[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]koffea wrote:
it was different than the bush administration in a couple key ways:
- wide receiver informed Mexican govt of what it was doing
- wide receiver used rfid chips to try to track the guns, the gun runners figured out ways to outsmart the tracking chips, but the attempt was made. – there was no attempt to track any guns in fast and furious except to right down the serial number. Also in fast an furious, agents were told to stand down and let the guns go when the straw purchasers were picked up.
- wide receiver was shut down in 2007 due to the fact that it was flawed because the gun runners had figured out how to circumvent the tracking. Concerns were also raised about the risk/benefit as well as whether or not they were getting useful information. Under Obama it was resurrected with no attempt to track.
both of these were deeply flawed, however, fast and furious was even more ill conceived than wide receiver. usually, you learn from the mistakes made in the previous operations, work out plans to fix them, and then maybe do it again. this is clearly not what happened.
also, Rep Issa’s letter really sums up the issue of executive power used in this case:
[quote]Either you or your most senior advisers were involved in managing Operation Fast and Furious and the fallout from it �¢?�¦ or, you are asserting a Presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation.
To date, the White House has steadfastly maintained that it has not had any role in advising the Department with respect to the congressional investigation. The surprising assertion of executive privilege raised the question of whether that is still the case.[/quote]
two options / both shady[/quote]
Good points. As you say wide receiver was a completely different operation.
Katie Pavlich, Fast and Furious:
'Allowing guns to “walk,” knowingly providing weapons to criminal suspects and attempting to trace them later, had been tried by the Justice Department before, in “Operation Wide Receiver,” launched by the Bush administration in 2005 in close cooperation with the Mexican government. In that operation, straw purchasers were closely monitored in the hopes they might lead to others. Some were arrested before they crossed the border back into Mexico. The ones who crossed the border were to be arrested by the Mexican government. When it was discovered that at least four hundred guns were not recovered by authorities and lost in Mexico, the operation was terminated.
What the Obama administration was attempting now was a reprisal of a failed operation, but with two twists: no attempt would be made to recover the guns as they crossed the Mexican border, and, as Dodson soon learned, the Mexican government had been kept in the dark about (now renamed as) “Operation Fast and Furious.”
Thus many of the key players in the Fast and Furious scandal - those in Phoenix directly overseeing operations, such as Burke, and those in Washington overseeing the overseers, such as Holder, Breuer, Emanuel, and Napolitano - had longstanding relationships, similar political views, and favored restricting Second Amendment rights. They put a sensitive, high-priority gun trafficking operation into the hands of an ATF office known for mismanagement and ethical problems."
“I can’t think of a single, logical strategy as to why this would have worked,” Special ATF Agent Peter Forcelli said. But perhaps it was not supposed to “work” all along."
[quote]ZEB wrote:
…it was a botched mission which cost the life of one border patrol agent and Holder is directly responsible![/quote]
Holder is a disgrace and never should’ve been offered AG. Amongst other things, I’m sure you remember his group amnesty to convicted FALN terrorists under the Clinton administration and subsequent denial of any recollection of it.[/quote]
I sure do, and I also remember him no investigating the Black Panthers when this group was OBVIOUSLY involved in voter intimidation.
But…they’re black so just look the other way. Can anyone think of any other reason? Can you imagine if another disgusting group like the KKK were involved in voter intimidation? They would be ripped to shreds as the Black Panthers should have been.
