The Fast and Furious scandal is turning into President Obama's Watergate

[CuteOldGuy]

Originally Posted by CJ7

Faux News can edit tapes and make shit up until they have ALL the mouth breathing idiots in a frenzy

Well, yeah. But still . . .

[Doove]

Colbert's take.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by BigLouie

Everyone seems to think this all started under Obama but he was sworn in as President on January 20, 2009. This program was started THREE YEARS before Obama was elected by Bush and his people, NOT Obama. Like a lot of other things, Obama was left to clean up the mess.

Here is a history of the program:

The ATF began Project Gunrunner as a pilot project in Laredo, Texas, in 2005 and expanded it as a national initiative in 2006. Project Gunrunner is also part of the Department of Justice’s broader Southwest Border Initiative, which seeks to reduce cross-border drug and firearms trafficking and the high level of violence associated with these activities on both sides of the border.
ATF had determined that the Mexican cartels had become the leading gun trafficking organizations operating in the southwest U.S. and is working in collaboration with other agencies and the Government of Mexico to expand the eTrace firearm tracing software system. eTrace provides web based access to ATF’s Firearms Tracing System to allow law enforcement both domestically and internationally the ability to trace firearms encountered in connection with a criminal investigation to the first recorded purchaser (who may have innocently sold the gun years ago). eTrace allows law enforcement to access their trace results directly (name and address of first purchaser) and offers the ability to generate statistical reports to analyze their trace data to estimate firearms trafficking trends or patterns.
ATF announced a goal to deploy eTrace software to all thirty-one states within the Republic of Mexico. As part of eTrace expansion, ATF continues to provide training to Mexican and Central American countries to ensure that the technology is utilized to a greater extent. Colombia and Mexico were provided with their own in-country tracing centers with full access to ATF firearm registration records. In Colombia, a joint ATF-CNP Center for Anti-Explosives Information and Firearms Tracing (CIARA) opened on December 6, 2006. In Mexico, The National Center for Information, Analysis and Planning in order to Fight Crime (CENAPI) was established in 2003. ATF states these are models for planned future tracing centers throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean Basin.

Didn't read COG's article, did you Big Louse?

It’s important to note that the Bush administration oversaw something similar to Fast and Furious. Called Operation Wide Receiver, it used the common tactic of “controlled delivery,” whereby agents would allow an illegal transaction to take place, closely follow the movements of the arms, and then descend on the culprits. But Fast and Furious is different because it was “uncontrolled delivery,” whereby the criminals were essentially allowed to drop off the map. Perhaps more importantly, Wide Receiver was conducted with the cooperation of the Mexican government. Fast and Furious was not.

[CuteOldGuy]

Big Louie has trouble reading and writing. That's why he cuts and pastes and pretends it's his own words.

[i'va biggen]

I don't compare it to watergate as much as the B S proceeding the going to war in Iraq.

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

If the House votes contempt charges, the media will be there, or most will switch to FOX News.

I think the House vote for contempt is a done deal. There's no way Holder will comply with the request for all the documents. Unless he does, they'll vote for contempt. He's bound to be sitting on something very embarrassing or criminal. I think Obama is directly tied with the operation and had knowledge from early on.

If Obama gets re-elected and the Republicans take both houses, this thing could get him impeached, particularly if the economy stays weak.

[Seedy]

Originally Posted by joe bloe

I think the House vote for contempt is a done deal. There's no way Holder will comply with the request for all the documents. Unless he does, they'll vote for contempt. He's bound to be sitting on something very embarrassing or criminal. I think Obama is directly tied with the operation and had knowledge from early on.

If Obama gets re-elected and the Republicans take both houses, this thing could get him impeached, particularly if the economy stays weak.

Oscuminable is flat fucked, if he continues this course, what's he hidding, someone will break ranks and spill the beans. Best thing he could do would be to come clean and tell the truth. But luckily for the country he is totally incapable of doing so, it will be his undoing...fuck him...communist bastard....

[JD Barleycorn]

I wonder why the AG first blamed the Bush Justice Department and then had to withdraw his claim? Seems to me that the charge that this was Bush's problem was just blown up right there by Holder himself. So I guess Louise will have to find something else to cut and paste.

I found that you cut and pasted from Wikipedia Louise. Also perusing the source material I have to be concerned that everything was after the shit hit the fan. Most of it is from the Obama adminstration, AP, and the Attorney General's office. Very questionable. You know what would convince me? Holder releases the documents that prove this. If he can't do this then I guess it never happened like you said.

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by BigLouie

Everyone seems to think this all started under Obama but he was sworn in as President on January 20, 2009. This program was started THREE YEARS before Obama was elected by Bush and his people, NOT Obama. Like a lot of other things, Obama was left to clean up the mess.

Law enforcement operations sometimes go horribly wrong, and every indication is that Operation Wide Receiver executed by the ATF during the Bush administration while Alberto Gonzales was the attorney general was a “keystone cops” operation of the first magnitude. It was a horrible failure.In Operation Wide Receiver, Tucson agents allowed the sales of more than 500 firearms to known straw purchasers. Like Gunrunner/Fast and Furious, the operation apparently backfired.

Some firearms in Wide Receiver were equipped with RFID tracking devices. In Wide Receiver, it seems the illegal purchasers seemed more than slightly knowledgeable of the ATF and how to take their aerial and electronic tracking procedures down.

Knowing the time aloft numbers for virtually all planes used in government surveillance, the buyers had a simple method of getting their purchases across the border undetected. They simply drove four-hour loops around the area.

As surveillance planes were forced to return to base for refueling, the smugglers simply turned and sprinted their cargo across the border.

The RFID tags also turned out to be problematic.

Rather than making large enough holes for the tags to be laid out inside weapons, agents force-fit them into the rifles.

That cramming caused the antennae to be folded, reducing the effective range of the tags. And an already short battery life (36-48 hours maximum) meant that should purchasers allow the firearms to sit, the tracking devices eliminated themselves.

As a result of the mistakes made in Wide Receiver, guns were lost: approximately 450 made it into Mexico. As a result, the botched operation launched in 2006 — and in this instance, actually botched — was shut down in 2007.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/gunwalker-gu...inglepage=true

The Fast and Furious operation had none of those controls in place. And the ensuing scandal became an Obama issue the moment he decided to use executive privilege to shield documents from being released to the House Oversight Committee.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...ous-documents/

And Sen. Charles Grassley astutely asks, “How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen?”
http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/...eID_1502=41368

How about a little hypocrisy?

Obama went on Larry King’s show in CNN in 2007 and accused the Bush administration of “hiding behind executive privilege” after King asked him for his opinion on its utilization. He further added that the American people have "a right to know."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpwYh...ature=youtu.be

Why did Obama change his tune? Don't the American people have a right to know now, as well? Video can be real bitch sometimes, huh?

This is a criminal investigation. An innocent American citizen was murdered. Its very likely that hundreds of Mexican citizens have been murdered. They were murdered with the very weapons that Holder and the DOJ knowingly sent to the drug cartels in Mexico, without working with the Mexican government and without tracking the weapons.

Here us a really good article on the history of this whole thing
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...ious-fall.html

You can argue it all you want, but the facts are the facts....and Fast and Furious happened on Obama's watch.

I don't recall anyone that died as a direct result of Watergate.

[Sidewinder]

At http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=8127, Jerry Pournelle, who was a professor of Government at Pepperdine, who taught Constitutional Law, and who was director of mission planning for Apollo 19 (one of the cancelled flights) before he became a full-time writer, says the following: "The news is full of the President’s invocation of Executive Privilege to protect someone in his Justice Department from being found out by Congress. For the President to invoke that privilege the President has to say that something in this involves him; Executive Privilege does not work to protect malfeasance or incompetence form being exposed. It has to say that the Office of the Presidency would somehow be at risk if the documents became public."

As long as this was Eric Holder stonewalling, it was one thing. When the President of the United States of America becomes the one stonewalling, because HE knows something about this that HE believes that the American people must not learn, it is no longer possible to claim that this is about the Department of Justice wrangling internally.

At http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=8082, Jerry reminds us: "The Congress is the Grand Inquest of the Nation, and constitutionally is empowered to see that the President does indeed take care to see that the laws are faithfully enforced."

Jerry says quite a bit more in both of those topics, and his site is always interesting reading.

[JD Barleycorn]

Is this the same Pournelle who wrote "Lucifer's Hammer"?

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by seedman55

Oscuminable is flat fucked, if he continues this course, what's he hidding, someone will break ranks and spill the beans. Best thing he could do would be to come clean and tell the truth. But luckily for the country he is totally incapable of doing so, it will be his undoing...fuck him...communist bastard....

The common wisdom is that the cover up is worse than the crime. People assume that because Nixon was ruined by his participation in the cover up of Watergate, not the initial crime, that every subsequent scandal is the same situation; not necessarily. The reason Obama is participating in a cover up may be because he was aware of the "crime" from day one. If Obama comes clean, he may well have to resign. Sometimes people cover up because it's their only option.

Obama had better hope that he doesn't have a deep thoat in his administration. From what he's said about Michelle, we can rule her out, "she doesn't go all the way down."

[Doove]

Originally Posted by joe bloe

The reason Obama is participating in a cover up may be because he was aware of the "crime" from day one. If Obama comes clean, he may well have to resign.

You people are funny desperate.

[Sexyeccentric1]

I loved this video clip by Rachel Maddow who talks about the silly concocted gun conspiracy and how it all came to be, landing in the congressional action we see today. It is a history account and is very eye opening. Goofy gun conspiracy

[Iaintliein]

Like I said, the drive by media has their collective tongue up the POSITOO's ass:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-dr...s-fast-and-fur