Another take on this Fast & Furious Business

[Shadowrider]

So now that we have Eric Holder held in contempt both criminally and civilly, I have a question. I've been thinking about this for awhile now and the pieces just keep falling into place.

We know that by every possible objective viewpoint that there appears to be a massive coverup and it appears that the whitehouse was definitely involved. If not in the actual operation, the coverup and maybe both. The congressional committee still hasn't got the documents that were subpoenaed and probably never will. Or will they? I'm wondering if they are somehow through some circumstance going to give up these documents. And if so, probably about two or three months out of the election. Obama and crew in my mind appears to be on a path of political suicide with their ideology blinding them to anything outside of that path. But in reality they are actually pretty shrewd. Could it possibly be that they have manufactured a "scandal" that the repubs would charge headlong into only to burn them in the end? What if they do end up giving up the documents and we find there's a fat lot of nothing, zilch, zero, nada in them? Would the democraps go to this extent? I think they might because it appears that there is no way they can win re-election without giving the appearance that the repubs are just so blinded by partisanship that they just won't work on anything else other than making the dims look bad. As I see it that's the dim's only hope and I'm wondering if they saw this when the cat got let out of the bag and decided to use the whole deal as a "tool" for re-election. Lord knows they are using all the class warfare, racism and everything else they can because they just don't have any other ground to stand on. They just can't win on the success of their policies.

I still think this is pretty far fetched and that there really is something to be found out. But on the other hand, it wouldn't be far, far away from the first time the repubs were bamboozled by the dims. Could it be?

Ready.....


Set.............





Discuss...........................

 

[HackerF15E]

I think that's reading WAY too much into the situation.

Personally, I don't agree with the idea that this was all some sinister conspiracy that has some wicked master plan to harm Republicans in an election year. I don't even agree that this was all some master plan to force some stripping of 2A rights. I think the government is way, way too incompetent to pull either of those things off.

Instead, I think it's just a poor decision (to not track the weapons), which evolved into a situation which DOJ lied to avoid embarassment (the initial Congressional inquiry), and then everyone (Holder and the administration) has amplified by covering up that they lied (or knew that people were telling lies in the hearings).

It has been simple bureaurcratic idiocy that has snowballed out of proportion for the ATF, DOJ and Obama Administration.

 

[David2012]

There is that pesky little e-mail from the guy who said they were looking for examples of guns from the United States having been used in crimes commited in Mexico in order to strengthen the need for tightening gun laws here in the states along the border. Kind of hard to get around that...

What gets me is.... if Obama & Holder did know about Fast & Furious' and knew that 100's of innocent Mexican citizens and Agent Terry had been killed in the process... what is the difference between that and Obama ordering Drones to kill known terrorists.. and innocent people around them getting killed as collateral damage.

I'd bet that in Obama and Holder's mind there is no difference.. Agent Terry & the 100's of Mexican citizens killed by these guns that walked was just collateral damage that comes with the 'war' on drugs.... just as in the 'war' on terrorism.

Personally, I think Obama gets a 'Woody' every time he orders or OK's someone to be killed. He strikes me as that kind of guy.

 

[RyanSixer]

I'd have to disagree. I mean, even if the objective was to track the guns and find all of the big drug cartels, how in the world does arming criminals solve the situation? I agree with Shadow. After all of the crap that Obama's done, these two huge things decided to show up 6 months away from an election. First, he said he didn't have any knowledge about the FnF stuff, and later uses executive privledge? And now, Obamacare has been ruled a tax. Now everyone who voted for Obama to lower taxes are a little angry, I suppose.

I think America as we know it is gone.

Maybe he should have spent a few less nights on golf trips..

 

[RyanSixer]

^ First paragraph in response to Hacker.

 

[Shadowrider]

For the record, I do think F&F was hatched as a way to drum up anti-2A sentiment, I just can't think of any other logical objective. Only after Brian Terry's murder is when I think the "never let a good crisis go to waste" kicked in.

 

[Glocktogo]

I think that's reading WAY too much into the situation.

Personally, I don't agree with the idea that this was all some sinister conspiracy that has some wicked master plan to harm Republicans in an election year. I don't even agree that this was all some master plan to force some stripping of 2A rights. I think the government is way, way too incompetent to pull either of those things off.

Instead, I think it's just a poor decision (to not track the weapons), which evolved into a situation which DOJ lied to avoid embarassment (the initial Congressional inquiry), and then everyone (Holder and the administration) has amplified by covering up that they lied (or knew that people were telling lies in the hearings).

It has been simple bureaurcratic idiocy that has snowballed out of proportion for the ATF, DOJ and Obama Administration.

I used to think this, but several things bother me. First, there's no way that a field level DoJ attorney or supervisory ATF agent in Phoenix decided that it was OK to violate the soverignty of a foreign country, by sending a couple thousand "assault weapons" across the border in the hands of known drug cartel mules. It would be career suicide to do such a thing. Another issue is that as an operation involving drug smuggling and gun trafficking, Fast and Furious was part of the internal Justice Department division known to insiders as "Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force" (OCDETF). The division is so important within the Justice Department that all of its operations must be overseen and approved directly by the Attorney General, with overall oversight provided by the President of the United States.

Andrew McCarthy of National Review provides an in depth report on the manner in which OCDETF operates, the relevant point being that the administration's claim that the Fast and Furious scandal was a botched sting operation of local field agents out of the Phoenix office is completely ludicrous when viewed within the context of the OCDETF.

These operations are invariably conducted by what is known as "main Justice" in Washington at the highest levels of government.

Thus, there is no way in which Fast and Furious could have been conceived, planned, and implemented without the expressed knowledge and approval of the Attorney General in consultation with the President of the United States.

Don't forget the sister operation in Florida called Castaway.

Now, add the fact that the CIA and DEA were upset at the operation and wanted "deconfliction", which were rebuffed by ATF and FBI. When they went to the White House national Security Counsel with the issue, the response from Obama's golf buddy and alleged right hand man Denis McDonough was "butt out". There's still the issue of the "third gun" which went missing from the Brian Terry murder scene that points to the murder being carried out by paid FBI informants, not ATF.

As I've stated MANY times before, independent of each other, none of these issues points to a wider conspiracy. Taken collectively, they do. I've been hopeful, particularly after someone leaked the wiretap authorizations to Issa, that somewhere there's a whistleblower with a smoking gun. I hope they're waiting to drop that bomb when it will have maximum political effect on Holder & Obama. But, when I saw how thoroughly the Obama administration, with the help of key players in Congress, punked the GOP on Obamacare, bad. My faith is shaken that they were stupid enough to leave a smoking gun at all. A few whispered words from ear to ear is all it takes to have plausible deniability. Are they really stupid enough to leave emails and signed documents in their wake?

I'm not so sure.

 

[HackerF15E]

First, there's no way that a field level DoJ attorney or supervisory ATF agent in Phoenix decided that it was OK to violate the soverignty of a foreign country, by sending a couple thousand "assault weapons" across the border in the hands of known drug cartel mules.

They didn't. All they did was fail to follow up on known straw purchases. Nothing was "sent". Nothing was "actively" done. The ATF and DOJ weren't loading crates of AKs and ARs into trucks and driving them in to Mexico.

Not defending it at all...but let's not overstate what happened. Known straw purchases were made that the ATF knew were intended for the cartels. ATF let the purchases happen, and never did anything about it.

 

[HackerF15E]

There is that pesky little e-mail from the guy who said they were looking for examples of guns from the United States having been used in crimes commited in Mexico in order to strengthen the need for tightening gun laws here in the states along the border. Kind of hard to get around that...

There is a Grand Canyon's worth of difference between that email, and there being some huge scheme to enact a new AWB or whatever boogeyman many US firearms owners seem to fear is behind the curtain.

There's no doubt that folks in the DOJ were being opportunistic, and that many would have gladly siezed the opportunitity to try and turn the situation into more gun control legislation. But that is an entirely different scenario than the whole operation being initiated for the sole purpose of creating new controls.

 

[reddog1]

Just face it, our govenment is run by criminals.