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Obama: We will hold responsible those who 'screwed up' Fast and Furious
 President Obama pledged to hold those who "screwed up" in the Fast and Furious scandal responsible, and said that he first became aware of the "upsetting" program through media reports. In an interview on Nightline, Obama said, "This investigation will be complete, people who have screwed up will be held accountable, but our overarching goal consistently has been to say we've got a responsibility not only to stop drugs from flowing north, we've also got a responsibility to make sure we are not helping to either arm or finance these drug cartels in Mexico." House Oversight Chairman Darrel Issa has suggested that Eric Holder has been intentionally withholding information from Congress and that he may have been aware of details of the operation earlier than he said during testimony to Congress. On CBS, Issa said, "His chief of staff had intimate details; we have notes in his handwriting that shows that the number two and Eric Holder's right hand had intimate details for long time. One of the questions is, why wouldn't you tell your boss about a program that had gotten so out-of-control that it had all kinds of people scurrying to try to stop it?" Obama defended Holder however, saying he stood by his Attorney General and said he thought Holder was handling the investigation appropriately. Obama said, "This is not something we were aware of in the White House and the Attorney General it turns out wasn't aware of either. Obviously Eric Holder has launched a full investigation of this, it is not acceptable for us to allow guns to go into Mexico." The president also defended DoJ programs meant to prevent the trafficking of drugs and weapons across the border. He said, "Our whole goal has been to interdict aggressively in the flow of weapons and cash flowing south into Mexico because the Mexican president, President Calderon, has done a heroic job of trying to take on these transnational drug cartels." Still, the president decried the methods of the Fast and Furious program and pledged not to let similar operations happen again. Obama said, "It's very upsetting to me to think that somebody showed such bad judgment that they would allow something like that to happen and we will find out who and what happened in this situation and make sure it gets corrected." Posted by: ryuge 2011-10-19 |
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