Maybe this doesn't deserve it's own thread, but considering the recent massacre, it's interesting to see the government involved in some murders, even if it wasn't involved in the massacre.
So what do you guys think about Fast and Furious? 'Botched' operation where they simply lost track of the guns? Or was it more along the lines of Katie Pavlich's book where the Obama administration actually wanted the guns to be used in crimes to bolster its argument for more gun control?
I definitely think this was a deliberately planned process, with oversight and awareness all the way up the chain of command. I think the invocation of executive privilege is very telling. That looks so bad, that whatever the documents actually reveal must have been far more damaging to the Obama administration than the suspicions we now entertain.
I don't think this originated under Obama though. I suspect that he inherited the project in some way, and whether the project changed over time or not, I don't know.
I think the plan, more or less, was to reveal the outcomes of those sales in a way that characterized the U.S. gun trade as fuelling Mexican crime. I do NOT believe that it was ever intended to be made public that the ATF had allowed the sales to take place right from the start. I'm sure it would have been portrayed in such a way that it looked like the research on the gun's history had been done as part of some sort of routine ATF fact finding.
I think one of the disgusting parts of the affairs is how coolly this project dismissed Mexican citizens' and law enforcement officers' safety. It's only a scandal HERE because a U.S. federal agent took a bullet too. What must Mexicans feel about this project?
In the end, a government that gives away the lives of foreigners in order to make a political point can't possibly care that much more about the safety of its own citizens. I think if any Fast and Furious guns were used in a media-blitz mass murder in America, it would have served that project just as well to prove the point they were trying to make, and I doubt whoever designed the program gave a poop.
"I don't think this originated under Obama though. I suspect that he inherited the project in some way, and whether the project changed over time or not, I don't know."
Yes, Obama inherited it somewhat. There was an similar program under the Bush administration called "Operation Wide Receiver". Interesting to note that Wide Receiver took more measures to keep track of where the guns went than did Fast and Furious, fueling the possibility that the administration wanted them to end up in the hands of criminals.
The 5 Biggest Differences Between Operation Fast and Furious and Operation Wide Receiver
Is there any good background reading on this topic?
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...