Obama, the DOJ, and a terrible decision

Here we go again, another reason we must vote Obama out of the White House this November. I'm going through chapters in Hugh Hewitt's The Brief Against Obama. This time, let's review the "Fast and Furious" debacle and cover-up.

The Obama administration in the fall of 2009 approved selling guns to Mexican drug cartels in the hope of tracing those guns to the big dealers of weapons and drugs. It all went terribly wrong when a year later U. S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona by suspected drug-smuggling operatives with two weapons that were part of this operation. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), as well as the Department of Justice, had long ago lost control of the weapons they had shopped to the cartels. In many cases, the end result appears to have been the arming of violent drug cartels south of the border.

Questions arose regarding why this was sanctioned and encouraged. However, answers have not been forthcoming from the Obama Department of Justice. The senior leadership over at ATF preferred to cooperate with a congressional inquiry, but they reported that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond. The result was that the Department of Justice, under Eric Holder, send over false denials and buried its head in the sand. The result was an obstructed investigation. In addition to not answering letters, DOJ didn't comply with congressional subpoenas. Holder's department not only stonewalled requests for information but appeared to influence the testimonies given to congressional inquiries.

Attorney General Holder didn't come off well in this disaster. When asked about the operation on May 3, 2011, he said he wasn't sure of the exact day he first heard of the operation but said it was "probably over the last few weeks." He also could not say who authorized the operation. Since then, Department of Justice memos have been released about Operation Fast and Furious that are addressed to Holder dated as early as July 2010. Either he has a terrible memory or he was lying. Neither is a great option.

The sales of Fast and Furious weapons coincided with an upswing of Mexican drug violence. Many of those who died in Mexico were killed with weapons supplied through this poorly thought out operation. This is President Obama's Department of Justice, so the buck stops with him. Just one more reason he has to go in November.