A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate.
Operation Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and overseen by the Justice Department. It started under the leadership of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Fast and Furious enabled straw gun purchases from licensed dealers in Arizona, in which more than 2,000 weapons were smuggled to Mexican drug kingpins. ATF claims it was seeking to track the weapons as part of a larger crackdown on the growing violence in the Southwest. Instead, ATF effectively has armed murderous gangs. About 300 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious weapons. More than 1,400 guns remain lost. Agent Terry likely will not be the last U.S. casualty.
Mr. Holder insists he was unaware of what took place until after media reports of the scandal appeared in early 2011. This is false. Such a vast operation only could have occurred with the full knowledge and consent of senior administration officials. Massive gun-running and smuggling is not carried out by low-level ATF bureaucrats unless there is authorization from the top. There is a systematic cover-up.
Congressional Republicans, however, are beginning to shed light on the scandal. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a congressional probe is exposing the Justice Department’s rampant criminality and deliberate stonewalling. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who heads the department’s criminal division, helped craft a February letter to Congress that denied ATF had ever walked guns into Mexico. Yet, under pressure from congressional investigators, the department later admitted that Mr. Breuer knew about ATF gun-smuggling as far back as April 2010. In other words, Mr. Breuer has been misleading Congress. He should resign – or be fired.
Nobody died in the original Watergate.
So far as we know, Obama’s gun running plot to get rid of our 2nd Amendment rights has killed over 150 people.
It is FAR WORSE than Nixon’s Watergate.
GUFFAW.
Are you kidding? Watergate ended Nixon’s career. Honestly, do you really think F&F will bring him down?
You’re delusional if you think so.
@Nan G:
If the Republicans running for President were smart, and God knows no one can accuse them of that, they’d be mentioning “Fast and Furious” in every sentence of every debate to raise the awareness of the American public since the press never will.
I don’t know if it will ever reach the level of Watergate, not that it should not. But nevertheless, what has happened is a crime. And more congress people/senators should all be screaming their heads off for the right heads to roll. It’s a shame and a disgrace either way you look at it. But then I seriously doubt if the real culprits behind this mess are ever held accountable. They are politicians. Need I say more? Oh sure they will find the sacrificial scape goat, and that will be that. I hope I am wrong.
The only candidate with the gumption and the verbal acuity to make this kind of thing public and understandable in a debate is Newt Gingrich. I would hope he would do it in a Presidential debate rather than a primary, since the people who need to hear about it are unlikely to be watching the primary debates.
The odds are against him ever seeing a Presidential debate though. The media is desperate to drag him down, as is the wealthy Romney campaign, the Republican establishment and an assortment of media figures on the right who each have their own personal reasons to dislike him.
@Ivan: No, I don’t think it will bring him down. He will be protected by his lapdog media. The media have great power in whether a scandal catches fire. They made Watergate huge, kept Clinton looking likeable enough to save his presidency, and spiked the Edwards scandal. They managed to turn inappropriate emails to Pages by a Republican (Foley) into a career ending proposition, and did the same with a foot tap in a public bathroom in another case. The Democratic representative caught having actual sex with Pages? Reelected 3 times.
If an insurgent Republican candidate with questions about qualification had surfaced, the media would have had inquiries and investigations within days, and kept after it like pit bulls.
RICK PERRY SHOULD RISE ALONG GINGRICH, same lever, same marks, same rank, YOU ALL want some action don’t you?
who’s in charge to keep him behind,? and why?
something is not right there, they must wake up.
don’t tell me It’s because he had a blank on a name,
that is a stupid view to focus on a minor word blank,
don’t you see it was because he had many other AGENCIES in mind to eliminate, and same for judges, he had more than one to target on, ONCE HE GET THE PRESIDENTCY, HE’LL HAVE A SUPER CREW from what I see behind him, and they will read his mind instead of his lips, it’s more direct to the truth of his agenda, don’t you have enough of words from a president, which don’t mean nothing