Fast & Furious- Not The Movie ;)

[Minor Axis]

I'm confused. My understanding is that Fast and Furious was an ATF program that allowed guns be sold to Mexico, the idea that they would be traced to the cartel people who purchase them and apprehend them. Correct?

I've read several links and I'm confused what the GOP is officially trying to uncover about this program? Is there a scandal or is this the GOP's attempt to create one? What are the issues?

Any short and concise factual based answers appreciated along with any applicable links. Thanks!

 

[AnitaBeer]

I believe it's because of this tactic failing (i.e. guns actually couldn't be tracked and have been found at murder scenes), documents were requested (to get answers to why this was happening), but not turned over. I listened to the story on our news channel, but the following is from the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ontempt-vote/2012/06/20/gJQAGImIqV_story.html

At its core, the conflict centers on a particular set of documents that the oversight committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), subpoenaed from the Justice Department in October for the investigation he launched into Operation Fast and Furious in the spring of last year.The operation, named after the popular movie series, was run out of the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives between 2009 and 2011, with the legal backing of the U.S. attorney in Phoenix. As part of the operation, ATF agents purposefully did not interdict more than 2,000 weapons they suspected of being purchased at Arizona gun shops by illegal buyers known as “straw purchasers”; agents hoped to later track them to a Mexican drug cartel.ATF lost track of most of the firearms, some of which have been found at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States. Two of the guns connected to the operation were found at a scene in the Arizona desert where a Border Patrol agent,Brian Terry, was killed in December 2010.​

 

[Alien Allen]

If you want a half way decent read then do a Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

The whole think stinks from the original program started under the Bush admin

 

[fuel1316]

ive got about as much info as you lol

 

[Minor Axis]

Thanks all. Is the inference here that if the gun that killed the U.S. agent had not been sold to the cartel by the U.S. government, that he would not have been shot by another gun? My understanding is that the program was not run effectively, the ATF lost track of the guns, and eventually it was shut down. It's ironic that a U.S. agent was killed by one of these guns, but I don't believe you can hold the program responsible for his death. You can hold whomever in charge responsible for botching it and loosing tracks of 2000 guns? Sheesh. Does this go up to Obama? I don't know.

 

[Accountable]

I'm confused. My understanding is that Fast and Furious was an ATF program that allowed guns be sold to Mexico, the idea that they would be traced to the cartel people who purchase them and apprehend them. Correct?

I've read several links and I'm confused what the GOP is officially trying to uncover about this program? Is there a scandal or is this the GOP's attempt to create one? What are the issues?

Any short and concise factual based answers appreciated along with any applicable links. Thanks!

Yeh, I'm kinda foggy, too. From what I can gather, it started under the Bush admin under the name Wide Receiver, down & out, Go Long, some kind of football play, but definitely not Linebacker. That was Viet Nam. Anyhoo, They would sell guns to drug dealers in Mexico & try to track them. I don't know if any arrests were made or not.

Sometime after President Obama took over, the name changed to Fast & Furious. I guess the new admin doesn't like football. There's all kinds of right-wing accusations that F&F wasn't about catching drug dealers, but rather about getting as many American guns into their hands so that an enraged and really stupid American public would get scared/angry and beg for more gun control. I can't imagine even the most southpaw leftie would believe something like that could work. Unfortunately, I haven't found much else about it.

Oh, except that President Obama says he never heard of it, doesn't know anything about it, but still thinks he should claim executive privilege about it.

Stinks all the way around, if you ask me.

 

[Jaybird]

Fast and furious was only under Obama's administration. Operation Wide Receiver was under the Bush administration.

There was a difference between the two operations. Under Wide Receiver, there was a goal and a plan. And the ATF attempted to intercept firearms before they went across the border. And the operation was done in cooperation with the Mexican authorities. They had a failure when they allowed a shipment of illegal firearms to go across the border. But this failure was mainly due to the Mexican authorities. Our government notified the Mexican authorities, but they failed to intercept them. At that time, the ATF shut down operation Wide Receiver.

Then a few years later under the Obama administration, the ATF ran Fast and Furious....and it was basically Wide Receiver on steroids with no controls in place. Local ATF officials were ordered to back off of their surveillance of firearms. And they did not notify the Mexican authorities at all.

And there is the rub. Under Fast and Furious, the federal government had full knowledge that guns were moving to Mexico, and did nothing to attempt to stop the shipments. They did not inform the Mexican Government at all. They basically watched as known straw purchases were going on in violation of federal law, and then did nothing about it. In fact, they ordered the surveillance to stop, and ordered local authorities to not attempt to stop the firearms from entering a foreign country. And over 2000 firearms(that we know of) walked across during this operation and went right into the drug cartels hands. If another country did this to us, we would be screaming bloody murder.

The reason that Holder was held in contempt though was because he has refused to turn over certain documents to the house oversight committee.

 

[Jezzebelle]

There's our jay with all his gun law knowledge *hugs*

 

[Minor Axis]

Fast and furious was only under Obama's administration. Operation Wide Receiver was under the Bush administration.

There was a difference between the two operations. Under Wide Receiver, there was a goal and a plan. And the ATF attempted to intercept firearms before they went across the border. And the operation was done in cooperation with the Mexican authorities. They had a failure when they allowed a shipment of illegal firearms to go across the border. But this failure was mainly due to the Mexican authorities. Our government notified the Mexican authorities, but they failed to intercept them. At that time, the ATF shut down operation Wide Receiver.

Then a few years later under the Obama administration, the ATF ran Fast and Furious....and it was basically Wide Receiver on steroids with no controls in place. Local ATF officials were ordered to back off of their surveillance of firearms. And they did not notify the Mexican authorities at all.

And there is the rub. Under Fast and Furious, the federal government had full knowledge that guns were moving to Mexico, and did nothing to attempt to stop the shipments. They did not inform the Mexican Government at all. They basically watched as known straw purchases were going on in violation of federal law, and then did nothing about it. In fact, they ordered the surveillance to stop, and ordered local authorities to not attempt to stop the firearms from entering a foreign country. And over 2000 firearms(that we know of) walked across during this operation and went right into the drug cartels hands. If another country did this to us, we would be screaming bloody murder.

The reason that Holder was held in contempt though was because he has refused to turn over certain documents to the house oversight committee.

Yeah, the U.S. Government thought it could increase its revenue by selling guns to the Mexican drug cartels. I'm just curious is this from Rush or Fox?

 

[Tim]

Fast and furious was only under Obama's administration. Operation Wide Receiver was under the Bush administration.

There was a difference between the two operations. Under Wide Receiver, there was a goal and a plan. And the ATF attempted to intercept firearms before they went across the border. And the operation was done in cooperation with the Mexican authorities. They had a failure when they allowed a shipment of illegal firearms to go across the border. But this failure was mainly due to the Mexican authorities. Our government notified the Mexican authorities, but they failed to intercept them. At that time, the ATF shut down operation Wide Receiver.

Then a few years later under the Obama administration, the ATF ran Fast and Furious....and it was basically Wide Receiver on steroids with no controls in place. Local ATF officials were ordered to back off of their surveillance of firearms. And they did not notify the Mexican authorities at all.

And there is the rub. Under Fast and Furious, the federal government had full knowledge that guns were moving to Mexico, and did nothing to attempt to stop the shipments. They did not inform the Mexican Government at all. They basically watched as known straw purchases were going on in violation of federal law, and then did nothing about it. In fact, they ordered the surveillance to stop, and ordered local authorities to not attempt to stop the firearms from entering a foreign country. And over 2000 firearms(that we know of) walked across during this operation and went right into the drug cartels hands. If another country did this to us, we would be screaming bloody murder.

The reason that Holder was held in contempt though was because he has refused to turn over certain documents to the house oversight committee.

I can see you are just another victim of the right wing propaganda machine...

[h=2]A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust.[/h]

You can read the whole article here.

The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Most of the weak laws and lack of electronic tracing of semi-automatic weapons lead directly back to the republicans and the NRA who lobbies hard against such laws. And yet here we are with the republicans crying foul and pointing their crooked fingers at the Obama administration.

I for one am glad he claimed Executive privilege.

 

[Stone]

............................
You can read the whole article here.

The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal



.................................

Thanks for posting the link.
Interesting and credible read.

 

[Accountable]

I for one am glad he claimed Executive privilege.

Why?.

 

[Tim]

Why?.

Without having the same resources and information as the congress, even I can see that this was nothing more than a witch hunt. A politically driven way to destroy the Obama administration. Did you think they were kidding when they said their only job was to make Obama a one term president?
They knew this was nothing and they twisted the story to the point where almost everything out there in the press says Obama is guilty of giving guns to Mexico to further his anti-gun agenda. Hoping for more Americans to die from these guns so the outrage would drive public opinion to regulate them.

So what do you do with people like this? Just play their game? Go through the motions of giving them what they want while you know all along it won't make a difference?
Do you really think that if the information was handed over that the republicans would read it and say, "Obama is in the clear, it was just a mistake"? What fantasy world do you live in?

 

[Tim]

And do I really need to explain that to you?

 

[Accountable]

So much for the pledge for transparency, eh?

One thing I do give Kudos to the president for: He didn't whip out his Executive Privilege card until the very last second. Most recent presidents would have thrown it at the first sniff of an investigation.

 

[Alien Allen]

You miss the point Tim

It is all about the cover up

Like many scandals in DC the original act is not as bad as what is done to cover it up

Take Watergate... It was a two bit botched robbery.... Probably something that happens more often than the parties would admit..... The press and the democrats smelled blood and Nixon panicked and tried to cover it up and it grew a life of its own. Had the idiots just put up their hands and plead guilty not much would have happened.

With Fast and Furious you will continue to see people searching for the truth. The fact one agent died will ensure that. It is not a witch hunt to hold people responsible for this mess accountable. Holder clearly knows more than he has admitted. He lied back months ago and then suddenly his memory came back. In an honorable world he would offer to resign. But he has dug in his heels so deeply he can not even apologize to the family for what happened. Or if he did I missed it. Obamas bullshit as other politicians when claiming they will be the most transparent administration in history is just more of the same which we are promised and never get. Some of us never expect it. Others vote every 4-8 years believing it though. So much for Hope and Change.... pffftt

 

[Minor Axis]

Some administrations hesitate when it comes to giving their political enemies sensitiveness/classified information to be used against them for political gain...

 

[Tim]

You miss the point Tim

It is all about the cover up

What cover up? Doesn't there need to be wrong doing before there is a cover up? And if nothing was done illegally, then there can't be a cover up, right?

 

[UncleBacon]

this is not the first time something like this has gone down....they had another program many years ago almost identicle to fast and furious...the difference being that the guns they used then had tracking chips installed in the butts of the guns...once the cartels got wise to it they simply just started to take the chips out making the program a failure....now knowing that it didn't work the first time around and now selling the guns without any real way to track them not even attempting to put in some kind of tracking device they tried it anyway....they failed to learn from previous mistakes so yes I do question the reasoning behind fast and furious....as I question why this current adminstration is trying to let the UN control the way we buy and sell guns....this last statement was recently in the news so I'm sure you heard or can find something about it....political views aside I'm just a concerned gun owner that wants to be able to keep buying