Also known as Project Gunrunner, the Arizona-based operation was supposed to be a sting, under which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is part of the Justice Department, allowed "straw purchasers" to transfer weapons from gun shops in Arizona to Mexican drug cartels to trace and halt crossborder arms-trafficking.
That's the official version, anyway -- but it's crumbling, fast.
The ATF's acting director, Kenneth Melson, has been singing like a canary to congressional investigators as he pushes back against administration pressure for him to resign and take the fall for something that, at the very least, had to include the US Attorney's Office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the Homeland Security Department.
Look at that list. Doesn't it remind you of your favorite conspiracy nut, going on about all the organizations involved in JFK's assassination? The Castro brothers, the 82nd Airborne, the Mob, LBJ & the Texas Rangers, the Soviets, the Kiwanis, that homeless guy right there, space aliens, and so on.
Only this thing is real. At least three major departments or offices and possibly the attorney general himself. This makes Iran-Contra look like a bake sale to raise funds for your kid's Cub Scout troop. A properly detailed congressional investigation and ensuing court cases could take us right into the late summer and autumn campaign season next year -- and wouldn't that be fun?
I know President Obama and AG Holder are best buds and all, but if Melson isn't going to take the fall -- and he won't -- then Obama had best show Holder the underside of the bus.
And soon. If this thing is as wide spread as is being told, this could bring down Obama and his crony government. We'll see, but it is starting to look really ugly.
Romney might ask: Who are you going to believe about the recession? The National Bureau of Economic Research, which says it's over, or your neighbor, who's been unemployed for three years?
But when Romney was asked last week about the accuracy of his contention that Obama worsened the recession, he did not claim to be invoking a truth that trumps mere facts. Instead, he denied making such an assertion. "I didn't say that things are worse," he insisted. "What I said was that the economy hasn't turned around."
The denial makes him look confused and dishonest. A campaign spokesman did Romney no favor by saying (in an e-mail to me) his comment "was in response to part of the reporter's question about the stock market" -- which it obviously wasn't, and which compounded one risible deception with another. Nor did it help when, a few days later, Romney went back to saying Obama "made things worse." It depends on what the definition of "is" is.
#4
Actually I've been involved in an intensive, professional development course (too intensive for you all to handle), so I wasn't able to provide you with my enlightening comments
in other words he was pillow-biting beneath the loving thrusts of his Uncle, his Dad, and the local Shaman
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/07/2011 14:33 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Here's the latest, via Glenn:
