Did Obama Hope to Benefit from ‘Fast and Furious’?
by AWR Hawkins
Attorney General Eric Holder is in trouble. The documents that strongly suggest he lied to Congress have been released to the public, and they came on the heels of the secret Fast and Furious recordings that had already blown holes in parts of his Congressional testimony.
As a result, the House GOP is calling for a Special Counsel to investigate whether Holder purjured himself before Congress.
And while it would be great to see Holder handcuffed and frog-marched off to the big house for lying to Congress (should he be found guilty), we make a serious mistake if we bypass an inquiry into the benefits that both he and President Obama were likely hoping to gain from the operation.
Consider Obama: In April 2009 he spoke alongside Mexican President Felipe Calderón about how border violence on the U.S./Mexico border was proof that the assault weapons ban needed to be re-instituted. (Ironically, at that very same time, the Obama administration was preparing to undertake Fast and Furious, which we now know increased the number of assault weapons on the border exponentially.)
Thus, with words that we can now recognize as hypocritical in light of Fast and Furious, Obama said:
“I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment right in our Constitution — the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners that want to keep their families safe — to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we know here in Mexico, are used to fuel violence.”
These words came just over two months after Obama has authorized $10 million for Fast and Furious (via the Stimulus package) and just over a week after Holder gave a speech at the Mexico/United States Arms Trafficking Conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in which he boasted of overseeing the implementation of Gunrunner.
The audacity of both Obama and Holder is stomach turning.
I have not been alone in speculating that the real reason behind Fast and Furious was to cause enough border chaos to incline Americans to clamor for more gun control, thereby opening the door for Obama’s anti-gun agenda to be unleashed. And as you read the words he spoke while with President Calderón, it’s easy to see how he was counting on border chaos to benefit him.
Sadly, Calderón played into Obama’s hand when he stood by him and said: “From the moment the prohibition on the sale of assault weapons [in the U.S.] was lifted a few years ago, we have seen an increase in the power of organized crime in Mexico.”
I wonder what Calderón would say about the increased power of organized crime in Mexico now that Fast and Furious weapons have been passed to the cartel? What would he say about the hundreds upon hundreds of deaths in Mexico that have been tied to those weapons?
Hopefully, he too has seen through Obama’s empty words and understands that lives on both sides of the border were sacrificed in hopes of persuading Americans that more gun control would fix everything.
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Holder revelations contradict Obama’s ‘Gunwalker’ assertions
By David Codrea
Yesterday’s blockbuster revelation of documents showing Attorney General Eric Holder was informed of “gunwalking” operations as early as July, 2010, despite testifying before Congress on May 3 of this year that he “probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks” contradict public statements made by President Barack Obama about administration involvement.
In direct response to a question from Univision’s Jorge Ramosas to who authorized the operation, the president said:
Well, first of all I did not authorize it. Eric Holder, the Attorney General, did not authorize it. He’s been very clear that our policy is to catch gun runners and put them into jail.
The problem with this statement, as the top-level Justice Department memoranda reveal, is that Holder knew gunwalking operations were occurring, that his direct reports were involved in them, and that he did nothing to stop them, or, based on evidence gleaned to date, to even question them. That his subordinates felt comfortable including him on routine reporting shows they assumed his tacit approval for their activities, that is, his authorization.
No other explanation is credible, including ridiculous new excuses which would show unprecedented incompetence if we are to believe that Holder did not read the reports from his staff, or that he did not understand a direct question put to him by Darrell Issa, or that the memoranda were talking about a different gunwalking operation!!! At this point, administration excuses have devolved from the Sgt. Schultz denial to the Bart Simpson taunt.
The key phrase here is “if we are to believe.” As opposed to thinking it more likely that, like not particularly bright or ethical children who have been caught red-handed, they are coming up with increasingly convoluted lies to cover the original whopper…
And there’s another problem for the president, because his assurances have covered more than his attorney general notauthorizing gunwalking. He is also on record asserting Holder did not know about it (as well as covering his own tracks):
I heard on the news about this story that…uh…Fast and Furious, where … uh … allegedly … uh … guns were being run into Mexico and ATF knew about it but didn’t … uh … apprehend those who had, who had sent it. Eric Holder is the attorney general, has been very clear that he knew nothing about this…
"Very clear"...?
Documented evidence from the Justice Department now shows us this is just not so. So the questions now become:
Did the president believe what he was saying when he said it?
Did Holder lie to his boss as well as to the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform?
Or might we have probable cause to doubt the implausible assertions coming from the Chief Executive? Especially sincethe White House withheld releasing “an unspecified number of internal e-mails exchanged among three National Security Staff aides” because, according to its Chief Counsel “the [Executive Office of the President] has significant confidentiality interests in its internal communications."
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Project Guntalker
My Sunday appearance discussing “Project Gunwalker” with Mark Walters on Armed American Radio is now online. Click here to listen.
Mark and I will both be guests tomorrow morning at 8:00 am Eastern time on Christian Worldview Today with Dr. Tony Beam, to continue with the latest revelations in this unfolding horror story. The program airs on the 50,000 watt Christian Talk 660 AM and simulcasts on 92.9 FM, beaming out of Greenville SC. Those outside the broadcast area can click the “listen live” button.
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Also see:
· A Journalist’s Guide to ‘Project Gunwalker' Part One,Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five and Part Sixfor a complete list with links of independent investigative reporting and commentary done to date by Sipsey Street Irregulars and Gun Rights Examiner.
Note to newcomers to this story: “Project Gunrunner” is the name ATF assigned to its Southwest Border Initiative to interdict gun smuggling to Mexico. “Project Gunwalker” is the name I assigned to the scandal after allegations by agents that monitored guns were allowed to fall into criminal hands on both sides of the border through a surveillance process termed “walking” surfaced.
Fast, Furious and false
by Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Holder told the Judiciary Committee May 3, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”
But in a newly discovered July 2010 memo Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”
Congressional investigators believe Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from that day on. The program didn’t become a matter of public knowledge until a Border Patrol agent was killed and two of the U.S.-supplied guns were found at the scene. A spokesperson for the Justice Department now insists that Holder simply misunderstood the committee’s question, which seems lame in the extreme.
There is, of course, an easy way to clear things up, and that’s for Holder to come before the committee again and correct the record, to disclose at what point he realized that guns were “walking” across the border never to be seen again, and why this idiotic effort wasn’t halted sooner.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view.bg?articleid=1371056
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