Bob Owens lays it out:
It is only reasonable to believe that knowledge of this operation did not stop with cabinet-level officials. If the directors of so many executive branch agencies were involved in this scandal, as it appears they might have been, it is plausible that knowledge of this scheme — perhaps the origination? — came directly from the White House.
One might ask what our laws demand of officials complicit in a plot that used the power of U.S. law enforcement agencies to pressure gun shops into selling weapons to narco-terrorists. If this is indeed the case, impeachment and resignations are just the beginning of the process of seeking justice. Those who authorized this operation and facilitated what was essentially a gunrunning operation to achieve what appears to be a political goal may very well be guilty of a number of felonies — and wanted for extradition to face justice in Mexican courts as well.
Under Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, any person who levies war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them aid and comfort is guilty of the act of treason. Gunwalker supplied narco-terrorists on our southern border with thousands of firearms.
As I said, tar and feathers aren’t enough.
[Update late evening]
Evidence points much higher than BATF director:
Former El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) director Phil Jordan said he thinks this scandal goes as high as Attorney General Eric Holder. From his decades of law enforcement experience working with Washington-based Justice Department officials, Jordan said he’s sure this kind of program would have needed approval from either the Attorney General or one of his direct deputies.
What a shocking development. Not.
This timeline makes two mutually incompatible arguments:
1. Obama wanted to bring back the Clinton-era “assault” weapons ban, which did not reduce the lethality of available firearms because it focused on cosmetic issues, there were stockpiles of large-capacity ammo clips, etc. Basically, the ban accomplished nothing because anyone who wanted the sort of firearm capabilities in question could get them regardless of the ban, and there is no public interest in restricting the sale of “assault” weapons.
2. Obama has blood on his hands because ATF agents did not intervene to stop the sale of a certain number of “assault” style weapons.
You can’t argue that letting a relative handful of these weapons go by is a terrible crime, but that there’s no public interest in restricting them across the board. Either restricting the sale of these weapons saves lives, or it doesn’t. The author wants it both ways.
Since both events did occur with the same supposed oversight, then I’m not seeing how they are mutually exclusive. To believe they are mutually exclusive begins with an assumption that ethics is involved. Knowingly breaking a deal to interdict firearm shipments (this is an event known to have happened) suggests a lack of ethics.
The only question is at what level the lack of ethics went:
ATF?
AG’s office?
Oval office?
The features and type is a strawman argument Jim, these could be 100 year old lever guns for that matter.
The crime is the federal government told the FFLs in question to commit a federal felony by completing a knowing strawman transaction AGAINST THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE FFL! NOT ONLY THAT, THE SAME FEDS NOW WANT TO BLAME THE FFL’S FOR MAKING THE SALES THAT WENT WRONG!
It is a federal crime for a liscenscee to knowingly complete a sale to someone he strongly suspects is not the intended buyer.
Here’s the part of this that never flushed for me.
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“…the meme that Mexican drug cartel violence was rooted in what they view as lax American gun laws.”
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I can’t believe that any grown up, with an IQ above 85, could believe that the availability of GUNS, is the CAUSE of the violence!! Before they had the guns, they used, and still do use, machetes and knives.
My gut tells me that the people who have been killed, might still have been killed. It’s just the ‘device’ used to kill them that would have been different.
Jim, the disconnect is that our firearms policy allows legal ownership by normal citizens in good standing, while trying to keep guns out of the hands of felons, murderers, gang members, crazy people, and narco-Columbian hit men.
Instead the federal government intentionally allowed extremely violent rival drug gangs to purchase thousands of really good guns, in the hope that those guns would show up at bloody crime scenes.
It would be like the LAPD supplying bazookas to Crips and Bloods so the resultant collateral carnage would terrify LA citizens into supporting pay raises for the LAPD. It would be like the EPA putting dioxin and mercury into our tap water so Congress would pass more stringent water quality regulations. It would be like a fire department secretly setting people’s houses on fire (killing many families in the process) so the public would pay more attention to fire safety. It would be like the CIA selling crack in the ghettos to see how many black people became drug addicts, and how many of those committed theft and murder to support their habit.
It’s an evil plot worthy of any Gotham City villain in Batman. It’s an evil plot worthy of impeachment or long jail sentences.
You know, it would be nice if somebody had actual proof that Obama and Holder were involved, let alone wanted to use this mess somehow to bring back gun control.
But why bother with proof when screaming “treason!” is more fun?
You know, it would be nice if somebody had actual proof that Obama and Holder were involved, let alone wanted to use this mess somehow to bring back gun control.
Proof? We probably won’t get it, absent a special prosecutor. Or is it your position that Holder should be allowed to investigate himself? There is certainly abundant circumstantial evidence.
Jim, Mexico has very strict gun laws. How is that working out for them?
“You know, it would be nice if somebody had actual proof that Obama and Holder were involved…”
Just like Rumsfield and Cheney were ‘involved’ in Abu Gharib, Chris?
Or like Cheney was ‘responsible’ for Richard Armitage ‘outing’ clerical worker Valerie Plame?
Sorry, but if you and your side wanted a different standard of responsibility you should have hewed to one 2001-2008.
Actually, I think there is proof they wanted to use this mess to bring back gun control. The question is if they enhanced the mess via the ATF under their administration?
Also, what did Democrat Senators know, and when did they know it?
DaveP – I don’t recall blaming Abu Graib on Rumsfeld. I do blame him for waterboarding at Gitmo, and since Bush admitted approving it that’s not at issue. Regarding Cheney, wasn’t his chief aid convicted of a felony in relation to the Plame issue?
Rand – you don’t even have circumstancial evidence of Holder’s involvement. You have unfounded accusations. BTW, I’m a member of the NRA and do not share Jim’s views on gun control.
Chris, do you really believe that this was some kind of rogue operation of which the AG was unaware? Really?
Well, maybe we’ll find out, if Congress can put enough pressure on the underlings. But seriously, do you expect the Justice Department to credibly investigate itself?
Rand – do you really believe that the Attorney General of the United States told the BATF to give guns to Mexican drug lords so he could get the US to pass gun laws?
First, it doesn’t make sense. Why not give the guns to US criminals? Or let US criminals purchase guns illegally, then bust them? Second, you have no evidence. You have raw, baseless allegations. In Watergate, the crooks were bailed out by the President’s campaign committee, establishing a link.
What’s the link here? Other than “Rand Simberg, a man who’s never even met any of the people involved, wants there to be a link?” You might as well accuse Holder of helping space aliens from Gamma Globula 5 take over the world.
Chris, as Jim says, you can’t have it both ways. Either Holder knew about this, and is an accessory to the crimes, or he is clueless about a very important operation and is an incompetent AG. Which would you prefer?
I actually agree with Jim, that the author of this piece shows evidence of having not throught through the implications logically. It is the case that either American gun dealers supply lots of the firearms used in Mexican drug warfare or the Gunwalker program is responsible for significant levels of mayhem, but not both.
This does not mean, however, that this is not a scandal, and the reason lies in the moral asymmetry of sins of omission and of commission, which I expect
Owens understands perfectly well but did not explain as well as he might.
For example, it’s a known fact that the IRS fails to catch loads of tax cheats. Does that imply that if the Treasury Secretary cheats on his taxes and the IRS lets him get away with it this is no big deal? It’s a fact that the LAPD does not prevent or even solve a big fraction of the murders committed in LA. Does that mean it’s no big deal if an LA police officer commits a single murder (out of the hundreds that go unsolved yearly), and the LAPD covers it up? Hardly. The failure to sufficiently crack down on evil is not the same as explicitly aiding and abetting evil, particularly where government is concerned.
I see Jim fails to grasp the distinction between criminals and the law-abiding. Been lunching with Debbie Wasserman “being illegal isn’t a crime” Schultz?
you really believe that the Attorney General of the United States told the BATF to give guns to Mexican drug lords so he could get the US to pass gun laws?
I certainly have no trouble whatsoever believing that, given his other actions (approving Clinton’s pardon to Marc Rich for bribes, politicizing the voting rights unit in favor of “his people” and stonewalling on it, etc.). The stonewalling on this matter also increases, not decreases suspicion.
What is your explanation for their behavior, if not under orders? Because it certainly made no sense from the standpoint of trying to trace the weapons.
I actually agree with Jim, that the author of this piece shows evidence of having not throught through the implications logically. It is the case that either American gun dealers supply lots of the firearms used in Mexican drug warfare or the Gunwalker program is responsible for significant levels of mayhem, but not both.
It’s already been established that American-sourced guns are a minor part of the narcotrafficantes’ arsenals. They prefer full-auto weaponry and this is not available from American retail gun stores. It is available from Mexican Army armories and corrupting the troops required to open the armories is a lot cheaper and more convenient – if accessing large quantities of weaponry is your goal – than attempting to smuggle American semi-auto arms across the border and then be stuck with having to do home-brew conversion jobs to get full-auto fire. The only people on the Mexican drug trafficking side this makes sense for are probably the fairly minor players who can’t outbid the big boys in the market for corruptible Federales. Thus, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find that the Fast-and-Furious/Gunwalker weapons actually constituted a significant fraction of the relatively small overall number of guns of American origin involved in the current Mexican narco/civil war. As to the scale of the carnage traceable to these weapons, it seems that there is solid evidence that two sworn U.S. peace officers are among the total body count to this point and probably some U.S. civilians as well. But the total Mexican body count is now well above 40,000 and still climbing. Mexico is losing civilians at a faster clip than the U.S. lost soldiers during Vietnam. The casualties traceable to this absurd BATF initiative are not large by current Mexican standards, but they are by U.S. standards. So, no, I don’t see any contradiction here at all.
“It is the case that either American gun dealers supply lots of the firearms used in Mexican drug warfare or the Gunwalker program is responsible for significant levels of mayhem, but not both.’
That’s not what Jim wrote. He is conflating two separate arguments and not doing a very good job.
Letting known weapons smugglers take them to criminals who will and did use them to kill innocent people is a bad idea and a terrible crime. That, in and of itself, does nothing to further the argument about restricting their purchase. It was ALREADY against the law for the strawman purchase to take place. The BATF prevented the law from being enforced. So, as usual, Jim has it backwards. Weapons sales are restricted. The argument is about restricting them further. Also, he’s wrong about the large stockpiles. New weapons had smaller magazines and some models weren’t available at all. The demand didn’t drop, just the supply.
I understand what you’re saying, Dick, but a calculus that dismisses one murder because there are 40,000 more, or because there is some vague future hope of reducing that number, is grotesque. I think the problem is rooted in the moral asymmetry: it’s one thing to balance this or that investment in law enforcement, based on the “bang for the buck” of lives saved. In that calculation it’s reasonable to weigh an intervention that saves 2,000 lives above one that saves 2.
But that is not the same as condoning an actual contribution to a single murder, because it was “only” 1 out of 40,000, or because you have some vague hope of preventing some future murders.
If a Mexican narco gang ordered me to kill a BATF agent, and said if I did not they would kill 24 hostages, and I did it, the jury would quite rightly pay no attention to my argument that my commission of 1 murder prevented 24 others, or that my murder was “only” one of several thousand gang-related killings this year.
To my mind, that’s why we are justified in paying zero attention to any defense offered by the Obama Administration that begins well, we were trying to prevent many more future deaths… or well, we only contributed to one murder out of thousands more… These are terrorist arguments, unworthy of civilized men.
P.S. I should also add, perhaps, that we should pay no attention to defenses that begin well, how could we know what would happen? The entire premise of their operation is that they did know what would happen — that the guns would be used to kill people in Mexico. That’s why they undertook the operation.
Indeed, from that point of view we can start to smell the nasty racist undercurrent that underlies Team Obama’s calculus. I think they imagine their real problem is that it wasn’t just brown people south of the border who got killed, folks whose deaths they could wave away with some simpering “root causes” speech about poverty and the remnants of 19th century United Fruit Company imperialism, or exploit for domestic political benefit.
Why law-abiding hard-working brown people north of the border should vote for these morally-corrupt coyotes next year is beyond me. Obama is one thing, and conceivably he wasn’t paying much attention — he’s obviously not a details guy — but Eric Holder strikes me as the first antisocial to hold the office of US Attorney General, a real snake.
Oh right. But they’re “pro-immigration.” I forgot.
Carl, your point reminds me of some post-Fukijima disaster arguments where nuclear engineers pounded home the difference between real deaths and statistical deaths. A real death is a person with a name and a life who you can directly tie to an event, whereas a statistical death appears in arguments like “if we cut particulate emissions from older diesel trucks by 15%, then statistically X fewer people will die from lung cancer 30 years down the road.”
At best, what the ATF tried to do was trade real deaths for statistical lives saved (which is wildly unethical, kind of like murdering real Jews to get a statistically healthier Germany), although I can’t imagine how they intended to do that by increasing the number and quality of guns in the hands of drug lord assassins and executioners.
Chris: I spoke correctly. Richard Armitage told both his boss Colin Powell and AG Fitzgerald that he was the one who talked about Valerie Plame. At that point, Fitzmas just wasn’t coming for the likes of you.
Now if you want to talk about AG Fitzgerald- operating with this knowledge- exceeding his ambit to attempt to score political points and finally crafting a “ham sandwich” prosecution against some guy named Scooter… go ahead. It’s you who look weak making the arguement, not me.
And connecting Abu Gharib (run by a general who was given her stars by Bill Clinton for being the right sex and not for competence, BTW- something his administration lost a lawsuit over) with Guantanimo is somewhat less accurate than connecting you with Bradley Manning, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, and James Veneris.
But hey- go ahead and make the arguemnt anyway. Like I said: it makes you look weak, not me.
The silence on this matter in the MSM is so deafening that I don’t expect it to result in anything whatsoever. It will just go away.
Ignoring Federal law, resulting in lethal small arms crossing an international border into the hands of drug cartels? There is no way this didn’t get approved by Holder.
Having worked for the government for many years, I’m absolutely certain that there is paperwork involved, with approval signatures. Perhaps even a Presidential Finding – you know, the explanation of why it’s appropriate for the President to invoke the law that allows him to break the law ….
Dave P. – I noted how he implied that Bush approved Gitmo, just not Rumsfeld.
But I’ll just add, it wasn’t that long ago that Gerrib was on this board blaming Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabriel Giffords. Gerrib’s proof at the time was more than sufficient for him.