” vaulting through local and state politics to the U.S. Senate and into the presidency at phenomenal speed. He knows that liabilities are to be relentlessly purged, and he did so repeatedly to separate himself from old allies and even mentors in his 2008 political campaign. Sentimental he is not.
He is also well aware that an ongoing, long-term political scandal is just the kind of public relations nightmare he does not need as he enters his reelection campaign season in earnest. Once the Republican primary battle is over and the stage is set for the general election battle, the political and legal spectacle of Operation Fast and Furious will be brought to the forefront by the Republican challenger or by one of the super PACs. Operation Fast and Furious is a serious and unresolved problem that endangers his second term as seriously as a problematic economy.
Any competent political operative within the Obama campaign would want the scandal surrounding Operation Fast and Furious resolved as quickly as possible to remove it as a weapon against Obama’s election. Fair or foul, cutting your losses is how the game is played, and it is miraculous that Attorney General Eric Holder still retains the president’s support after the allegations of Operation Fast and Furious and various other scandals that are emerging at precisely the wrong time.
This leads us to a third question:
Considering the president’s close relationship with the attorney general, it is possible that Mr. Obama simply does not want to turn on a friend and political ally. There is also the possibility, however, that Mr. Holder is quite well below the person who approved the operation and was aware of it. Evidence suggests that White House officials may have been briefed on the operation. It is conceivable that the attorney general holds evidence that assures he will not be forced out.
These are intriguing questions, and each demands a thorough explanation.
If the media were interested in some sort of objective view of reality that most non-ideologues could easily confuse with something akin to truth, they would only need to relentlessly seek the answers to these three questions on which a presidency may indeed turn.
Holder - I never saw that memo ! Not that I can recall ...
Either the “Just-us” department is into this up to its eyeballs , or ,... Holder is incompetant, and like Zero , is in over his head.
Both reasons are ‘probable cause’ for removal !
There is also the possibility, however, that Mr. Holder is quite well below the person who approved the operation and was aware of it.
No question the Bamster signed off on this. He doesn't dare betray Holder.
The founders wisely provided for impeachment, so that there was a political remedy for malfeasance in office, aside from assassination.
With impeachment, the accused has an opportunity to make a case in his defense.
#1 - Mugawbwe..... and uh ‘Obama’s cousin’ ODINGA. Worked well for them.
#2 - All.
#3 - Sorry, the President is out at the golf course, and cannot be interrupted right now.
Question #4- Has Speaker Boehner obstructed Congressman Issa’s investigation and why, and who is he protecting?
This was mentioned on FR yesterday(?).
I don’t see the word, “Hillary!” anywhere in this piece. That means there are four.
"Tracking by body count".
Go after the "ringleaders of a cartel's weapon acquisition team", but not the cartel bosses, who are already well-known. I guess they're untouchable.
Insanity. It's nothing but a sick game. A war no one wants to win.
Agree. I’ve posted before that I believe this whole thing STINKS of the type of scenario Hillary would dream up to gain an objective such as gun control. She would ruthlessly push it from behind the scenes no matter objections concerning loss of life.
She was adamant about distancing herself from Fast & Furious in an article I read sometime last year, and that in itself is the old signal “you’re on your own on this one buddy” to Holder as she turns her back, and walks away. She and her political mate haven’t the least bit of love for Obama, and his crew.
Even Faux Knews is trying to keep this bottled up in the bowels of the DOJ as a 'failed program that started in the Bush Administration' (Gunrunner), but it just doesn't pass the most cursory sniff test.
"Grenade-walking" part of "Gunwalker" scandal
And this...
Worse Than Gunwalker? State Dept. Allegedly Sold Guns to ZetasPhil Jordan, a former CIA operative and one-time leader of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Intelligence Center, claims that the Obama administration is running guns to the violent Zetas cartel through the direct commercial sale of military grade weapons:
Jordan, who served as director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Intelligence Center in 1995, said the Zetas have shipped large amounts of weapons purchased in the Dallas area through El Paso.
(snip)
“They’ve found anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era,” Plumlee said. Other weapons found include grenade launchers, assault rifles, handguns and military gear including night-vision goggles and body armor.
More about State Department involvement...
— has sources claiming “Obama’s man in the State Department,” (former) Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, was the State Department operative who helped Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General David Ogden formulate the strategy that led to the tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious.Steinberg took office as Deputy Secretary of State on January 28, 2009
A little more than two years later, it was announced that Steinberg's time in the Obama State Department was over. From the New York Times, 30 March 2011:
Mrs. Clinton heaped praise on Mr. Steinberg, describing him as an “indispensable” partner. “On every foreign policy challenge, big and small, he has helped formulate our policy and oversee its execution,” she wrote. Mr. Steinberg, she said, played “Oscar to Jack Lew’s Felix,” referring to Jacob J. Lew, her other deputy, who left earlier this year to become Mr. Obama’s budget director.
Want to read even more about State Dept. involvement? ...
Sipsey Street Exclusive: "In at the beginning." The State Department & the Gunwalker Scandal.
Yes, it’s Sipsey Street that’s really been all over this thing.
What better reason than that for 0bama to appoint a special prosecutor? Let's look at both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious. I don't think Pres. Bush or AG Mulkasey have much to worry about.
‘Wide Receiver’ CI: ‘It had nothing to do with Bush or even DOJ’Operation Wide Receiver vs. Operation Fast and Furious
- Wide Receiver was less than one-quarter the size of Fast and Furious, involving about 500 guns. About 450 guns made it across the border into Mexico. Not only was Fast and Furious much larger, but it was only one of several gun walking operations launched by the Obama Administration. In fact, intrepid CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson says she has “found allegations of gun walking in at least 10 cities in five states.”
- Unlike the Obama Administration programs, there actually was a serious attempt made to track the Wide Receiver weapons. Some of them were fitted with radio tracking devices. The cartel gun buyers figured out how to defeat the tracking system by driving around in circles, until the tracking planes ran out of fuel and were forced to return to base. Also, some of the tracking devices were damaged when ATF agents improperly inserted them into the guns.
- By contrast, one of the signature features of Obama gun walking is that absolutely no effort to track the guns was ever in place. ATF agents have testified they were expressly ordered to stand down when they tried to follow the cartel straw purchasers.
- Special Agent In Charge Bill Newell, That’s right – the same Phoenix ATF supervisor who became famous during the investigation of Fast and Furious was involved with Operation Wide Receiver. He’s also the ATF agent that originally told Congress that he mentioned gun walking in a roundabout way to his old buddy Kevin O’Reilly of the White House national security staff, who he communicates with maybe three or four times a year… only to be exposed as a liar when the same document dump that put AG Holder in jeopardy of perjury charges revealed a constant stream of emails between Newell and O’Reilly, lasting over a month.
- Operation Wide Receiver was, by all accounts, shut down after its weapons dropped off the grid, and the ATF realized it had blundered. Operation Fast and Furious was only shut down because two of its weapons were discovered at the scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder. According to congressional testimony, the Terry shooting – along with the mistaken suspicion that Tucson mass murderer Jared Loughner might have been packing a Fast and Furious gun – panicked top ATF brass into halting its gun walking operations.
- The Obama Justice Department cobbled together significant inter-agency co-operation for its huge gun walking programs. As Kurt Hofmann of the Gun Rights Examiner notes, “At this point, we don’t seem to have any evidence that earlier ‘gunwalking’ involved the FBI, the DEA, DHS, the State Department, the IRS, and even the White House Security Council.”
- And, of course, there was no massive cover-up of Wide Receiver. No senior Administration officials committed perjury to distance themselves from it. The ATF was not exactly advertising the existence of the operation, or its unhappy conclusion, but that’s very different from the thick stone wall Obama and his people tried to build around their far larger and deadlier operations.
much LESS to carry it out to its' completion. And it's hard for me to even imagine....and I'm watching it unfold before my very eyes.
The founders wisely provided for impeachment, so that there was a political remedy for malfeasance in office, aside from assassination.
With impeachment, the accused has an opportunity to make a case in his defense.
Rather, you don’t have enough guts to trust in your fellow Americans, to trust in others with a different view of the situation, and if need be, to trust in your valor and those of your fellows if it comes to that.
There is no shortage of guts, and faith in the constitution, if you know where to look. This little bit of darkness is but a cloud in the midst of a sunny day. It will soon be gone, and we will appreciate the sunlight all the more for its passing.
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