What? No barf alert?
The article does demonstrate how you can twist an issue any way you want it. That is why it is really important to get many people’s take on this.
A popular argument is to simply say that this was Bush’s program to begin with, so what’s the big deal. First, not only is that akin to blaming Henry Ford Sr. for problems with the Pinto, but it ignores things like this:
From here: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybens..._bush_is_a_lie
The key to [Democrats’] strategy is conflating two very different programs: Operation Fast & Furious and a Bush era ATF initiative known as “Operation Wide Receiver.” In the questions from Judiciary Committee Democrats (principally, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer — there may have been others but, again, I didn’t see the entire hearing), it emerged that Wide Receiver began in 2006, when Alberto Gonzales was the Bush administration attorney general...Wide Receiver actually involved not gun-walking but controlled delivery. Unlike gun-walking, which seems (for good reason) to have been unheard of until Fast & Furious, controlled delivery is a very common law enforcement tactic. Basically, the agents know the bad guys have negotiated a deal to acquire some commodity that is either illegal itself (e.g., heroin, child porn) or illegal for them to have/use (e.g., guns, corporate secrets). The agents allow the transfer to happen under circumstances where they are in control — i.e., they are on the scene conducting surveillance of the transfer, and sometimes even participating undercover in the transfer. As soon as the transfer takes place, they can descend on the suspects, make arrests, and seize the commodity in question — all of which makes for powerful evidence of guilt. Senator Schumer’s drawing of an equivalence between “tracing” in a controlled-delivery situation and “tracing” in Fast & Furious is laughable. In a controlled delivery firearms case, guns are traced in the sense that agents closely and physically follow them — they don’t just note the serial numbers or other identifying markers. The agents are thus able to trace the precise path of the guns from, say, American dealers to straw purchasers to Mexican buyers.
To the contrary, Fast & Furious involved uncontrolled deliveries — of thousands of weapons. It was an utterly heedless program in which the feds allowed these guns to be sold to straw purchasers — often leaning on reluctant gun dealers to make the sales. The straw purchasers were not followed by close physical surveillance; they were freely permitted to bulk transfer the guns to, among others, Mexican drug gangs and other violent criminals — with no agents on hand to swoop in, make arrests, and grab the firearms. The inevitable result of this was that the guns have been used (and will continue to be used) in many crimes, including the murder of Brian Terry, a U.S. border patrol agent. In sum, the Fast & Furious idea of “trace” is that, after violent crimes occur in Mexico, we can trace any guns the Mexican police are lucky enough to seize back to the sales to U.S. straw purchasers … who should never have been allowed to transfer them (or even buy them) in the first place. That is not law enforcement; that is abetting a criminal rampage.
The US collaborated with a cartel to get information on other cartels.
Did the guns go to the cartel we back?
Or was it just dump American guns in Mexico to justify abridging 2nd Amendment rights here?
Sorry, I thought it was ‘automatic’, ‘redundant’, and ‘pointless’ to issue barf alert.
To your other point, we need MORE concise argument to combat the “Bush Started It” talking points currently favored by the Left. Esp. consider regular public who have never been told F&F.
It is our job to make the argument more effective.
I now can lucidly explain things to others...which I couldn't do before!
Vive le difference!
Leni
“...that is abetting a criminal rampage.”
Time to defund the ATF....way past time to do so...