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Fast and Furious and journalist shills
In Foreign Policy, an article that places the blame for Operation Gunwalker on... the NRA. You see, they kept BATF from compiling dealer records that would be searchable by name, and blocked bills that would have registered all guns, so when President Obama told them to crack down on drug cartels, they only thing they could do was ... ship guns to drug cartels. Somehow I don't quite follow the logic.
The Issa hearings "were useless." He thinks it terrible that three relatives of the murdered Border Patrol agent were allowed to testify.
"There are roughly 100,000 licensed gun dealers in the United States. ... many are so-called "kitchen table" dealers who sell secondhand guns out of their businesses, homes, or even cars." Few who sell out of homes have survived the 1990s legislation that requires dealers to be zoned for business, and no dealer can sell out of a car.
"The U.S. government keeps track of everyone who owns a car or a house..." Really? I thought counties and States did that.
"And, preposterously, there is no federal law explicitly forbidding international gun-trafficking." Ever hear of Arms Control Act, as in up to ten years in prison for each offense? And I guess he didn't hear about the person who who got 30 years imprisonment for running guns to Mexico.
William Newell, who ran Gunwalker, is a "devoted, articulate lifetime civil servant," who might even have become head of ATF as a result of his brilliant gunwalking.
The agents who blew the whistle were "newly posted to Phoenix," and "had no idea of the scale of the gun-trafficking problem when they arrived in Arizona. They were used to interdiction and apparently were not properly read into the larger aims of Fast and Furious." Narrowminded novices, who didn't understand how letting guns flow to cartels would lead to busting cartel leaders. Nor can I. Nor does the author explain just why, other than a general suggestion that somehow it would happen. And it's curious that the head of the agency said that gunwalking astonished him, too.
The article sees it as regrettable that no one understands " that letting guns walk was precisely the point of Fast and Furious."
· BATFE
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re: "The U.S. government keeps track of everyone who owns a car or a house..." Really? I thought counties and States did that.
Who do you think paid for the databases and has unhindered access?
"The article sees it as regrettable that no one understands 'that letting guns walk was precisely the point of Fast and Furious.'"
Which pundit did I read who said (paraphrasing), "that the point of letting guns to to the Sinaloa cartel, was to let guns go to the Sinaloa cartel."
Somebody somewhere in the right place at the right time in a roomful of powerful men with money to spend said, "Hey, I got an idea! Let's sell guns to cartels and then arrest the cartel leaders."
Who put him up to that? My money is on the cartel that benefited. Either that guy was manipulated or paid.
If there was a cartel mole who was superior to him who said, "Say, now. You might be on to something..." I'd like to know who that was, too.
GunWalker was too stupid to be either a) brilliantly conceived, vetted and planned, or b) just a coincidence, as in cartel leaders are no different than gun owners.
Also, they say that like it's a good thing. Me, I don't exactly get the warm fuzzies when someone helpfully reminds me that the government tracks other activities I engage in.
Sad state of our education system is that someone as ill informed as this individual was allowed to graduate.
It really does calibrate you on the other articles in the publication. If they can be SO wrong on Gunwalker, what about the rest? I used to read FP, but quit a long time ago. Haven't missed it. Rather read a good blog - say Richard Fernandez or Walter Meade.
I'm idly curious what the JournoList has been saying about Gunwalker. Discussing the best way to aid the coverup, I suppose.
I forget the author who first pointed it out, but there's a grand delusion that most people suffer from. Find an article from almost any source (some referred journals aside) on a topic which you know well. You'll invariably discover that not only are the author's opinions absurd, but his or her facts are simply wrong. Rather than take this revelation as a warning about the rest of the content, people tend to treat it as a rare exception, and treat the other articles as if they were divine writ. The closest most popular media comes to correct reporting is a breathless rehash of some article the reporter ran across in a two-year-old copy of "Nature" or another scientific journal in the waiting room of his dentist's or proctologist's office.
the point of letting guns to to the Sinaloa cartel, was to let guns go to the Sinaloa cartel.
Well, yes, but I thought the point of that was to support it against the Zetas, who are thought to pose an existential threat to the Mexican government.
Omelet. Eggs.