Have you been following this story about ATF allowing assault rifles to be purchased by Mexican drug cartel gun runners from legitimate US dealers so that the guns could be tracked and eventually recovered during drug busts? The program - also known as "Gunrunner" - was designed to develop enough gun running evidence to bring down an entire cartel.
Bob Owens compares it to Iran-Contra - a similarly cockamamie scheme with similarly predictable results.
Bob points us to a 51 page report by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that presents some shocking facts about the program:
"DOJ and ATF inappropriately and recklessly relied on a 20-year-old ATF Order to allow guns to walk." The agencies misrepresented the intention of the order to justify their actions.
"Supervisors told the agents to 'get with the program' because senior ATF officials had sanctioned the operation." At least one agent was cautioned that if he didn't stop complaining about the dangerous nature of the operation, he would find himself out of a job, and lucky to be working in a prison.
"Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix." ATF officials were seemingly unconcerned over the deaths of Mexican law enforcement officers, soldiers, and innocent civilians, noting that you had to "scramble a few eggs" to make an omelette, in a callous disregard of human life.
Senior ATF personnel including Acting Director Ken Melson, and senior Department of Justice officials at least up to an assistant attorney general, were well aware of and supported the operation.
Department of Justice officials hid behind semantics to lie and deny that they allowed guns to be walked across the border.
When asked by the Oversight Committee how many of 1,750 specific weapons that "walked" under orders of the ATF and DOJ could have been interdicted if agents were allowed to act as they were trained, the agents answered they could have stopped every single one.Owens puts a human cost on this reckless scheme:
The more than 2,000 weapons that the Obama Justice Department allowed to be delivered to Mexican narco-terrorist cartels are thought to have been used in the shooting of an estimated 150 Mexican law enforcement officers and soldiers battling the cartels. Two American law enforcement officers have also presumably fallen prey to these weapons, along with an unknown number of civilians on both sides of the border.
President Barack Obama's Department of Justice has purposefully armed narco-terrorist drug cartels that have been accused of bombings, ambushes, mass murders, public executions, and the assassination of police, politicians, and civic leaders.
Obama's Justice Department armed the enemy of our neighbor and ally, providing enough arms to equip ten infantry companies, or two battalions, of violent drug dealers.The Examiner declares that even if Holder didn't know of this, he should have. Reason enough to demand his resignation:
Documents released by the Issa panel make it clear that Operation Fast and Furious was well-known and enthusiastically supported at the highest leveIs of ATF. That means the program had to have been supported elsewhere within the Justice Department. Thus, it is inconceivable that Holder did not know about Operation Fast and Furious. But even if he didn't know, he clearly should have. Either way, Wednesday's hearing provided the latest evidence that it's past time for Holder to go.
American Thinker
