“As you know,” President Obama told a press conference today, “my attorney general has made clear that he certainly would not have ordered gun-running to pass through into Mexico.” So Department of Justice Chief Eric Holder would have ordered ATF-enabled gun running that didn’t past through into Mexico?” No matter how you parse it, the President of the United States responded to a question about his knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious with weasel words. The chickens that armed Mexican drug thugs with American firearms—one of which drug thugs shouldered to murder U.S. Border Patrol Brian Terry—are coming home to roost. Clearly, All the President’s Men have prepared President Obama’s defense for a scandal that threatens to eclipse Watergate, with similar results . . .
It’s only a matter of time before President Obama says “Yes, I knew of the ATF program, but I didn’t know that smuggled guns were allowed into Mexico.”
Which is complete and utter horse-shit.
As an ATF agent told Representative Darrell Issa at Congressional hearings on Gunwalker, the Bureau was over the moon about the fact that agency-enabled guns were showing-up at Mexican crime scenes. That’s how the ATF measured their success. There is no way they’d brief the Prez on the program’s progress without sharing the stats. No. Way.
First things first . . .
The President’s comments reveal the White House’s short term Gunwalker strategy: throw ATF Acting Chief Melson and Attorney General Holder under the bus, allow Department of Homeland Security jefe Janet Napolitano to exit gracefully, draw a line under the scandal and call it good.
As Brad would say, nope. If there wasn’t a paper trail between Melson’s mess and his boss (Attorney General Holder) and his boss’s boss (President Obama), Melson would have already taken one for the team. But there is so he can’t.
Melson will appear at Representative Issa’s Gunwalker hearings in July. He will profess the ATF’s good intentions, fail to recall, refuse to surrender key documents (again, still) and then take the fifth. All hell will break loose.
Lest we forget, this is a criminal investigation. Not only did Agent Terry eat ATF-enabled lead, but Gunwalker’s gunrunning violated an international treaty. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is some serious shit. No wonder Obama dodged the bullet at his press conference . . .
The investigation is still pending. I’m not going to comment on a current investigation. I’ve made very clear my views that would not be an appropriate step by the ATF, and we’ve got to find out how that happened.
As soon as the investigation is completed, I think appropriate actions will be taken.
Notice the passive construction and verbal tick: “I think [emphasis added] appropriate actions will be taken.” Not “I will take appropriate actions.” Call me an over-analytical nit-picking pedant, but Obama couldn’t promise some Gunwalker clock-cleaning ’cause it’s his timepiece that’s lousy with lethal lint (or something like that).
In any case, this is President Obama’s “I did not have sex with that woman.” If it’s revealed that the president did know about the ATF’s Gunwalker crime gun recovery stats, he will claim ignorance. “I do not recall that part of the briefing.”
And then he’ll repeat his assertion that the greater good—stopping Mexican cartel carnage—is the real issue. Just as he shrugged off questions about violating the U.S. Constitution to unleash helicopter gunships on Libyan troops.
Meanwhile, is there anyone who believes that the Department of Justice submitted all-black documents to Rep. Issa’s investigators to protect the rights of suspected shooter Osorio-Arellanes, the career criminal currently rotting in a Texas prison, or his three alleged cohorts, mysteriously released and deported by the feds immediately after Terry’s murder?
Is there anyone who believes that the Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted all-black documents to Rep. Issa’s investigators to protect the rights of the ATF, DOJ, DHS, DEA and State Department officials who knew about Uncle Sam’s anti-gun running gun running operations?
Of course not. The DOJ is stone-walling for one reason and one reason only: the Obama administration knew about and approved this operation at the highest levels. Including the President of the United States.
I repeat, Barak Obama is up to his eyeballs in Gunwalker. For it was he who stood side-by-side with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and blamed U.S. gun stores for the cartel-related violence bedeviling our number two crude oil supplier. Knowing full well what his people were doing about it.
You could say that Gunwalker was the ATF doing the “‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” routine. No doubt that’ll be the president’s story, at some point. But it’s not true. What did he know and when did he know it? He knew about the recovered guns sometime between his press conference with Calderon and today’s weasel word fest.
Truth be told, President Obama has shown his willingness to sidestep legal niceties when the ends justify the means (e.g. Bin Laden’s assassination, Libya, Guantanamo). In some ways, Gunwalker was a marriage made in heaven, a union between a rogue agency with delusions of grandeur and inadequate oversight and an American president who considers himself above the law.
Sound familiar? And that, friends, is just the obvious part of this scandal. As I’ve said before, U.S. complicity with Mexican drug cartels and corruption on both sides of the border is the cake underneath the icing. No matter. Obama lied and Agent Terry died. There’s more than enough here to bring down the President.