Hat tip to Hot Air
Hot Air interviewed Paul Babeu, sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona at the CPAC convention and got his thoughts on Fast and Furious.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/02/11/sheriff-paul-babeau-fast-and-furious-scandal-is-far-from-over/
Babeu made a couple of important points.
First, to this day, Eric Holder and the Department of Justice have failed to reveal who concocted Fast and Furious.
Secondly, this is, indeed, bigger than Watergate, as serious as that was. Nobody died in Watergate.
Third, it can no longer be considered a wide-eyed conspiracy theory that the motivation was to convince the American public that the government had to crack down on gun sales and gun ownership, in effect, to chip away at the 2nd Amendment. At this point, it is the only reasonable explanation.
That leads us back to the White House.
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8 comments:
Of course any sheriff who would choose to attend CPAC would talk like that, as would any non-sheriff who would choose to attend CPAC.
As I've said before, this hue and cry seems to have been concocted by friends of the gun dealers who don't want to be answering questions about their contacts with the cartels, but would rather than the attorney general be answering questions from their favorite congressmen. I don't think its going to carry much weight with voters.
Siarlys,
Once again you demonstrate that you have no concept of the facts of Fast and Furious nor what it was all about.
Siarlys--it was the government, NOT the gun dealers, who had contacts with the cartels through informants, and it the government/AG which should be answering the questions, which they iare not. Any number of gun dealers questioned the transactions and were advised by government to proceed and not to worry aobut it.
P.S.--a difference of opinion is, of course, what makes for a horse race, but I for one would much rather my sheriff attend CPAC than not.
No elwood, it was not the government. The tactical error was that the government let some of the guns being tracked, as they were bought and sold from gun dealers to cartels, both willing sellers and buyers, get out of sight of the agents doing the surveillance. The trafficking (long before this operation) was a major concern on both sides of the border.
Gary, your pat little dismissals merely show that you have no facts, just a lot of assumptions, and an infinite capacity for denial when someone points out that the congressman from Orange County has no clothes.
***GARY***---My apologies again, the below may be a double post. I attempted to post something much like it yesterday but am not sure I was successful. I believe you have been on since I was, so apparently it either did not get to you for approval or you decided not to post it, since I don’t see it. If yesterday’s proposed post failed to reach you, please post or reject the below one, at your pleasure. Thanx. Elwood
Siarlys--not to quibble or to unnecessarily beat this possibly (unfortunately) sick/dying horse (if Gary is correct in another post), but all, repeat all, of what I have heard, read, and seen about this whole goat rope demonstrates, of course, that it originated with government, not gun dealers. With all due respect, while you may occasionally know what you are talking about, that does not appear to be the case here. You are obviously missing part of the equation, either through accident or design.
Any gun dealers with “cartel contacts” who knowingly sold guns to straw purchasers who ultimately furnished them to cartels without government involvement/permission were, and for that matter still are subject to prosecution for various firearms offenses. Any instance of a gun dealer independently selling guns under these conditions would, of necessity and by definition, NOT be a part of this effort.
Contrary to your assertion that “it was not the government”, this was obviously a government operation from start to finish. It even had its own name!!! Who do you think named it , the cartels?? The gun dealers?? Naw, probably the government.
I certainly concur with your assessment of “tactical errors” (which were almost necessarily built into this program from the get-go), some of which usually occur, or are at least subject to occurring, in just about any operation (civilian, military, corporate, whatever). This concern is, in my view, most definitely secondary to the primary (and much larger) issue, which is the mindset (and/or ignorance) which would allow such a flawed strategy to be implemented in the first place.
How officials could expect to furnish guns to violent individuals already involved in gun and drug crimes, including many murders, and somehow expect that some of the guns furnished would not be used in further gun and drug crimes, to include the certainty of gun fatalities in Mexico, and the exceedingly high probability (near certainty) of gun fatalities in the U.S., is again beyond my comprehension.
elwood, I suppose that if Gary, in his DEA days, had arranged for a straw buyer to make a buy from a known drug dealer, you would have said "See, just like the black legislator said in that intemperate speech, the government is selling drugs."
Of course the operation to test, investigate, and trace the flow of guns was a government operation. But nobody from the Justice Department went to the cartels for the purpose of supplying them with guns. Gary has said before that what he considers criminal was letting the guns get out of sight and control of the personnel conducting the operation. That would indeed be incomptenence --- unless there were some reason the operation would be blown by stepping in too obviously, and the idea was to pick up the guns again further downstream.
Siarlys,
It is clear you don't know much about law enforcement. You think you do.
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