I can assume why this isn't getting more traction, but even the small details that I am reading about Operation: Fast and Furious should be making much bigger news.

Some brief details:
The ATF sold a large cache of weapons to Mexican drug cartels (at least 2,000) in an effort to track and stop illegal weapons trafficking.

According to reports, more than half of those weapons are still unaccounted for. The weapons that they have found, many have been used in violent crimes in Mexico and the US - including the shooting death of a US Border Patrol agent.

From HuffPo

The report continues


So far, there have been no arrests of any Mexican drug cartel members in relation to the guns.

There have been some firings at ATF, but there have been some possibly questionable promotions.

William G. McMahon, who championed Fast and Furious inside ATF, was elevated from ATF's deputy director of operations to deputy assistant director of the ATF's Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations. (the ATF division that investigates misconduct).

Also promoted was William Newel, the special agent in charge of ATF's office for Arizona and New Mexico. Newel was promoted to special assistant to the assistant director of the agency's Office of Management in Washington.

The third promotion went to David Voth, formerly the program's on-the-ground team supervisor, who is now branch chief for the ATF's tobacco division.

I don't see how anyone associated with the operation could be promoted. But I don't have all the facts.

Among those that have lost their positions are Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson who has been reassigned to a lesser post in the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, was also pushed out.

Several of the whistle-blowers have been re-assigned.

There are questions as to how many other Federal agencies were involved or had information about this failed Sting. There is a Congressional inquiry that is looking at the involvement of FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

It's pretty shameful, but it is also pretty common for federal employees to take the brunt for their supervisors' fuck-ups.

Yep, peons get the crap that the supervisor can deflect. Sucks.

_________________
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That's not exactly limited to federal employees. You can find the same poor managers anywhere.

Part of the problem I have is that we are not getting much coverage of this fiasco as we should. Why did the ATF break protocol and let over 2,000 firearms go willingly to international criminals?

Because they are stupid and lack oversight.

The era of real news has long since ended. As people can customize and configure their content delivery to the perfect echo chambers, it is only going to get worse from here.

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I have made it my mission to inform as many people as I can about O:F&F. I am trying to get more people to ask questions, like "what really happened?"

This isn't something that can or should be swept under the rug. This has resulted in Americans being the victim of vicious crimes, even death, at home by international criminals.

Was the purpose to show that we still have a porous border? Was the purpose to show that criminals will still get "illegal" or controlled firearms regardless how many regulations the government has on them? Was the purpose to add further instability to our neighbor to the south?

Given how much attention has been paid to the number of firearms sales that have ended up south of the border for use by drug cartels, I don't think any reason they could have had would make sense at all.

There's already enough of an issue with it that the ATF could have set up watches at pawn shops without adding to the problem.

This is a Fox News piece, and it is just underscoring something that we should have already known:

full story


Yeah, we should have known and understood that these weapons were bought with taxpayer funds (the government can't buy anything without taxpayer funds). The only other option would be that the operation sold weapons that had been seized from other operations or already on hand. Seeing that a selection of these weapons were tied to local gun dealers really adds to the "what was the real purpose of this action?" question.

Even the coverup is being handled ineptly.

following up on the "US Funds were used" it seems that this is a violation of U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, chap. 96, section 1960-61, defining the use of federal funds to illegally obtain and/or transfer controlled substances and/or items to unauthorized third parties.

To do this within the law requires a bench warrant from a state or federal court. The buying or selling has to be done in a controlled manner, the items must never be out of law enforcement control (meaning they at least must be tracked), and they cannot cross state lines or national boundaries without proper notification of authorities on the “receiving end”.

The Mexican government was not notified, and from what I can tell, there were no warrants to do this.

Add to the "suspect firearms" database that was created to catalog the firearms that were sold so they could identify them after they were recovered at crime scenes and many more questions are raised.

The link below is a letter from Senator Grassley to Attorney General Holder and BATF Acting Director Melson asking for more answers.
Letter

This has to go very high in the DoJ.

Didn't we learn that beginning with the last administration warrants are irrelevant? :p

CBS News story
Looks like AG Holder was not completely truthful during his testimony during a Congressional Hearing...

there are a lot of links in the CBS News Story that I linked above.

Have any of you been following the hearings?

[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57450110-503544/house-committee-schedules-contempt-vote-against-holder/?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea}Congress is considering charging Holder with Contempt[/vote]

If you heard the back and forth last week you would have to wonder "what all is Holder hiding?" or "is he THAT incompetent?"

Looks like Obama decided to use the Executive privilege. I wonder what he is hiding.
Is it my imagination, or does Obama like to be not very transparent?



If nothing wrong was done, why do you need to hide it?

I'm not going to even try to claim that they have nothing to hide, but you do realize that this is the first time Obama has used his executive privilege? I'd say that his level of secrecy, while still higher than I would like, it still far behind that of other modern Presidents.

In the end, as long as the President is transparent regarding their financing and who they are being lobbied by, I'm a happy camper. Sadly, no President has done this or is likely to.

This ticking time bomb looks to be growing too.

Forbes.com has large piece on it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/20 ... watergate/

And The Telegraph has a detailed piece as well (it links to the Forbes piece) http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timst ... watergate/

One of the key quotes from the Telegraph piece:
(bold by me)

I am not going to infer what the ulterior motives may or may not have been. It will be the cover-up that causes the largest problem.

I just thought I would point out that the privilege asked for only pertains to documents after Feb. 4th, 2011, after the operation was over and after the "cover up" the Republicans are screaming about.

I don't like executive privilege. I really don't, and I don't like it being used by anyone including Obama. But I would take Boehner and his GOP buddies a lot more seriously if they were bitching this much any of the six times Bush used it.