Eric Holder continues to amaze and disgust as a new round of congressional inquisitions attempts to uncover who, how, what, when, where ….. in the Fast and Furious gun running scandal. For over a year, this gun running fiasco of the ATF has gone unpunished. Nobody has been fired. Nobody has been arrested.
Holder’s most common assertion under questioning is, “not to my knowledge”.
The Obama Law Enforcement organization allowed over 2000 guns to be put in the hands of criminals. In typical ATF fashion, the operation was botched and the guns were not recovered. To date 600-700 have been recovered. There are another 1400 – 2000 (according to who gives the numbers) or so still in the hands of criminals and cannot be found.
A U.S. border agent was killed with at least one of those guns. The Mexican Attorney General has asserted that over 200 Mexican citizens have been killed with guns traced to the FAF operation. The reasonable speculation is that it obviously doesn’t stop there and many more people may be dead as a result of this now.
And Holder doesn’t know anything about it. Also, according to Holder, Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler nor Assistant Attorney Lanny Breuer authorized it or had anything to do with it. Oh…… excuse me. When he was questioned about them he said, “Not to my knowledge.” This is the top law enforcement official in the U.S.
Democrats on Capital Hill have, in usual disgraceful unity, claimed that there is nothing to indicate that Holder or any top officials in the Justice Department had any knowledge of the operation. Really?
Holder’s response when asked about anybody being held responsible gave this response:
- No one has been punished ….. yet.
- There is a new Attorney General in Arizona
- Personnel “switches’ have been made at the ATF.
- People have been “moved out” of positions.
What all that doublespeak means is that nobody is taking responsibility in an election year. And it means that ATF personnel have been conveniently switched around to deliberately confuse the situation and keep people quiet.
But the obvious hope that this will all go away is turning into a bloody circus side show for the Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department. It will be interesting to see how long Obama will allow this to go on before he begins feeding Holder and other officials to the dogs.
Anybody, including government officials can make “mistakes”. Any well meaning policy can be poorly evaluated. Government action can be taken that ends up having negative results. All of these are matters of policy that can be worked out between politicians and voters.
But Fast and Furious is yet another ridiculously failed operation of the ATF that has resulted in people being murdered. Somebody was fully in charge. The head of the Justice Department says, “Not me”, as do other high level officials. But somebody is responsible. Probably more than one. And these are not people who should be just fired. These are people who, at this point, should be arrested and tried on criminal charges. For anybody else in the nation, murder resulting from them embarking on a stupid endeavor would result in …. what?
In this case “switches” have been made in “positions”.
Eric Holder is the proud attorney general who in 2009 called America a “nation of cowards”.
Now as he keeps a puppy dog look on his face and lies to congress, it appears he should be looking in the mirror making that statement.
Holder was a mistake President Obama made when picking his cabinet. The bigger mistake was keeping him this long. And the biggest mistake is letting him keep the reigns of the justice department during this FAF investigation.
The obvious concern of the Obama administration is keeping hope alive that this monstrous disgrace will not affect the presidential campaign too deeply.
No matter that people died. Just protect the administration.