August 29, 2012, 10:03 PM | #2551 |
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Aguila Blanca wrote, if I understand correctly:
However, any and all of the BATFE agents who knowingly and willingly participated in allowing (and encouraging, and facilitating) the illegal sales of the firearms used and the transportation of those firearms across an international border contrary to U.S. law, Mexican law, and international law, most assuredly should be charged with conspiracy to commit various firearms offenses; with being an accessory to various firearms offenses; with aiding and abetting the commission of various firearms offenses; and possibly with being accessories to the murder of Agent Terry. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Re the above, yes, they certainly should be, and then re the following, They should NOT be allowed to hide behind "the Agency told me to do it, I was only following orders." That approach was discredited at Nuremberg, it should not be allowed here in the U.S. Further, if any of the BATFE people involved were ever in the military, they should know that under the UCMJ a soldier not only does not have to follow an unlawful order, he/she is required to disobey the unlawful order and to report it up the chain of command. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- They most likely will be, which strikes me as rather sad, possibly displaying a failing of understanding on my part. |
August 29, 2012, 10:19 PM | #2552 | |
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Nothing is going to happen. Obama and Holder and Napolitano and various congressional leaders will not allow anything to happen.
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August 30, 2012, 08:21 AM | #2553 |
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I really don't know if this is related, but I can imagine that it might be. It looks like BATFE is looking for a new Deputy Associate Chief Counsel in the West Region. http://www.justice.gov/careers/legal...-occ-ad-wr.htm
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August 30, 2012, 09:22 AM | #2554 |
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So if the new policy is to throw agents under the bus for actions approved by their supervisor/manager then this will lead to unrest throughout the bureau. Ouch.
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August 30, 2012, 10:11 AM | #2555 | |
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August 31, 2012, 09:51 AM | #2556 |
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I think the unrest was inevitable.
You had upper levels of BATFE collaborating with appointees to subvert the mission of BATFE and turn the bureau into a component of a propaganda machine - manufacturing events that the administration could then spin to support their agenda. Subverting the mission of BATFE made for tension. Having tactics and operations manipulated by non-BATFE politicos like Burke and friends made for tension. |
August 31, 2012, 11:14 AM | #2557 |
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The following might be somewhat "off-point", but it still bears on the thrust of this discussion.
Interested readers might view the following . [email protected] in particular the 30 August 2012 article. Takes a few miniutes to read, but time well spent, I think. Judge for yourselves. |
August 31, 2012, 12:11 PM | #2558 |
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If the local office id thrown under the proverbial bus for carrying out an operation that originated up the line, then we might expect the information flow from those local agents top significantly increase.
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August 31, 2012, 12:53 PM | #2559 |
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Here's a working link to the article alan mentioned from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. The author is George Reisman
http://mises.org/daily/6172/Gun-Cont...vernments-Guns
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August 31, 2012, 04:02 PM | #2560 | ||
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See Memorandum, US Congressman Issa, dated 3 May, 2012: Quote:
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August 31, 2012, 10:17 PM | #2561 |
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CowTowner :
Thanks. The link you put up is more direct than the approach I came upon. go to mieses.org, a list of areticles is found there, scroll down through it, not very far, and there find the article I referenced. The link is a lot quicker. |
September 1, 2012, 09:15 PM | #2562 | |
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Unfortuantely, the only conceivable utility for the gun walking plan, with no attempt to follow the weapons -- just wait for them to turn up at a crime sceme and a trace request to come in from MX -- is for political anecdotal support for ill-conceived gun control laws. The local agents don't benefit from that -- unless they get some personal gratification from narrowing the rights of Americans. The only political appeal for such a plan is higher up the ladder. There HAS to be some paper trail evidencing that. Hmmm . . . Wonder why exec privilege has been asserted for the documents subpoenaed?
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September 2, 2012, 12:24 AM | #2563 |
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^ +1
Very few people in the media ever make a critical examination of the the F&F plan. Even if the agents had never lost track of the weapons, does anyone believe those weapons were going to end up on the mantle over the fireplace of a Mexican drug lord's mansion or something? Did they think the head of an entire syndicate was going to take one of these straw-purchase weapons and start carrying it themselves? Those weapons only ever would have circulated among the bottom few tiers of the organization between the people who use them - the workers, the people who transport and guard shipments, assassins, enforcers and the soldiers of the organization. The operation NEVER made sense for the stated goal. Instead of scrutinizing the stated objective, the reporters just chalk it up to a few bad choices, a few bad decisions. " Mistakes were made", "the strategy was flawed." Only the NRA keeps beating the drum, that it wasn't a flawed strategy - the real objective of F&F was different from the stated objective, and the tactics made sense in light of the real objective - building a case for lax U.S. gun laws being responsible for the high level of violence in Mexico. |
September 2, 2012, 04:42 AM | #2564 | |
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I understand that the propaganda line being put forth by almost all media sources is that some agents lost track of some guns, and that is the whole problem with Fast and Furious. If you misidentify the problem, getting to the wrong solution becomes easier. The agents did not "lose track" of some guns. They deliberately allowed them to get away on orders from their superiors and despite their better judgment. Saying they "lost track" of the guns implies it was a mistake and that agent competence might be the problem. It was no mistake, the agents were competent. They did not lose track of any guns. They walked them. BIG difference, even if the media is trying to erase it. |
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September 2, 2012, 07:35 AM | #2565 | ||||
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/...in;contentBody Quote:
Not all the F&F guns went to Mexico. Never saw this one reported by any other news organization: http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/local_...-valley-crimes Posted: 06/30/2011 • By: Lori Jane Gliha Quote:
CBS won the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative journalism: http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/in...d-furious.aspx Quote:
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September 2, 2012, 10:11 AM | #2566 | |||
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Thallub, Sharyl Attkisson is a notable exception to what I'm talking about, and the ABC report you linked is another. It says:
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September 2, 2012, 10:20 AM | #2567 | |
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The NY Times provides another example:
Quote:
Saying that "agents did not move quickly" against straw buyers and that they lost track of the guns is certainly part of the truth, in addition to being an excellent example of why courts ask people to swear to tell the whole truth. On orders from superiors, the agents did not act quickly against those buyers, and when the agents were ordered to lose track of the shipments in various ways, they did as ordered. When you put it that way, it kind of suggests a different problem than the one the NY Times and the rest are suggesting. |
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September 2, 2012, 10:22 AM | #2568 |
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Thallub, you should also check out the coverage on MSNBC, CNN, and Huffington, for TV and web coverage bias.
NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe, AJC, even Kansas City Star, too, for print and web. Most of the major media seem to deliberately miss the point on F&F. Without going into my own politics, I try to follow news across a fairly broad spectrum. Patterns in coverage definitely begin to show. Luger, while praising the NRA is fine, don't forget David Codrea or Sharyl Atkisson. |
September 2, 2012, 01:51 PM | #2569 | |
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One of the earlier gun-running operations, IIRC, did have tracking devices attached to or embedded in the guns, and my recollection is that the Mexicans found them and disabled them, rendering the operation a failure. The F&F guns did NOT have any tracking devices. The operation was not briefed even to BATFE agents in Mexico, or to any Mexican authorities. Which means that, even if the U.S. agents had managed to keep eyeballs directly on all 2000 guns right to the border ... once they were across the border they were gone. No tracking devices, nobody in law enforcement even knew they existed, let alone that they were coming into Mexico. There was no need to "order" anyone to lose track of them. The operation was designed to lose track of them. The only "tracking" contemplated was to "trace" them back to U.S. gun shops after they were used in crimes in Mexico and recovered. Any innocent (or guilty) Mexicans killed by the guns were just collateral damage. |
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September 2, 2012, 02:04 PM | #2570 |
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Aguila, I watched the original Committee hearings - the agents in question DID testify that they had gun runners in sight about to transfer, asked for permission to arrest/interdict, and were ordered from above to allow the firearms to leave surveillance unhindered. They did testify they were ordered to let firearms "walk" out of their sight into Mexico, unlike the first operation, Wide Receiver, which the guns were watched all the way to the border and the Mexican authorities were advised...and did nothing, which was one major reason why Wide Receiver was terminated. One ATFE agent during the first hearing did testify he tried to build a tracking device, but it failed due to off the shelf components, limited range and limited battery life.
The agents on the ground testified they were repeatedly ordered to suspend surveillance and to allow known criminals to walk the firearms across the border, sometimes over strenuous objections by the agents testifying. Yes, I remember seeing the report on F&F firearms found in Phoenix and Glendale, as well as other Arizona jurisdictions. Some of them are smuggled in, others probably walk in with the cartel enforcers along that lovely fed.gov superhighway gifted to them up through the state, the one marked "US Citizens stay out". That's not too many miles from my home. |
September 2, 2012, 08:27 PM | #2571 | |
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September 2, 2012, 10:14 PM | #2572 |
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Some above appearing posts make mention of "media coverage" or the lack thereof re the details of Operation Fast & Furious in particular, and might I add, of "gun control" in general.
Given the media in general are great supporters of the Tales of the Vienna Woods, also known as Gun Control, one would hardly be surprised, though the facts of the matter are worth mentioning. |
September 3, 2012, 08:47 AM | #2573 |
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There have been many hours or testimony and documents placed before the Committee. Some of the most telling have been overlooked by the media and I think the lawmakers themselves.
The Commanding General for Southern Command testified that the Arsenals of Central America were the major source of weapons for the Cartels. |
September 3, 2012, 01:05 PM | #2574 |
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What will be interesting to see is what happens if the election goes against the current administration. The reason I say that is then it would really limit the time the president has to give pardons and it would be interesting to see if he used this power to make this issue go away. For myself if a pardon is issued on this I think it will have ramifications that won’t easily go away... Yet if they do loose then they have to already be aware they could very well end up being prosecuted at some point over this issue... Murder is still murder...
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September 3, 2012, 11:12 PM | #2575 | |
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If the United States was arming some government and the weapons "just happened" to find their way into the hands of right-wing death squads... the media would be running stories on the bloodshed (and blaming America) nightly. There would be protests calling for the U.S. to cut off foreign aid to the country, cease military coperation and cease military aid, freeze assets, etc, etc... The State Department was arming narco terrorists in Mexico, and hundreds and hundreds of people were getting killed with weapons that were procured through the Direct Commercial Sales program, and the media hardly said a word. Sharyl Attkisson was the notable exception. I think the architects of the whole thing counted on things being too chaotic for people to ever be able to track down which weapons were from the Mexican armories and which were from U.S. gunstores. And with the media coverage on border issues being as bad as it was, their strategy probably would have worked, except for 2 things, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed and some BATFE blew the whistle. The death of Brian Terry was a game changer, but the State Department's role in this has never been brought to light by the media |
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