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From the Guardian, Jan. 2011. We could address this by blaming Obama for one failed program or we could note how keeping marijuana illegal here creates the profit motive that leads to this map. UPDATE: Pink dots are cities with at least one drug-related murder; red pins have 70+.
This story is Geoff Willis’s beat, but as I don’t know if he’s going to write about today’s development I thought I’d better send out the alert. (Actually, I was willing to post anything to get that Bachmann-Taitz photo off of the first slot in the picture rotation. It’s killing us!) I’m putting ‘Murdergate’ in quotes, but once again I stress that I am in total sympathy with Geoff about the Republicans making this their MAIN ATTACK on President Obama in 2012. (Of course, I say that as one who will cast a not-entirely-unconflicted-but-certainly-comfortable vote for Obama.)
The big development about yesterday’s news is reported in this story in Talking Points Memo. I reproduce here the first four paragraphs of that article, which all “Murdergate” afficianados should read.
At least twenty weapons that were allowed to “walk” during a Bush-era investigation aimed at combating gun trafficking were later recovered in Mexico, documents the Justice Department sent to congressional investigators on Thursday indicate.
One of the distinctions that Republicans have drawn between Operation Fast and Furious, the flawed investigation that allowed weapons to “walk” into Mexico during the Obama administration, and Operation Wide Receiver, which did the same during the Bush administration, is that authorities who took part in the earlier investigation were coordinating their efforts with Mexican authorities.
“The difference in the previous administration is there was coordination with the Mexican government,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said at a hearing in December. “They made a real effort under Wide Receiver to pass off a small amount of weapons and track them.”
But new documents DOJ disclosed to congressional investigators on Thursday appear to indicate that ATF officials didn’t even consider looping Mexican authorities in on their operation until several months after the investigation began and ATF had already lost track of weapons that likely ended up in Mexico.
If you think that this shows that this program — even if not well-conceived and not well-executed — was also not initiated by the current administration, well then that just shows that you haven’t yet read the material yet to be published by that Issa-Willis Axis, surely coming any moment now!
C’mon, guys, we can’t let this story die! It’s the best thing you got going this year apart from Romney’s Death Star Rovian PR ninjas!
So, assuming what you posted is true, that means that Fast and Furious is ok? And it’s ok that at least one American Border Agent and untold numbers of Mexicans have been killed by guns allowed to walk under the Obama administration’s program? Or are you just trying to deflect attention from all that? If Wide Receiver allowed guns to walk and people died, then those in charge should also be held accountable.
It means that, rather the Obama’s Administration’s perversion of a previous policy that had been done properly, it was a reiteration of a previous policy that had led to the same errors. FWIW, my sense is that it was a “too clever by half” idea that was not ill-intentioned but riskier than they probably admitted, but that not only should Obama not be held to account for it, but probably not Holder either. That doesn’t mean that F&F (or its predecessor Wide Receiver) was OK; it just means that the political hay some are trying to make for it is all wet.
Really? You mean it’s not really a well-executed secret sinister plan for long-time closet gun-control fanatics Obama and Holder to take away my hunting rifle?
You know damned well that I’m not allowed to confirm that.
” And it’s ok that at least one American Border Agent and untold numbers of Mexicans have been killed by guns allowed to walk under the Obama administration’s program”
Except that American border agent WAS NOT KILLED by one of the guns from operation Fast and Furious, two guns from F&F were just found at the scene.
Darrell Issa’s Fast and Furious? Isn’t that back when he was driving around cars that his brother stole?
Bring the troops home and invade Mexicao so we can save them just like we saved Iraq.
America’s favorite past-time, cheap oil and drugs.
Saddle up cowboys and lets go get ours, lets occupy them.
I really like how nice your map is, but, what do the dots represent?
Do they indicate clothing optional resorts ? Marijuana farms ? Ex-patriots living south of the border on their own private compounds with cable TV ?
But thanks for pushing the picture of Dumb and Dumber closer to the trash bin.
Sorry — the first attempted post of the graphic, where I included that info in the caption, didn’t take; when I did it over I forgot to include it. I’ve fixed it now.
Mr. Diamond,
You and other F&F deflectors are deliberatly conflating 2 distinct definitions of the term “allow”
allow:
1. to give permission to or for; permit: to allow a student to be absent; No swimming allowed.
2. to permit by neglect, oversight, or the like: to allow a door to remain open.
The Bush Admin. is responsible for “allowing” several hundred guns to enter Mexico through ineffective operational control.
The Obama Admin. on the other hand is guilty of intentionally “allowing” several thousand guns to enter Mexico – the intent of the motive for this is yet to be determined, but it will be determined.
I see. Obama’s screwup was intentional and Bush’s was not.
And there’s definitely a secret motive that explains why Obama intentionally screwed up, and intentionally MURDERED one of his own border agents. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this!
Read ’em and weep skallywag,( the newly released e-mails from Operation Wide Receiver that is);
From The Huffington Post;
The Wide Receiver investigation that began in early 2006 proceeded and used the gun-walking tactic despite the concerns expressed by some of the law enforcement personnel involved in it.
“I am no longer comfortable allowing additional firearms to `walk,’ without a more defined purpose,” a supervisor for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona wrote in a June 2007 email to a federal law enforcement official in Texas about Operation Wide Receiver.
“I think it is wrong for us to allow 100s of guns to go into Mexico to drug people KNOWING that is where they are going,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Serra Tsethlikai wrote in a Dec. 19, 2008, email to another assistant U.S. attorney.
Early in the investigation, prosecutors had enough to charge suspects who had been converting firearms into machine guns, but law enforcement officials decided to wait, according to emails by personnel at ATF.
“We believe at this point there is more value in the surveillance, identification of locations, persons, vehicles,” an ATF supervisor wrote in a June 15, 2006, email. An ATF briefing paper on Wide Receiver in August 2006 said the weapons involved in the investigation probably had ended up as “illegally trafficked firearms to Mexico.”
Investigative activity went on for another year, then languished at the Justice Department until the Obama administration took office.
In an August 2009 email, an ATF agent said that a federal prosecutor had a “moral dilemma” about Wide Receiver because the government had allowed the targets of the investigation “to traffic 300+ firearms to Mexico.”
Under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department pursued the Wide Receiver case and six defendants have pleaded guilty.
**************************
Hmmm, the quote from Assistant U.S. Attorney Serra Tsethlikai CERTAINLY sounds like they were INTENTIONALLY letting “guns walk”.
Anonster,
The Huff & Puff Post puts forward a lot of misleading words but does not change the basis of my argument – still valid. I read that article before I made my comment. Vern gets it.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic, Skallywag. No qualitative differences between the two programs.
To put it in the most simple terms – the Bush Admin. did not intentionally allow non-tracked guns to be trafficed across the border – the Obama Admi. did. Irrefutable.
Huff-post had QUOTES directly from the e-mails from people working during the Bush administration, those NOT suffering from Obama derangement psychosis can easily COMPREHEND the truth.
You can try and SPIN, DENY and LIE, but those e-mails prove that they DID KNOWINGLY ALLOW guns to walk into Mexico, uncoordinated with Mexican officials and on top of that they NEVER even bothered to pursue the criminal cases, the Obama administration did that.
The Bush Admin. knew that the guns which they had intended to track and interdict before they crossed the border had ended up in Mexico – that is why they stopped Wide Receiver.
We should learn more from Holder’s upcoming congressional testimony on F&F – I hope that they put him under oath this time.
Greg,
“Is Issa a trustworthy source re Fast & Furious?”
uhh – so where do you address this question in your article?
The answer, suggested by comparing these e-mails to his accusations, is “no.” Issa is the one pushing the investigation in Congress. I may have edited out the relevant passage in one of the links, sorry. Check the links, and if it’s not there, check the links from the links, and if you still don’t see it, check the links from those links. That should keep you busy.
Does Scally not know that Issa has been charged with a felony for stealing a Maserati with his brother, and also suspected of stealing a fellow serviceman’s Dodge Charger? He was also denied an insurance payment for a suspicious fire at his car alarm factory.
Most people don’t have this much interaction with the police.
I thought that this stuff was common knowledge.
A fellow soldier claimed that Issa stole his car – the car was found abandoned on a nearby expressway. Issa denied the charge and suggested it was possible that other soldiers stole the car or that the car owner abandoned it himself while intoxicated.
Issa and his brother were charged with stealing a car from a dealer’s showroom. Issa says it was a matter of mistaken identity by the Cleveland Heights police; the case was dismissed.
You don’t believe in innocent until proven guilty?
This would all mean something if Issa were black or a democrat or heaven forbid, both, right skallywag?
In 2011, Issa acknowledged that he had tried to cover his brother’s insurance fraud scheme. Both men say that Issa’s brother planned and executed the scheme; Issa remained close to his brother in spite of his brother’s activities and had ridden, as a boy, with William in cars he knew must have been stolen, saying in 2011 that “I admired my brother even when he was doing wrong…. I was always the kid at his ankles.”
Okay …. what else?
If one wanted to cover every shady deal that Darrell Issa was involved in, they would need a dedicated website.
Here’s another from the NY Times:
He has secured millions of dollars in Congressional earmarks for road work and public works projects that promise improved traffic and other benefits to the many commercial properties he owns here north of San Diego. In one case, more than $800,000 in earmarks he arranged will help widen a busy thoroughfare in front of a medical plaza he bought for $10.3 million.
You want more? Try using Google.
I wouldn’t trust this guy to walk my dog.
politicians don’t want anyone to protect themselves at all. fast and furious is still a plan.
drug dealers will kill as many people as they want to kill.
americans use drugs and that is part of the problem.
politicians don’t care how many americans are killed to prove a point.
politicians are evil and greedy. politicians care about themselves and money.
the facts are scary and true.