Forbes : Fast and Furious might just be Obama's Watergate

so where is felipe calderon on this one?

remember that big lecture speech he gave arizona about the new law?

youd think hed be a little more pissed off about this...

whats even more embarrassing, is that the government got massively ripped off.

690+ ak-47's and all they got was $350 thousand. that's 500 a piece.

they were practically giving them away. they should have gotten $5000 a piece. when you're selling illegal guns to multi billion dollar narcotic empires, that's the minimum.

this was a joke. they could have traded coc aine for them and set up a massive sting that could have crippled them.

anyone, who touched the coc aine would have been implicated. obama's is just like all the "smart" elite. he's in another world, where all the problems he tackles is whether to have the mashed potatoes with the white house roast beef.

Originally posted by OldCorp

...

I'll also echo a previous poster who said that if Obama goes down for this, then Bush should go down for his crimes as well - they BOTH have innocent blood on their hands. Imagine for just a second, in a perfect world, Bush and Obama sharing a jail cell... I wonder who the bitch would be?

Its so refreshing to be participating in a site where there are people who realize we've got scumbags on "both sides" of the proverbial aisle. Until I found ATS, I was stuck reading posts from right-tards on one news site, and left-tards on another. One side thinks Bush was a great president and Obama terrible, the other vice versa. In very few places can you find a decent percentage of people smart enough to realize that Bush & Obama (and both of their kindreds) are two very similar sides of the same coin.
Edit > Meant to add: thanks for the visual of the most recent two worst presidents in history rotting in jail together.

It sure has not stopped the ATF from making up there own laws without congresses approval.

blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com...

Them telling gun dealer not to sell to "suspected" medical marijuana users with out the dealer having ANY WAY to know if someone is a user is just a catch 22 way of putting the screws to FFL dealers.

Now if a medical marijuana user buys a gun the dealer can be held responsible.

Plus the ATF could send in someone with a t-shirt with a marijuana leaf on it and then arrest or fine the dealer for selling a gun to that person just because the person MIGHT be a user.

The next thing that might happen is dealers may become afraid to sell to someone just because they have long hair or a beard(me) then the person that was refused may likely sue for discrimination causing the dealer a lot more legal problems.

Originally posted by randomname
this was a joke. they could have traded coc aine for them and set up a massive sting that could have crippled them.

anyone, who touched the coc aine would have been implicated. obama's is just like all the "smart" elite. he's in another world, where all the problems he tackles is whether to have the mashed potatoes with the white house roast beef.

That's like trading Gasoline to an oil company for payment.... Why would they want it? they manufacture it, or have it manufactured for pennies on the $100.

I wonder if this "Fast and Furious" played any part in the Administration's bullying tactics with AZ's immigration law? Especially, considering if the AZ immigration law would have been implemented, then this F and F may have been found out about sooner.

Could this be the reason the Obama Administration chose to specifically target AZ's immigration laws and not some of the other states with similar, or more strict, immigraiton policies?

Back when the immigration thing was front page, I often wondered why the Administration chose this state to strong-arm, and so viciously too. I kept thinking to myself, 'there is something else going on here that we are not seeing, besides wanting to look good to the hispanic voters'. Could also explain Obama's over-the-top red carpet treatment of Mexico's President. Not to mention the amount of podium and camera time O gave the guy to specifically and directly address the American People. I mean, what President does that? Another nation's leader, in from of the White House, talking down to The People, really?

Hmmm, get's more and more interesting.,

A bit off-topc, but FWIW: I also thought it wierd that Osama Bin Laden was killed the same weekend that Holder was first being questioned about the Fast and Furious, by congress. That being the first time someone as high up as Holder was being officially questioned, on record, should have garnered MUCH more media attention (even though it was also the Royal Wedding weekend). The Holder questioning was over-shadowed by the Osama death. I wonder how many journalists were immediately taken from the congressional hearing and immediately charted off to Afganistan?

Curioser and Curioser...

Originally posted by ANNED
It sure has not stopped the ATF from making up there own laws without congresses approval.

blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com...

Them telling gun dealer not to sell to "suspected" medical marijuana users with out the dealer having ANY WAY to know if someone is a user is just a catch 22 way of putting the screws to FFL dealers.

Now if a medical marijuana user buys a gun the dealer can be held responsible.

Plus the ATF could send in someone with a t-shirt with a marijuana leaf on it and then arrest or fine the dealer for selling a gun to that person just because the person MIGHT be a user.

The next thing that might happen is dealers may become afraid to sell to someone just because they have long hair or a beard(me) then the person that was refused may likely sue for discrimination causing the dealer a lot more legal problems.

I think this has a lot to do with the government pushing back against legalized marijuana in any way they can, such as closing down medical marijuana facilities in California, even though they're legal in the state, they're still illegal with the fed. Now, how would they know a MM user from adam? Well, that's stereotyping, and that's against the law in a lot of cases, as it should be in this. Maybe we need Equal Opportunity Gun Sellers, as well as employers? If they don't come into your place of business blitzed, clearly under the influence, you've really got no grounds. You're neither an expert or a doctor, who are you to categorize 'drug users'. Next thing you know you'll be turning in people driving down the road because they look like they might drink or use drugs, doesn't matter how they're driving or actual mental status. Everything is based on outward appearance, you know.

Originally posted by SourGrapes
, I often wondered why the Administration chose this state to strong-arm, and so viciously too. I kept thinking to myself, 'there is something else going on here that we are not seeing, besides wanting to look good to the hispanic voters'.

Obama has already deported more illegals in his short time in office than bush (couple million), he needed a way to save face to retain his hispanic voters. If it looks like I'm doing this publicly, maybe you'll ignore what I'm doing privately. If I'm making a big deal of this, obviously I had nothing to do with that.

ETA: a source for my babbling.

www.washingtonpost.com...
Granted, that's not the last article I read as it's over a year old, but it highlights what I was saying, this hasn't changed any in the last year, and record deportations continue.

Originally posted by stirling
Naw, the Cover up would be even more brutal thats all......As it is, it pretty much raises the specter of goverment involvement directly with the Sinaloa Cartel, which was the primary recipient of the arms.
...GEE THIS IS A LONG ONE ... excuse me misoir,,,
Consider the Menna airport sandal in the US., precursor history to this and i think youll not be far afield.
Its far more complicated, and far deeper and more convoluted than the average citizen may want to contemplate.
This has to be independantly researched and investigated, by somebody with very deep pockets and who is immune to both criminal and goverment retaliation.
Is there suich an entity?
Just the public en masse i think.
Go get em Annonymous!
Do something real instead of screwing with peoples emails.
Hack some real time information on these subjects and youll get my support!
But thats off topic so just diregard that last........................s

Great insights and logical "who's who" for the internal conflict
within the families! Here's yer star----
I believe the traction this story is getting (versus the PTB's ability
to plug the infodam) just MAY be very soon like John Rappaport's
metahor of "trying to hold an inflating beach ball underwater...)
pretty soon that little scrap of plastic is going to be one ungainly
mother. We can hope, my friend.... it doesn't matter at this point
who the finger is pointing at, because just about everybody in the
gubment who wants us disarmed stood to gain from trying to back
door the 2nd. Good luck with that one, fellas.
"Tree--rope--journalist: some assembly required." unknown

Originally posted by derfreebie
it doesn't matter at this point
who the finger is pointing at, because just about everybody in the
gubment who wants us disarmed stood to gain from trying to back
door the 2nd

What exactly could they gain from releasing guns to another country that aren't even purchasable by the general public if they were trying to rail against the right to bear arms? They have plenty of cases for that; I don't believe this is one of them. They f'd up - badly. I'm sure they'd rather just forget it ever happened.

Something just came to mind, if indeed our govt would do such a thing.... and is still a real stretch...
The price thing is an obvious real problem. There needs to be a better reason why sold so cheap.
It would be interesting if you could obtain one of these weapons and totally strip it down and see if there may be some kind of device, or chip, or whatever embedded in it; that would make it possible to locate it, like a Lojack or GPS, but probably alot more sophisticated and undetectable......

That would make some kind of sense, so perhaps it is wrong.
IMHO

reply to post by Vitchilo


So, this bit tells us what they were trying to do and the fact that it wasn't some utterly secret 'black ops', otherwise we'd be relying on someone with a youtube account to tell us:

“The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”

This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn’t necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.

Given the futile premise of the War On Drugs, I can understand law enforcement agencies getting to a point where this seems like a good idea.

Personally, I'd decriminalise hard drugs and license and legalise draw.

And this isn't Watergate. Not by a mile.

reply to post by charlyv


The article itself says there were no trackers put in the guns.

reply to post by FlyingSpaghettiMonster


Thanks, Missed it.
Seemed like an obvious suspicion.

Originally posted by FlyingSpaghettiMonster
And this isn't Watergate. Not by a mile.

You're right. This resulted in far more gruesome and deadly results. The chain of command is complicit in mass murder, many thousands of victims in mass graves and the most gruesome of tortures.

Originally posted by charlyv
reply to post by FlyingSpaghettiMonster

 

Thanks, Missed it.
Seemed like an obvious suspicion.

Well, it would seem like the sensible thing to do, if the aim was to track serious and organised crime. But to me this proves that more cock-up goes on than conspiracy. It's basically a badly thought-out and executed operation. Sending guns on the 'off chance' that one turns up at a crime scene?

The other thing to note is the cover-ups detailed in the article happen *after* the program is questioned. The government hands over oodles of documents, rather than denying the thing actually exists. This scrambling for cover seems to me to be how governments actually work (or not, depending on your definition of 'work )

reply to post by Dbriefed


If you want to impeach the administration for mass murder, then start with a count of civilian deaths in any US war from Vietnam onwards. The Obama administration is nothing special in that regard. If you want torture, impeach all who set up Camp Delta and allowed torture in Abu Ghraib prison. If you want Obama out of the Whitehouse, use the democratic process. Unfortunately for the American right, enough of the electorate wanted him there, and quite possibly will do so again. As we saw with Clinton, using the Ken Starr method to overcome inconvenient mandates doesn't necessarily work.

its clear from the article that this wasnt just a misguided plot to identify mexican drug lords, it was about justifying new gun laws, and the atf, fbi, justice dept and obama administration in general are complicit in it.

business as usual it seems.

reply to post by snarfbot


Surely there's more than enough gun deaths to enable the administration to claim the need to justify tighter gun law anyway? All that's needed is to talk in a particular way about the subject to get the result needed. That's politics. Once again, the idea that the F&F operation is some kind of 'false flag' would be the biggest, messiest and most difficult way to achieve that end, which makes it the least likeliest.

according to the article atf whistleblowers admitted that it wasnt clear how this strategy could result in identifying the cartel leaders.

its like that south park episode.

step one, collect underpants, this is analogous to giving ak47's to a drug cartel.
step two, ?, this is analogous to allowing the untrackable weapons to be used in murders.
step three, profit, this is analogous to identifying king pins of the cartel.

there is no direct or indirect means to result in step 3 via step 2.

our government agencies make stupid decisions time and again, but this goes beyond "misguided sting operation" into the realm of the absurd.

we are to believe that between the atf, fbi, us justice dept, and key figures in the obama administration that the best plan they could come up with was one that was so profoundly stupid, and pointless that it was comparable to the underpants gnomes?

they arent that incompetent, its much more likely that this was indeed, a political maneuver.