From FirearmsTruth (
http://www.firearmstruth.com/2011/never-waste-a-good-crisis)
Never Waste a Good Crisis
The title of this article was spoken by the Obama administration’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Is this the philosophy the President is using to keep the scandalous operations Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious out of the mainstream media headlines?
The ATF’s sting operation has come back to plant apitoxin in the long arm of the law. As regular readers of FirearmsTruth know, Project Gunrunner allowed straw buyers to illegally buy and export guns to Mexican drug cartels. Over 1,700 firearms were involved and some have been used to murder U.S. agents and Mexican citizens.
A few major news outlets, including CBS and FOX News, have run stories on the scandal over the last few weeks. But the coverage has been back-page news compared to the war in Libya, the nuclear disaster in Japan and the latest antics of Charlie Sheen. There has been little editorial discussion about the subject on talk shows like Meet The Press and the late night comedians haven’t satirized the ATF.
If the public is to be informed, the press has to report on stories, even if they don’t fit their political view. Before Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious broke, most of the media repeated the falsity that 90% of the guns seized from the Mexican drug gangs came from the United States. Stories attacking guns shows and gun stores near the U.S. Mexican border peppered the reading and viewing public. Now that we know our own government perpetrated these sales, news stories citing the 90% fallacy have disappeared. The question arises: If we are engaged in a war on drugs, why is the government selling weapons to the enemy?
President Obama has called the ATF’s actions “a serious mistake†but isn’t willing to take responsibility for the apitoxic sting. “I did not authorize it; Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. He’s been very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them into jail.â€
So who is in charge? The ATF operates under the Justice Department, which is headed by Eric Holder. Two of Holder’s assistant U.S. attorneys administered Operation Fast and Furious. It seems unlikely that such an operation could be undertaken without Holder’s knowledge. This isn’t a simple law enforcement matter. There are international implications attached to Fast and Furious and U.S./Mexican relations have been strained because of the ATF’s actions.
It doesn’t seem likely that a domestic law enforcement agency could be co-opted by mid-level officials to interfere with international relationships. At the very least, the State Department should have been consulted. But if the President is to be believed, no higher-ups knew anything. That means we have an administration that isn’t in control of its own levers of power.
Yesterday FirearmsTruth asked the question “Is the U.S. Bombing Libya to Deflect Attention From Fast and Furious?†We put our foot in the conspiratorial pool to test the temperature of the water. The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they rely on half-truths, circumstantial evidence and made-up facts. The simplest explanation is usually correct. As the 2012 election starts to heat up, it is clear the administration doesn’t need a well-known scandal to pierce the public’s conscience. The crisis in Libya and other parts of the world weren’t perpetrated by President Obama, but they have been exploited by those in the press who subvert news coverage so as to lend support to the President’s reelection.
